No Excuses, No Apologies, Just Football
Guy Morriss made a living moving defensive lineman. Now he is moving his players, university, fans and the state of Kentucky to believe in his philosophy.
by: Richard Scott©
More from this issue
The Morriss File
1988-89 New England Patriots - Offensive Line
1991 Mansfield, Tex., HS - Offensive Coordinator
1992 Washington (PSFL) - Head Coach
1992-93 Valdosta State - Offensive Line
1994 Arizona Cardinals - Offensive Line
1995 San Antonio (CFL) - Offensive Line
1996 Mississippi State - Offensive Line
1997-00 Kentucky - Assistant HC, OL
2001 Kentucky - Head Coach
Playing Career 1969-72 TCU - OL/TE
1973-83 Philadelphia Eagles - OL
1984-87 New England Patriots - OL
1972 All-Southwest Conference
1981 All-Pro
Guy Morriss isn’t a complicated man. He isn’t trying to dazzle anyone with genius, gimmicks or gadgets. After all, he was an NFL offensive lineman, and is well aware the shortest distance between two points is a straight line – the line that goes right through the obstacle directly across the line of scrimmage.
These days, Morriss finds his challenges stacked one on top of the other in his job as the head football coach at the University of Kentucky. Building a consistent winner at Kentucky has never been easy, especially in the football-rich SEC. Inheriting a program under the cloud of a prolonged NCAA investigation and the shackles of probation and penalties that followed it on the day before national signing day does not help either.
But don’t feel too sorry for Morriss. He sure doesn’t. You won’t catch him sitting around making excuses and feeling sorry for himself. You don’t survive 15 seasons in the NFL through self-pity. You just dig in, fire off the ball, hit someone and shove him out of the way. And if the obstacle won’t move you dig a little deeper, work a little harder, push a little longer, and do whatever it takes to get the job done.
That worked for Morriss as a player. That’s why the big Texan earned All-Pro honors and played in two Super Bowls as a member of the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. That’s why Kentucky handed him the reigns during a time of turmoil and asked him to start slamming away at the obstacles surrounding the program.
“It was kind of an overnight deal,” says Morriss, who replaced Hal Mumme as Kentucky’s head coach on Feb. 6, 2001 in the midst of a controversy that led to Kentucky’s current probation. “All of a sudden, you’re sitting in the big chair and making all the decisions. It’s a position where you can’t tell someone ‘go down and see that person at the end of the hallway and that guy will take care of it.’ Now it was up to me to handle all that stuff. It was sudden, but you just had to get everything in gear and get rolling in a hurry.”
Morriss jumped from signing day to spring practice to spring recruiting to a summer of meeting and greeting Kentucky fans and boosters and right into a 2-9 season in which the Wildcats appeared to show significant improvement towards the second half of the season. Before he had a moment to breath, Morriss jumped right back into recruiting and the whole cycle began again.
“We were thrown into the fire,” Morriss says. “When we were hired the day before signing day, I had to leave the press conference early so we could try and salvage the recruiting class. We haven’t stopped since. My wife and I still pinch ourselves. We can’t believe it happened the way it happened, and we still haven’t had much time to sit back and reflect on it. We’re just trying to get things turned around here.”
Getting things turned around at Kentucky has never been easy, and probation and penalties won’t make it any easier. Through no fault of Morriss’, or anyone on his current staff, Kentucky suffered a major blow in February when the NCAA banned the program from postseason play this season and placed it on probation for three years.
The NCAA also cited UK for a lack of institutional control over its football program and accepted the reduction of 19 football scholarships over three years that the university imposed upon itself last February. Additionally, the NCAA reduced the number of players UK can have on scholarship at any one time from 85 to 80 during that period.
Add that to the list of problems Morriss faces at Kentucky, and he could have enough excuses to fill a Division I-A roster, walk-ons included. Ancient history will tell you Kentucky hasn’t been a national football power since the days of Bear Bryant and basketball continues to overshadow football throughout the state. Morriss inherited a young team with a weak defense, tensions within the athletic department, and problems with in-state high school coaches.
Yet, Morriss refuses to accept any of those factors as reasons for improving the program and turning it into a winner. Instead, he considers them excuses, and Morriss absolutely detests excuses.
