DENTON, Texas — Eric Morris knows he has his work cut out for him this year.
The head football coach at the University of North Texas, heading into his second season at the helm of the Mean Green football program, is looking to turn the tide after his team missed out on a bowl appearance and finished 5-7 in his first year on campus.
Others agree that he has his work cut out for him: The 2024 American Athletic Conference (AAC) preseason media poll predicts North Texas will finish in ninth place out of 14 teams -- just one place above their 2023 finish.
Looking at their schedule, those doubts aren't without merit. The team will face tough tests early on, traveling to Lubbock to face Texas Tech in Week 3, and then hosting Wyoming at DATCU Stadium in Week 4. As the season stretches on, they'll endure a particularly brutal stretch, facing four of the teams picked to place in the top 5 in a five-week period.
But Morris and the Mean Green's toughest battles might not come on the schedule at all. UNT enters the 2024 season with 74 new players on its roster -- the most of any FBS program this year. Of these 74 new players, 35 of them are transfers. It's a lot of change, and Morris knows it. In fact, he embraces it. Rather than worry about all the fresh faces on his roster, he's leaning into the experience each of these new players brings to the table.
"One of the biggest things I look for in the transfer market is snaps played," Morris said earlier this week at AAC Media Days. "And I don't care where those snaps are played, whether it's a Division 2, Division 3, FCS, FBS. When kids play meaningful snaps, they get those experiences and it makes them that much better players."
One of those new, experienced players on the UNT roster is quarterback Chandler Morris (no relation), who comes to North Texas after having previously played at the nearby TCU.
The son of former SMU and Arkansas head coach Chad Morris, Chandler Morris has plenty of experience under his belt from his time with the Horned Frogs, where he started behind center at different stretches in each of the last three seasons. He's now looking for a fresh start in Denton after his last two seasons in Fort Worth were marred by injury. In 2021, he received several honors -- including Big 12 Offensive Player of the Week for his performance against Baylor -- but, ever since, he's been plagued by MCL issues that saw him twice lose his starting job, first to Max Duggan in 2022 and then again to Josh Hoover last season.
"He's the obvious leader of that room right now," Coach Morris said of his new starting quarterback. "[Chandler Morris] looks phenomenal in all the stuff that [our offense is] doing this summer."
Morris said he believes bringing in so many new players is not just changing the way his team looks schematically, but also physically.
"When we played the four best teams in this league [in] consecutive weeks last year, we always talked about size and how much bigger those teams were than us," Morris said. "And I think we really hit on being able to beef up."
After going 3-5 in one-score games in 2023, Morris hopes to improve his team's finishing ability in tough games this season. With some improvement on that front, he hopes the Mean Green can find their way into postseason play in 2024.
"We need to go to a bowl game this year," Morris said. "It still drives me crazy thinking about eight one-score games last year, and [how] we weren't able to find one of those wins."
Morris said it's taken a lot of reflection this offseason to figure out what was causing his team to fall short in those tight battles.
"We got to look ourselves in the mirror and figure out why that is," he said. "Are we not tough enough at the end of these games mentally? Are we not tough enough physically? Do we need to get bigger? Do we need to do something different schematically on both sides of the ball in these opportunities that we have?"
Morris said he understands that bringing in a ton of new faces has its downsides. One of those is that he has to get all of these new players to buy in and work together seamlessly. The coach had success working with a roster of new faces in his first season in Denton. In 2023, North Texas was one of the least penalized teams in FBS, averaging around 4.75 penalties per game.
Getting this year's roster to similarly coalesce could make all the difference in these close games that still keep him up at night.
But having 74 new players mesh well, he admits, will take some time.
"You'll see some of it this year," Morris said. "But then I think, a year from now, continuing to do that, we're going to have a stable roster of kids that love this place, that want to compete for one another."
Full North Texas 2024 Football Schedule
- Aug. 31 | UNT at South Alabama - 4 p.m. on ESPN+
- Sept. 7 | SFA vs. UNT - 6:30 p.m. on ESPN+
- Sept. 14 | UNT at Texas Tech - 11 a.m. on FS1
- Sept. 21 | Wyoming vs. UNT - TBA
- Sept. 28 | Tulsa vs. UNT - TBA*
- Oct. 12 | UNT at Florida Atlantic - TBA*
- Oct. 19 | UNT at Memphis - TBA*
- Oct. 26 | Tulane vs. UNT - TBA*
- Nov. 9 | Army vs. UNT - TBA*
- Nov. 15 | UNT at UTSA - 8 p.m. on ESPN2*
- Nov. 23 | East Carolina vs. UNT - TBA*
- Nov. 30 | UNT at Temple - TBA*
Games in bold denote home games
* AAC game
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