Eric Morris has no plans to give up offensive play calling duties: 'It's still my favorite thing to do'

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There has been plenty of change the past eight months for Oklahoma State coach Eric Morris. New location, new team, new level of football, new challenges in rebuilding a program.

But what isn’t changing for Morris are his offensive duties on game days. Morris has been the offensive play caller his entire head coaching career, and at Big 12 Media Days, he said he has no plans to give that up.

“It’s still my favorite thing to do,” Morris said. “There’s nothing that still motivates me, keeps me involved in the game-planning, keeps my brain activated, trying to come up with different ways to attack people on the offensive side of the ball (like play calling).”

There is precedent on both sides of the play-calling debate with head coaches. Many like to call their own plays on the side of the ball they specialize in, but many have passed along those jobs.

Ohio State coach Ryan Day became the Buckeyes’ offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2017, then head coach in 2019. He held onto play calling until passing them along to offensive coordinator Chip Kelly ahead of the 2024 season.

“As you move up, you’ve got to give up and that wasn’t easy for me,” Day said in an interview with Fox college football analyst Joel Klatt before the 2024 season. “I feel like the time is right, now. With the transfer portal, with NIL, it was more and more energy and time that needs to be focused on the players in those areas. I also think that it’s going to allow me the opportunity to be more present with the team, especially later in the season.”

The Buckeyes went on to win their first national championship under Day that season.

Even Morris’ predecessor at OSU, Mike Gundy, gave up play calling during his tenure. Gundy was the Cowboys’ offensive coordinator for four seasons until becoming head coach in 2005. He continued to call the plays on offense for his first five seasons at the helm.

But Gundy handed over offensive play-calling duties to offensive coordinator Dana Holgorsen ahead of the 2010 season after the OSU offense sputtered down the stretch of the 2009 season, scoring a total of seven points in the final two games against OU and Ole Miss. That move paid off, as the Cowboys’ offense ranked in the top five nationally each of the next three seasons.

After Morris fielded the No. 1 offense in the country at North Texas in 2025, he has every reason to continue calling the plays. He’s one of the top offensive names nationally in college football. And giving up play-calling duties isn’t always for the better.

Before becoming the OU head coach ahead of the 2022 season, Brent Venables spent 10 years as the defensive coordinator at Clemson, where his defense was top 15 nationally eight times. He was also previously the Sooners’ co-defensive coordinator on their 2000 national title team. Venables was known as one of the best defensive coordinators and play callers in the sport.

Venables maintained his defensive play-calling duties as head coach until 2024, when he relinquished them to pick up other responsibilities as the Sooners entered the SEC. The OU defense ranked 19th that season, but the team went 6-7. After the season, Venables took back over the defense and led OU to the College Football Playoff in 2025.

“Why am I going to call the defense? Because I’m good at it. And I’m confident at it,” Venables said before the 2025 season.

Morris cut his teeth in college football around that line of thinking.

His mentor and former head coach at Texas Tech, Mike Leach, was an offensive guru and called the plays his entire career.

Morris’ positions coach at Texas Tech, Lincoln Riley, later built a name as one of the best offensive play callers as OC and head coach at OU, and he still refuses to give up play-calling duties as head coach at USC. Morris said he and Riley have talked about it.

“I enjoy winning a whole hell of a lot more than calling plays,” Riley told ESPN on Tuesday at Big Ten Media Days. “If I thought it would help us out I would do it in a heartbeat.”

Morris has an offensive coordinator he’s more than comfortable with in Sean Brophy, who played quarterback for Morris at Incarnate Word and was Morris’ passing game coordinator and QBs coach at UNT. Brophy would likely be fine as the play caller.

But that’s not a duty Morris is willing to part with yet, even as the number of head coaches nationally who call plays shrinks.

“I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it, calling people. There’s not a ton of people left,” Morris said.

“That’s probably what Lincoln and I talk about the most is, ‘Are we saving enough time for all these different parts of the organization when you’re spending so much time calling the plays?’ I think you got to hire good people that you trust to do some other things.

“But, yeah, it’s what I love the most.”

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