“That comes from my playing career,” Morriss says. “You don’t last in the NFL by making excuses. The bottom line is you’ve got to perform. You’ve got to show up and go to work. I don’t like people who make excuses. I don’t like being surrounded by people who make excuses. I won’t be around people who always point the finger at other people for their problems. Those are negative people and I think of myself as a positive person. Our coaches are positive people and our coaching style is very positive.
“Our deal from day one has been ‘men, we’re not going to make excuses. We’re going to control what we can control and that’s it. We’ll just keep working, because making excuses doesn’t cut it.’”
Morriss himself had to put his own potential excuses aside when he became a head coach for the first time. He had never been a head coach before, expect for a brief fling with a PSL franchise that never played a game, and did not anticipate becoming an SEC head coach in such a surprising manner. He had received phone calls to interview for head coaching jobs, most at lower division schools, and even talked to some, but without a substantial offer he remained an assistant coach and did what he could to prepare himself for the day when the right call might come along.
Little did he know it would come from within the same athletic department.
“Right up until the first conversation I had with Larry Ivy (former UK athletic director) about the job I didn’t pay much attention to the whole situation,” Morriss says. “I was just trying to be a good soldier and keep working. I was doing my best to support Coach Mumme. I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for him.
“But I was also hoping my time would come someday and I felt like I had prepared myself as a player and as a coach so when the right opportunity came along I could take advantage of that.”
Morriss knew he could draw on his experiences with former Patriots coach Raymond Perry and former Eagles coach Dick Vermeil, as well as his relationships with former NFL coaches George Allen and Sid Gilliam, but there were some things he simply had to learn on the job.
“I felt prepared from an X and O and philosophy standpoint,” Morriss says, “but the thing that did hit me after I got the job was how large the administrative responsibility has become. You have to deal with so much that you actually kind of give up your coaching duties. You’re like a CEO.”
As the CEO, Morriss bears the responsibility for setting the tone for the program. Part of his job is to deal positively with the NCAA sanctions weighing on the program. Some of his ideas come from his time at Mississippi State in the mid-90s, when archrival Ole Miss had to endure similar penalties. Morriss watched how former Rebel coach Tommy Tuberville and his staff handled the situation and learned some valuable lessons that he applies to the Kentucky situation now.
“We’ve tried to do what we call ‘grayshirting,’ which is sort of like robbing Peter to pay Paul,” Morriss says. “We signed some kids and then convinced them to come in and enroll in January. That’s still a good deal for them because they get 5 1/2 years of school paid for, they get to go through spring practice before their first fall, and it gives them an extra year to grow and mature and helps them get off to a better start academically.”
Another thing Morriss plans to do is redshirt more signees.
“For us to be successful, we’d like to redshirt pretty much every kid we sign,” Morriss says. “We play some great programs here in the SEC and you’re not going to be the Floridas and Tennessees and Alabamas and the LSUs of the world playing freshmen and redshirt freshmen. We need to sign them, let them develop and play those teams with fourth- and fifth-year players. We’ve made a commitment to biting the bullet and redshirting 85 to 90 percent of our class.
“That’s a long-term approach, but it’s the only way we’re ever going to build this program into the type we want to have and the type the people here in Kentucky want to have.”
That attitude toward the future is especially remarkable considering Morriss’ contract status. When he took the job, he accepted a one-year contract with few guarantees. Within months, he accepted a new five-year contract, but the deal did not include the typical buyout clause found in most coach’s contracts. Basically, the contract gave Kentucky the freedom to fire him without penalty, and Morriss simply accepted the opportunity and gambled on his ability to get the job.
Few in the coaching profession would blame Morriss if he attempted to re-load with quick fixes and shortcuts. Yet, despite the lack of guarantees in his contract, Morriss continues to work on re-building the foundation like a contract with a seven-year deal and a comfy buyout clause. Even his willingness to discipline players, to the point of removing players who failed to live and work within the guidelines of the program, reflects a coach with long-range plans.
