SMU head coach June Jones’s Run-and-Shoot offense is only as effective as its quarterback, and Kyle Padron had a strong year, at least statistically. He set new school records for passing yards and touchdown passes in a single season by a Mustang quarterback, and finished eighth among Football Bowl Subdivision quarterbacks in passing yards and tied for eighth in passing touchowns. But the sophomore from Southlake, Texas, still had his critics, who contended that his play was inconsistent, at least in comparison to his record-setting performance in the Hawaii Bowl at the end of his freshman season. SMU assistant head coach/offense Dan Morrison visited with PonyFans.com to discuss Padron’s development, and the team’s depth at the position.

Assistant head coach Dan Morrison is getting ready for his fourth season working with SMU quarterbacks (photo by Webmaster).

PonyFans.com: There was talk last year — at least in the media and among fans — about Kyle Padron being inconsistent last year, even though his name is all over the SMU record book after a season in which he set single-season records for touchdown passes and passing yards. Now that you have had a couple of months to watch film and digest his season, how would you rate his performance?

Dan Morrison: I think what happened is that when he came out of his freshman year, the expectations from the outside jumped dramatically. The reality is that sometimes, when you go through that freshman year and you’re thrown into it like he was, then you just play. Then you’re kind of going through the process of really feel the system and learn the system. It’s a process all of the quarterbacks go through. They start thinking too much, and they’re processing, and then they come out the other end, and they really take off.

Now, as I watched him, he makes a lot of really good throws. He’s also running around quite a bit, and dealing with some receivers who also are learning, so sometimes they’re maybe not quite where they should be, or sometimes he’s got somebody in his face, so he’s just got to adjust to that. He was really free-wheeling as a freshman, because he just … let it go. But you have to go through this process, and my take on him is that he actually did very well. His ankle still isn’t completely well from that East Carolina game, which he fought his way through and played pretty well in that win; he played the Army game with a broken finger — not on his throwing hand, but still, you break your finger and you know it’s there. He never complained.

He does take some heat from some people, and that’s just the nature of playing the position. He takes it on the chin, and he goes about his business. I think that was a great maturing process, for him to go through that, and feel the negative side of being in the public eye, when you’re not as supported as you were as the “darling” as a freshman. That’s OK — he and I both know that, and we talk in terms of improving, not on the basis of other people’s expectations, but on our own internal expectations, his goals of what he wants to do better next year and what he can get better at. That’s the only thing we can work with. We have talked about it, and he will mature and grow through this process. He’s got to have thick skin — every quarterback does — and that’s fine.

I talk to him every day. Not at this point in time — I have tried to get out of his life a little bit — but during the season, I see him every day, I talk to him every day, I look in his eyes every day and I watch him very carefully in practice every day. I know he’s going to be fine, and he’s going to walk out of here as probably the most prolific thrower this place has ever seen, and also, they’ll be very proud of him as a young man.

Morrison said Kyle Padron will take on something of a teaching role during spring workouts (photo by Travis Johnston).

PonyFans.com: You mentioned Kyle’s ankle. In an interview last week, he said he had a torn “joint capsule” in his ankle after the ECU game, which doesn’t require surgery right now (although he said he might get something cleaned up after the season). How much was he affected in the last two-plus games, playing with that injury, and how much were you and Coach Jones affected in terms of what you could and could not call, based on the pain in Kyle’s ankle?

Morrison: I can’t speak for June, but (Padron’s injury) got out of my mind because he gives no indication that he’s hurt. I knew he was, because I could tell by the way he was walking, but we purposely did not talk about it, and how bad it was is reflected by the fact that it’s still there at this point in time — that’s a long time for it to be there. Kyle is just an exceptionally tough young man. Players, generally speaking, can see that they need to play through some things, but I think it’s important also to know that he was playing through some things.

I don’t think it affected anything June did in terms of his play calling — I think he just marched on. And Kyle marched on — he didn’t say a word about it. He played through it. Again, the (broken) finger was in the last game, but the ankle was there for a few weeks, and he never complained. He’s just not the type that, you’re going to hear from him, ‘this is bothering me.’ He’s very introspective and keeps those things to himself. He’s a competitive person, and he just keeps pushing. That’s just his style, and that’s his leadership style — who he is, and what he does, as opposed to how he says things.

PonyFans.com: When you have a guy like that — your starting quarterback who has been a big part of the offense for the last year and a half — who has an injury like Kyle has in his ankle, how will you tailor his workload in the spring to protect the ankle and reduce the stress on it?

