College Football 2017: Winners, losers of Week 16 coaching carousel

Winner: Arkansas Razorbacks

The Arkansas Razorbacks fired Bret Bielema and hired Chad Morris to run the football program down in Fayetteville. He ran a power offense with tight ends and fullbacks that looked to pound the ball on the ground in Big Ten style. It didn’t work out for Bielema and he was fired on the field in a despicable manner by administration.

In comes Morris. He is the offensive guru given the thumbs up from Deshaun Watson and Dabo Swinney — two guys that know about winning football games.

Coach Morris didn’t play college football and instead was a statistics major in college. After putting some high-powered high school offenses together in his home state of Texas, he was promoted to become the Tulsa assistant head coach, offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach in 2010. Todd Graham had employed another well-known former high school coach in Gus Malzahn down at Tulsa before Malzahn went on to become a head coach.

Morris was then hired as the offensive coordinator at Clemson during Dabo’s rise from a 7-5 team to a national championship-winning program. Clemson finished 42-11 while Morris was on staff from 2011-14. Morris was then hired as the SMU head football coach and drove the Ponies up to 7-5 this year after the program had nearly gone extinct before his arrival. He has had experience around great offensive minds like Todd Graham and Herb Hand (Auburn’s offensive line coach).

Morris will bring an offensive mindset and a youthful approach to the Razorbacks, something they’ve lacked over the years. Arkansas had gone with the re-tread head coaches but instead take on an up-and-comer in Morris.