Chad Morris Reflects on Charlottesville, His Son Chandler, Clemson’s Challenges
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The Blue Ridge Mountains have a way of framing football in a unique way. The cool evenings with crisp air that clings low to the ground — it all signals that fall has arrived.
For Chad Morris, the former Clemson offensive coordinator, the past week in Charlottesville has been both a step back into the rhythms of the game and a chance to watch his son thrive.
“You smell some of that wood burning and got a little smoke from the tailgating,” Morris said, painting the picture in a way only a coach raised on Southern football could. “When it gets a little crisp, that smoke stays a little lower. You know it’s getting close to hunting season, so everybody’s getting excited about that, too. That’s when you know football season is really in full gear.”
Morris has been embedded in Virginia’s football offices this week, watching practice, sitting in on meetings, and offering occasional insights. His son, Chandler, transferred to UVA and now leads the Cavaliers’ offense under head coach Tony Elliott.
“We’ve thoroughly enjoyed it,” Morris said. “Being able to come up here and be around in the office most of the week and watch practice. I do some work for those guys up there and kind of from the offensive standpoint and some consulting stuff and helping those guys out from some scouting. It’s been good. I remember coming up here in 2013 with our team, and when Tajh, Sammy, and I just put on a show up here. It was in early October, and I just remember how pretty this time of year is up here. That’s when football weather really kicks in. You can’t beat it.”
Last night might have “beaten it” for Coach Morris. He was just a father watching his son shock a national audience, as Chandler led Virginia to a double-overtime win over No. 8 Florida State.
Chandler, who had been recognized as the ACC’s Player of the Week just last week, carried that momentum into Friday’s contest at Scott Stadium. The younger Morris delivered a performance for the ages, going 26-of-35 passing for 229 yards, two touchdowns through the air, and three more on the ground as Virginia stunned the Seminoles, 46-38.
“He’s playing really, really well,” Morris said before the game. “Had a tremendous game last week. He’s enjoying it, and he’s playing really well as they all are.”
While Virginia celebrated its upset, Clemson is grappling with its own midseason questions in the bye week. The Tigers sit at 1-3 for the first time since 2004, and the offense has been in a funk for most of the year.
For Morris, who spent years building Clemson’s offensive identity, the message is clear: adversity is the true measuring stick.
“Everybody’s an All-American when it’s 72 and partly cloudy, right?” he said. “But you really find out kind of who you are, what you have, when it’s 104 degrees out there and it’s third and one or fourth and one and the heat’s bearing down on the back of your neck. That’s when you find out.”
The bye week, Morris explained, is a natural point for teams to pause and recalibrate.
“As you go into this open week, as everybody does, you go through a self-scout routine,” he said. “You may look and say, ‘You know what, maybe we haven’t had the success we’re reaching. We may not have a lot of tendencies because we really haven’t had an identity or really what we’re doing well.’ So at that point, you hit reset and go, okay, what over the first three or four weeks of the season have we done well? And try to build off that.”
Just as important is resisting the urge to pile too much onto players’ plates.
“You can’t have so much information that you get constipated, so to speak,” Morris said with a laugh. “If you have too much stuff, you’re over-processing. Somebody in the room — whether that was Tony [Elliott], Jeff [Scott], Danny [Pearman], Robbie [Caldwell], whoever — would look and go, ‘Hey, Chad, we got too much in.’ Even Coach Swinney would say, ‘Hey, do we have too much in?’ It caused you to go back and say, maybe we did. So what can we scale back? What can we do well? Then you build off that.”
For Morris, the week in Charlottesville has been about more than nostalgia. It has been a reminder of why he fell in love with the game in the first place: the shared language of football, the thrill of a crisp fall Saturday, and now, the pride of watching his son seize his moment.
And he isn’t finished talking.
Coming Sunday: Inside the Playbook
Next, Morris goes beyond memory and fatherhood, taking us back inside the playbook. From “eye candy” to the art of disguising calls and making in-game adjustments, he explains how offenses are built to test both discipline and deception.
That feature will also include our full audio interview with Coach Morris.
