PonyFans.com: When June Jones and the rest of the staff arrived in 2008, he (and the rest of you) had the reputation of running a pass-happy offense, but the offense has evolved. Shawnbrey McNeal became your first 1,000-yard rusher, and over the last couple of years, a tight end has become a more regular part of the offense. How much of that is just the natural evolution of the offensive system, and how much is a result of the coaches’ further tailoring the system to meet the strengths of the players? Or do you and June Jones and the rest of the coaches sit down and consciously decide how the offense will evolve from one season to the next?

Quarterbacks coach Dan Morrison said that one of the biggest assets Conner Preston has going for him is his endless desire to improve (photo by Doug Fejer).

Morrison: I think one of the things June has always done is adapt to what’s in front of him. Because we actually used a hybrid tight end at Hawaii, at times, but it was done in a different way. You know, we had two running backs that … the smaller one was 252 pounds, and the bigger one was listed at 270, but I don’t think that was accurate — I think he was closer to 300 pounds. There were times that we put Reagan Mauia and Nate Ilaoa together in the backfield. One was kind of an H-back kind of thing, and one was the running back. It was because of who they were. I think when we got here, we inherited two or three tight end-kind-of young men. They were pretty good, and we really started to utilize them, and then the running backs were doing quite well.

June will kind of tap into the strengths of what surrounds him, which is good, because you don’t want to be so stubborn that you try to force the kids to fit you, as much as you have to fit the offense to what you have. There were pieces of the puzzle here — with Bradley Haynes and Patrick Fleming and that type — that were meant to be used in that regard, and that’s how it went.

So I think it’s not necessarily an evolution of the offense as much as it’s an evolution of what’s in front of us and what we walked into and what was there, and we’ll see how it evolves from here.

PonyFans.com: Last year, you had three quarterbacks at practice with Gilbert, Conner Preston and Neal Burcham (Garrett Krstich was out injured), so your old Hawaii quarterback, (graduate assistant) Timmy Chang, ended up throwing a lot of passes during drills. Now you have Krstich back and have added Austin Kent, who enrolled in January. When practice begins in August, you’ll have two more in Kolney Cassel and (walk-on) Cayman Carter. What will having seven passers in practice allow you to do that you weren’t able to do last year?

Morrison: Again, there are times that we have had three, and I think there was one other time in Hawaii that we had seven. So you’re (almost) always going to have between four and five and six — (somewhere) in there. Occasionally you have seven, and occasionally you have three. So you just adjust to it at the time. I think one of the biggest things, ironically for us, is that in training camp, we throw so much and for so long that it can be a long (day) for those arms. They’re out there for three hours in the morning. So as much as it was fun watching (Chang) throw, it’s going to be a good thing to have a couple of different quarterbacks down there with the scout team, quarterbacks who are of different profiles — one’s more of a pure thrower, one can be a little bit more of a runner … and they (the defensive coaches) can kind of utilize them as they’re young, in their redshirt year … utilize them to help the defense on the scout team.

Also, I have never had a problem with the (quarterbacks) family getting a little larger. We’re a very close group, and we still put our arms around each other and have fun with it and get to know each other and support each other, and if that’s OK with the guys that are in the system and it’s fun for them, then so be it. They all know they can’t all play, but there isn’t one of them who doesn’t want to play. This is a very competitive group of guys, and that desire to play is a great way of pushing them to work harder and harder. You never know how this can evolve. We have had walk-ons come in, and this just wasn’t for them and they departed, and that was OK, and we have had some that stayed with us and got better. You just never know how that’s going to evolve. They’ll have their chances to throw, and we’ll have our chances to evaluate them. We’ll add a few chairs down in the meeting room down there, and our family will get a little larger, and that’s OK — that’s actually a good thing.

I haven’t seen us larger than seven — I know that. As I said, I think there was a year at Hawaii when we were at seven. But these are good kids, they want to play college football, and as long as it’s fun for them and as long as they do the things they need to do in order to help us become a better football team, then it’s fine with us.

PonyFans.com: Since your staff got here, through the quarterbacks who have played here, you have always said that one reason you saw for optimism was the fact that the quarterbacks throw so many passes in practice every day that they have no choice but to see more things from the defense, make quicker decisions, get rid of the ball more quickly and get stronger in their throwing arms. With so many quarterbacks, is there a risk that their won’t be enough passes to go around?