“Every decision we’ve made is based on the long-term and what’s best for this program and this university,” Morriss says. “If you want a good program you have to build a solid foundation under it. “
A coach also has to be willing and able to sell his program to boosters and fans, and make sure it fits in with the rest of the athletic department. Fans loved Mumme’s offense and his ability to score points, which led to the Wildcats two consecutive bowl appearances, but continuing tensions between the football program and the rest of the department didn’t help Mumme’s popularity.
Morriss might not enthrall fans with whimsical stories like Erk Russell or inspire them with his gosh-golly-gee homespun wit and wisdom like Bobby Bowden, but he’s more than willing to spend time shaking hands, signing autographs and answering questions at fan and alumni events. He’s also more than willing to hop on his motorcycle and participate in a ride for charity, or go out of his way to welcome the former players back into the fold.
He’s also not afraid to hold his ground with the media, even the tough questions that come following a loss, a big decision to change quarterbacks or the announcement of NCAA sanctions.
“The media has a job to do – I understand that,” Morriss says. “They’re not always going to write that you’re Mr. Wonderful or the answer to football, but you’ve got to understand that. I grew up with some pretty tough media in Philadelphia, so I know how tough it can get. But it’s all about how you treat people. I respect them and the job they have to do, so let’s make ourselves accessible and respect their job and hopefully they’ll respect us.”
It’s a lot easier to repair the damage with the fans, former players and the media, but rebuilding bridges with the state’s high school coaches hasn’t been as easy. That’s going to take more time, but Morriss hopes that opening the doors of the football complex and the phone lines to his coaches will help Kentucky high school coaches know they are important to the program. Morriss has also thrown his support behind a proposed East-West High School All-Star game for Kentucky prep standouts.
“All they usually want is an honest evaluation of their players and accessibility to our staff,” Morriss says. “We’ve tried to do open our doors and do that. It just goes back to the old adage of how you treat people. We want to treat the coaches the way we’d want to be treated if we were in their shoes.”
While all those off-field areas of concern are important, Morriss knows the most important part of his job lies in what happens on the field. With that in mind, he is attempting to reshape the Wildcats into a more physical and resilient team with the ability run the ball and shut down the run.
Kentucky is fortunate to have a reputable defensive coordinator in John Goodner, but Goodner’s defense is young and needs more time, muscle and depth – and more attention to the running game than it got under the previous head coach. The offense is loaded at quarterback with junior Jared Lorenzen and sophomore Shayne Boyd, but needs more balance to take the heat off the passing game and be more productive in the red zone and short-yardage situations.
“The better a team can run, the better they can throw it,” Morriss says. “We’re just striving to be more balanced in our offense because the more one-dimensional you get in anything you do, the easier you are to defend. People were ignoring our running game and laying back and starting to play a lot of soft coverages on us. Sure, we were putting up a lot of yards but we weren’t scoring as many points and our production was going down.
“And that kind of offense not only effects your offensive production, but if you don’t practice the running game how is your defense ever supposed to learn to stop the run?
“The biggest thing we’re doing now is we’re not ignoring the running game or the defensive side of the ball. I played on two Super Bowl teams and I know what gets you to the championship game. You’ve got to throw the ball and you’ve got to be exciting, but if you’re ever going to win you’ve got to play defense. That’s as old as football itself. You ignore that side of the ball and you’re in trouble.”
Morriss also has attempted to use the new emphasis on running the ball and stopping the run to ignite more intensity in Kentucky’s practice. Demands for toughness and physical play are higher than ever, but Morriss relies on his own experience to keep those demands within reason.
“One of the things I do is to go back and stop and think about my days as a player and ask, ‘am I asking my players to do something I was asked to do as a player and couldn’t do it? Are my expectations too great?’” Morriss says. “I feel like I can rely on my playing experience to answer those questions.”
Of all the lessons the Wildcats can learn from Morriss’ attitude and experience as a player and a coach. The most important lesson is the one he learned and applied as an offensive lineman.
It’s not about running the ball, throwing the ball or choosing one philosophy over another. It’s about fighting the good fight. It’s about enduring.
“It’s about digging in, coming off the ball, hitting someone and shoving him out of the way. And if the obstacle won’t move? It’s about digging a little deeper, working a little harder, pushing a little longer, doing whatever it takes to get the job done.
“We just got to keep our head down and keep grinding,” Morriss said. “That’s all I know to do.”
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