Morrison: I think there’s a point in time in the spring when they become less involved, and (spring) becomes much more developmental for the younger guys — Conner Preston is coming in, and Stephen Kaiser is coming off his sickness — just to get them more opportunities, more reps, more throws, and really we can kind of watch them grow and develop. So I would suspect that Kyle will be involved, but less involved in spring. Eventually, (older quarterbacks) get to the point where they’re almost in the role of coaching, which I find is great. I think sometimes their perspective, their language, their involvement … you learn by teaching, and the more you put experienced players in a position where they’re teaching younger players, it’s helping them organize their own minds, and articulate it better. If you want someone to learn something, get them to the point where they’re teaching it, and that’s when they’ll take off, as far as learning. So I’ve always tried to get them, in meetings, as they become more veteran, to articulate more, and talk about what they’re seeing and what they’re doing and how they’re doing what they doing it. It’s partly for the new guys, to let them hear from the older guys, but it’s partly for the older guys, because it cements what they’re learning when they have to articulate it, and organize their mind to teach it. As a former teacher, I’m very cognizant of the fact that the best way to learn is to teach. I’ve done that with all of the quarterbacks I had at Hawaii, too, as they got older, and it works pretty well.

Morrison said freshman Stephen Kaiser is reporting increased arm strength after missing part of the 2010 season because of illness (photo by De Smet Jesuit HS).

PonyFans.com: How much did Stephen Kaiser lose, in terms of his development, by missing the first part of the season last year?

Morrison: He had mono before he arrived, and he relapsed when he got here. It may be a year before he’s fully, fully recovered, and I know they told him early on that it wouldn’t be until after December before he started feeling better. He’s just now starting to feel better, and he’s feeling better with his throwing. It’s a devastating thing. There may be nothing worse than having that particular disorder hit you.

It’s discouraging for a lot of reasons. One, your progress is terribly impeded, but on top of that, you start to lose your confidence. I would tell him the velocity of his arm and the velocity of the ball coming out didn’t match. His arm looked fast, but the ball wasn’t coming out with that same velocity, and he was frustrated, just trying to figure out why. So much of it was just the fact that his body was really thrown for a loop by that thing.

He struggled last fall with his health, but you never give up on him. We would never give up on a kid like that. He’s only a true freshman, and he comes in and has a battle with a pretty difficult thing. You want to let him get entirely through that, and give him the opportunity to throw, and you want to be patient to give him those opportunities. He’s talking like he’s more comfortable when he goes out and throws, and I could see he wasn’t comfortable throwing last year. “Perplexed” is probably a good word — you could see that on his face. “Why is this not working?” It’s a little different, now, in his eyes.

But if you make a fast judgment on someone who has gone through something like that, you’re going to miss something. You may he have a kid who comes out with a whole new mindset because he did miss some time, and is actually better off and more mature because of it. There is a lot of reasons to be patient with Stephen. There’s a road ahead that we’re still going down, and we’re not giving up on him.

Morrison said freshman Conner Preston unified a talented high school team, going 29-1 in his last two seasons (photo by Preston family).

PonyFans.com: Now that he’s on campus and working out with his teammates, what do you like about Conner Preston? When you started looking at recruits’ tapes, what made him stand out and made you decide that out of all the quarterbacks you saw, this was the guy you wanted to recruit?

Morrison: He’s got a very quick release and a very strong arm. And I watched a kid who walked into a setting where they always had tremendous athletes, but could never win it all. I see one kid walk into that setting and it changes that setting. They win the state championship his junior year, and then they go back to the state championship game his senior year. They went 29-1 those two years. The same kids were there, but before he got there, they couldn’t win it, and now they did.

I talked to the coaches, and I talked to some of their players, too, and they know inside that he’s kind of the catalyst who put them in that position. I know he was criticized in Southern California, once they did start winning … “well, look what’s around him.” He did have some phenomenal talent around him — I have never recruited a quarterback who had that kind of receivers around him. But at the same time, when you watch the film carefully, his receivers didn’t really have to work for the ball at all, and they were dropping some of his better throws. So it was more a matter of him being the one who was doing things well, and when they got their hands on the ball, they were scary as heck, but they had to have someone get them the ball.

Conner has touch, he has accuracy, he has a quick release, he has a strong arm. He can move around when he has to, (although) he’s not a blazer, by any means. The other thing I liked about him is, I spent a lot of time talking with him, and he’s a real student of the game. He understood, “this safety, I kind of caught his eyes and I knew I could turn his hips this way, so I could get him to go here.” He sees a lot of things.

He has played in more games, he has started more games — except for Timmy Chang, who started a lot of games, too — than just about any quarterback we have had. He’s kind of a grizzled veteran, for a young kid. He started 40-something games in three years, and there is a difference there, just in their eyes, and what they see and feel.

He’s an interesting kid, and a mature kid. We’ll bring him along. He knows he’s coming here to learn, and wants to do as well as he can, and pick up the offense and learn it. We’ll see what his base is and what he looks like when he starts firing it out there and we get a chance to see him this spring.

(Editor’s note: At the time of the interview with Morrison, PonyFans.com had not yet interviewed backup J.J. McDermott. University employees are not allowed to comment publicly about a student-athlete’s medical condition, so there is little mention of McDermott in this interview.)