Morrison: No, they’ll still throw a ton, and the guys who are the top two or three … there will be portions of practice when they will be the only ones getting the throws. We have never seen a quarterback who came in and his arm didn’t get stronger. We like to see their arm strength, in evaluating them, and part of that is how fast their arm is and how great their feet are and how accurate they are. That’s more important, because they always get stronger. You throw as much as we have them throw, and I have never seen one not get stronger — it’s like they have their own weight training program out there in practice, they’re just throwing so doggone much. We take care of their arms — we try to do some things to help their arms out. I think they’ll be fine, because like I said, the ones who have to do the throwing … they’re going to get the lion’s share of the throws, when it’s really said and done.

PonyFans.com: Conner Preston got a little playing time last year, completing 5-of-10 passes for 127 yards and a touchdown. He has been here for two-and-a-half years now after enrolling in January (of 2011). Where is he in his development?

Morrison said that Neal Burcham is "a little like Garrett (Gilbert)" in the sense that each is quiet but fiercely competitive (photo by Mustangsabu).

Morrison: All of the quarterbacks, including Conner, grow at different rates, they all mature at different rates. He has grown up quite a bit as a person, (and) he has grown up as a quarterback. He understands things much better. His eyes are really good. He’s very accurate throwing the ball down the field, and that has been very impressive — think you saw that last year in the Baylor game when he went out there and just launched one for a touchdown. He’s very accurate in that area.

He’s still working on his pocket presence and on the shorter things that are around him, being more comfortable in the pocket. But the thing about Conner is that he is going to work and work and work at it, and he’s also a very intelligent quarterback, so he’ll continue to get better and better as we go along. My expectation is that I really think he’s going to continue to improve, because it’s built into his nature to do that. He doesn’t like to stay where he is — he really wants to get better. That’s a trait you like to see in all quarterbacks, and he has it, 10-fold. He just has this thing built in that … he will get better.

PonyFans.com: When you added Neal Burcham to the mix last year, you made a comment about how you might have really stolen one, whether it’s because he’s from Arkansas or didn’t play the same level of competition that some of the more high-profile quarterbacks got. He got a measure of attention when Trent Dilfer heaped praise on him at the Elite 11 camp, but there was talk that he had the potential to really become a special player. Now that you have worked with him for a year, has he continued to show the promise you thought you saw when you first got him?

Morrison: Yeah, the promise is still very much there. He has, built in to him, certain things that are just hard to find. His release is so quick, his feet are so good, he’s such a good athlete. He’s also a good student of the game. He’s a competitor — he’s a point guard in basketball, and a very good one — and that translates out to a kid who likes to be in charge of things as a quarterback. He’s a very basketball player and a natural leader from that point guard position. So he’s one that we’re very intrigued with, just to watch him progress. Again, he was just in it for the last year, and he’s just starting to get used to … not just our offense, but the whole level of jumping up from playing in a small town in Arkansas, where he was a really special quarterback, to playing Div. I football, just getting used to all of the speed, size and craziness of this level.

He’s a little big like Garrett (Gilbert), in the sense that they’re quiet competitors — they’re not real loud about it, they’re not real boisterous about it. But when you get to know those guys, there’s a fire burning in their belly — they’re competitors … and Conner is the same way. They’re going to do anything they can to get better, and they are not afraid of what’s coming in front of them. They’re looking forward to jumping on the field and going, and that’s what you love to see. That’s what you saw in Colt (Brennan) — he couldn’t wait to get on the field and go. That’s what these three characters are like, too. They all want to get out on the field and go.

PonyFans.com: Is it possible to quantify how much progress Preston and Burcham have made over the past year, or how much better prepared they’ll be if called upon to play this year?

Morrison: It’s hard to say, because they didn’t have a lot of time in it, to see where they really are. Practice is great, and it has to be done, but you have to throw them into it to really see. You can guess and speculate as you’re watching that they’re going to be pretty good, but you want to see them kind of get thrown into it and let them go. Our guess is that if we throw any of them into it — including Garrett Krstich, who has really grown a great deal, as well — that they’re going to be OK. We have to monitor them a little bit. You don’t give them everything immediately — you give them things that they’re comfortable throwing and let them get their confidence. But they’re a great group of guys, and we’re just thrilled to have all of them with us. Austin Kent just walked on in January, so we’re just getting to know him, but he also seems like a great kid. SMU should be very proud — is very proud — to have that type of young man who will represent this school and this football program very well.

