Chad Morris was sitting on a Texas State bus, phone in hand, on a rainy night in 2024. He had just finished coaching a game, but his mind was in a driving rainstorm in Florida.
His son, Chandler, was playing for Virginia, his father says. He looked at his screen on his phone. In the stands in Florida, his wife, Paula, sat alone in the downpour.
"I remember sitting there going, ‘What am I doing?’" Morris said in the Two Right Turns podcast. "I’ve got a son having an incredible year. I’ve got a wife in a driving rainstorm, and I’m not there with her. At that point, I made up my mind... unless the right opportunity came around, I was going to step back."
That “step back” formed the cornerstone of Morris’s recent career. In 2025, the man who once called plays for national championship contenders became a full-time football dad.
He and Paula traveled to every single Virginia game, experiencing the game from the tailgate lots rather than the coaches' booths. Morris admits that for those three and a half hours of games there was "zero enjoyment" to be had.
The stress of a father watching his son "living and dying every snap" was more intense than any fourth-and-goal he ever faced as a coach. But the experience reignited his enthusiasm for the “people business” of coaching.
He does bring that outlook back to Clemson, where he is meeting one-on-one with each offensive player. In those meetings, he is not just discussing X’s and O’s; he is asking about academic goals and life after football. He offers a horse-racing metaphor for how he will guide this 2026 roster.
“When you got a roping horse and you see these guys pushing... what triggers that roping horse to go is when you put the reins up on their neck,” Morris said. "No hold back. That’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to turn them loose."