HCCM and Matt Davis are together again for the first time

[Harry0569]

http://ftw.usatoday.com/2015/08/smu-foo ... matt-davis

[Harry0569]

Of the 41 states in the union that have a Football Bowl Subdivision team within their borders, none have more than Texas.

For 12 days, as teams nationwide dig into preseason drills, USA TODAY Sports’ college football reporters are traversing the state of Texas and ‘visiting each of its one dozen FBS programs. AT&T presents Two Weeks in Texas …

Day 11: SMU

DALLAS — To understand why SMU junior quarterback Matt Davis is especially comfortable with his fifth college coach, it’s perhaps instructive to go back to an important interaction with the first. Mike Sherman was never actually Davis’ coach — but that’s part of the story.

On the first day of December in 2011, Davis and his family waited for an in-home visit with Texas A&M’s head coach. Davis, a dual-threat quarterback from Houston’s Klein Forest High School, was a high school senior already committed to the Aggies, and planned to enroll for the spring semester. The phone rang. It was Sherman, saying he was outside the apartment complex, but wasn’t coming in — because he had just been fired.

“It was kind of a shock,” says Davis, who recalls he ate all of the pigs in blankets his mom had prepared as snacks, “drowning my sorrows.”

Given that start, nothing much about the long and winding road that eventually led to SMU — and now, into the continuance of a relationship that had once seemed very promising but hadn’t gotten very far — has seemed all that surprising to Davis. The arrival of Chad Morris, reuniting the quarterback with a coach he’d really liked during the recruiting process?

It all seems “preordered,” Davis says, or “predestined.”

The task Morris faces at SMU seems gargantuan. He inherits a program that, despite blips of success, has struggled for most of the last couple of decades to regain footing after the NCAA imposed the death penalty in 1987. June Jones took the Mustangs to four bowl games in six-plus seasons from 2008 to 2014, but the program slipped into decline the last couple of years. Last season, the Mustangs went 1-11, only avoiding a winless season with a win against Connecticut in the season finale. Most games, they weren’t competitive — though it’s hard to make a substantial evaluation of the results since Jones was fired two games into the season.

“I really don’t think people quite understand what these players went through last year,” Morris says, “and how hungry they really are.”

And a moment later, he promises:

“We’re gonna get it turned around. We are. There’s a commitment from the university to get this thing turned around. … This has been a tough one on a lot of coaches, and June had it — he was so close. I’m from this state. I’m not gonna let this thing drag me down. We’re gonna get it right.”


How quickly that happens is an open question. Morris won’t make predictions on results, but promises the Mustangs will be better this season. It helps to have a quarterback he’s familiar with, a guy he’d wanted while in his previous job at Clemson, a 6-foot, 202-pound dual threat suited to run exactly the kind of offense Morris is installing.

“It’s still a little early because we haven’t seen anything in a live game, with contact,” Morris says. “But I’ve got a guy that definitely the players respond to. He’s a leader. He’s working hard. … He knows his deficiencies. It’s just the small details of the game he has to continue to master.”

Davis was highly recruited out of Houston’s Klein Forest High School. He was ranked among the top dual-threat quarterbacks nationally by several recruiting services, and chose Texas A&M over scholarship offers from schools like Alabama, Arkansas, Auburn, LSU, Nebraska and Oklahoma State. And he stuck with the Aggies despite Sherman’s firing — the night it all went down, when Sherman called to say he wasn’t going to make the visit, Davis tweeted: “The thing I love about (Sherman) is he said, ‘Matt, A&M is a great place and I still think you should go there and do great things.’ ”

Davis became one of several recruits credited with holding Texas A&M’s recruiting class together during the transition from Sherman to Kevin Sumlin. He texted the others during that time, urging them to remain committed.

Once he got to campus, though he says he enjoyed his time and has no regrets, he encountered a numbers game. The number was one: a redshirt freshman named Johnny Manziel who came out of nowhere to win the starting job and then the Heisman Trophy. After redshirting that 2012 season, Davis transferred to Tyler (Texas) Junior College.

From there, it was on to SMU. And then, suddenly with Jones’ resignation after two lopsided losses, it was back to uncertainty as the Mustangs played out the majority of the season with an interim coaching staff, waiting for Jones’ permanent replacement.

As the season wore on, Davis — who had taken over as the starter at quarterback for the final five games — found himself considering the names of potential candidates for the vacancy and paying special attention to what was going on at Clemson, “hoping to get coach Morris.”

Just as he’d been a few years earlier, Davis was intrigued by the idea of running Clemson’s offense. Back then, Morris was intrigued by Davis’ potential, which wasn’t surprising.

“He was athletic, moved around well, a competitor,” Morris recalls. “He extended plays with his feet. I thought he had a really good football IQ, and I knew he was coached extremely well.”

Back then, when he was a junior at Klein Forest idled while rehabbing a torn ACL, he had enjoyed getting to know Morris, who had sent him a handwritten letter urging him to call.

The first time that happened, they talked for two hours. It was football — Davis envisioning himself in the role that was being filled by Tajh Boyd — but it was more than that. Their relationship grew during their conversations. Davis really liked what he heard from Morris, because it was more than just football. And Davis’ mom, well, “she really loved him.”

“She was pushing me to take a visit (to Clemson),” Davis recalls.

But he never did. In his mind, he was already leaning toward Texas A&M. A few weeks later, he made a verbal commitment, and says he believed he shouldn’t make any official visits after doing so. And there was another factor.

“Clemson, that’s far away from Houston,” Davis says. “That’s far. South Carolina, man.”

College Station, Texas, wasn’t far. But it was also, as it turned out, only a way station on Davis’ way to SMU — and eventually, to a relationship with Morris. When Morris was announced as head coach last Dec. 1, Davis said he felt “a peace come over me and a calmness.” The first day Morris was on campus, he saw his quarterback. They hugged, and Morris needled Davis about how he’d never visited Clemson.

“It’s because I knew you were coming to me,” Davis replied, and they both laughed.

In the months since, Davis says he’s grown more comfortable with Morris because the coach he’d become acquainted with on the phone is who he’s seen at SMU.

“He’s been everything and more,” he says. “He’s exceeded my expectations of what he’d be as a coach and as a man. … That’s what I can say about coach Morris. He doesn’t just see No. 4, he sees Matthew. So that’s a good thing to know about your coach, that he sees you beyond the helmet.”

[HarvCrimYaleBlue]

That article got me pumped. All that is needed is for the line to hold up and we are going to see another gear from Davis this season that was unseen last season. I think it is all but obvious that these current players are going to play their hearts out for The Chad.

[Pony Boss]

Hearing good things about the line so my hope is at all time high. Now where'd I put that bottle again?

[JoeKidd]

O-line and DB's are the two keys to this season.

[StallionsModelT]

I like that we are moving Zach Wood inside to tackle. He's big enough now at 285 pounds to play in there and hold his own. That gives us a little more versatility at the rush ends. Maybe we start with Lawler and Seals at both ends. Those guys have the skill set to be pretty decent pass rushers. Also, that gives us a little more depth at tackle now.

(1)
Zach Wood
Mason Gentry

(2)
Zelt Minor
Deon Green

(3)
Spencer Hollie
???