PonyFans.com: You mentioned Garrett Krstich, who missed part of last year with a foot injury. He walked on and has not yet had a chance to play (in a game), but are you saying he’s a part of your rotation now?

Morrison: He has improved, probably as much as any walk-on we have ever had. He has transformed his body — he has worked at it, he looks different — and he has that same look in his eye, that look that says, “whenever you’re ready to throw me in, Coach, I’m ready to go.” You love to see that in kids. There are some kids … you can tell there’s a hesitancy about being put into a situation quite yet. But these guys … they don’t have any of that in them. They’re waiting to get their opportunity to jump in and go. So they’ll all prepare in that same way, and as I said, Garrett (Krstich) has improved quite a bit since he arrived. He has really done a great job.

Morrison said Garrett Krstich has improved as much as any walk-on quarterback the SMU coaches have ever had ... at SMU or at Hawaii (photo by PonyFans.com).

He is a good one to have in the fold, because you really never know how it’s going to evolve. It’s one of those things where you knock on wood and you hope that Garrett (Gilbert) goes through all of these games and never has a tweak and just lighting it up, and he has a great season and we have a great season, and we go to a fifth (consecutive) bowl game. But you never know how things are going to go. Everybody’s ready to go, and everybody knows that.

Because the quarterback is the centerpiece of this offense, and you can’t hide him, you usually have to have about three of them, at least, ready to go. You don’t want to have just “a backup” ready to go, because if somebody gets hurt early in the season, and that’s all you’ve got, you’re in trouble. So we want three, and maybe four, ready to go. We want them not just ready to be put on the field and hand the ball off, and play-action, and get us out of the game, but can actually go out and win games. That’s just the nature of this offense, that they have to be that way.

PonyFans.com: When you look at this coaching staff … with June Jones, you, Jason Phillips and Wes Suan, you have four coaches with immense offensive coaching experience. Now, over the offseason, the staff adds Hal Mumme — the so-called “godfather of the Air Raid offense” who has been a head coach a couple of times and whose teams have had very potent offenses. In the offseason, when the offensive staff first got together, what were those meetings like, with all of those successful offensive coaches, all of that experience, all of those ideas crammed into one room? How can you blend all of those minds together and co-exist effectively?

Morrison: (The meetings) were surprisingly civil. They’re very good, because everyone understands that there’s a lot of … not just good football minds, but genuinely innovative football minds. The rarity is that I can say that I have been around two coaches — Mouse Davis and Hal Mumme — who literally invented new offenses that worked and offenses that stuck.

Football is a game of copying. You see things and you copy things from different systems and incorporate them into your own. It happens all the time. There’s not a whole lot of true innovators who come up with something that people have not done very much, and those are two who have crossed our paths. You see some of Mouse in June — and June has certainly gone on and innovated it in his own way — and Hal is an innovative person, too. It’s going to be very interesting to see how this is going to evolve, because the reality is that in the last 15 years or so, the most prolific offenses in the history of college football came out of (Mumme’s) offense or ours. Now we’re going to mesh these two together, and it’s going to be interesting how we mesh it together.

That’s something people are just going to have to see when they see it. It’s really interesting to sit in these offensive meetings. They’re very humble people, really. There are suggestions put out and thoughts thrown around, and it molds itself into what we’re going to become. Coach Jones and Coach Mumme have been at it a long time and done it very successfully, and neither one of them — none of us — is a “it’s got to be my way or the highway” guy, in any way, shape or form. There’s just a lot of really interesting thoughts and ideas being presented at the table. It’s a lot of fun to be a part of it, to be a part of those meetings. (Jones) will shape and tweak what’s in front of him, as opposed to saying, “it’s my way or the highway and I’m going to force the Run-and-Shoot on everybody here.” He’s a guy who looks at what he has in front of him and says “we need to move a little bit this way, a little bit that way,” to fit the kids … and that’s a real strength. That’s a strength of a lot of coaches, when you don’t force a system on the kids, but you kind of wrap the system around the players, when you see what they do best. That’s (Jones’s and Mumme’s) strength and coaches: we’re going to evolve the offense around who’s in front of them. A lot of the great coaches — that’s their strength.