The call came in a few picks before the selection flashed on the screen. As family and friends in his Wisconsin home did their best to keep calm, James Morgan spoke to Jets general manager Joe Douglas, who had just made the Florida International quarterback the 125th selection in the 2020 NFL Draft. Adam Gase, who will look to develop him into New York’s insurance policy behind Sam Darnold, jumped on the line soon after. All the while, Morgan remained composed.
“Let’s get into that playbook, huh?” Morgan said as the conversation died down. “I appreciate it. Thanks a lot … Good deal … bye.”
He hadn’t entirely removed the phone from his ear before the rest of the room finally let their emotions out.
Morgan’s parents, brother, sister and girlfriend erupted in joy. They tackled the 23-year-old to the ground, screaming and yelling. Former high school teammates, roughly six feet away, joined in the celebration. The ESPN and NFL Network telecasts played the scene on loop throughout the final day of the draft — the perfect visual of what happens when a dream becomes a reality.
Some 30 minutes south, Mark Jonas sat with his wife and kids in their own living room in front of their family laptop, watching the Morgans celebrate via Zoom. He’d have loved to be with his former high school quarterback, but couldn’t because of the COVID-19 pandemic. That didn’t dampen his reaction, though. As the Morgans jumped, so did he and his family. As they yelled, his family did, too.
Once all started to settle down, Jonas took a moment to himself. That’s when his eyes began to well.
“I cried for an hour,” he said. “As a coach, there are certain kids you always feel a connection to. James was different. You wanted the best for him. He’s the type of kid you root for. He outworked everyone. He had tremendous leadership. I don’t know. It’s tough to put into words.
“When you talk to him, when you meet him in person, you’re going to get it. Talk to him. Shake his hand. You’ll get it immediately.”
The Jets did.
And that’s why they believe he’s the perfect player to complement Darnold in New York’s quarterback meeting room.
“‘Dad,’” Brian Morgan recalls his son telling him. “‘I want to get a scholarship to play football. Then, I want to play in the NFL.’”
Morgan’s father recalls the moment vividly. James wasn’t yet 11 when he came up with an assertive proclamation. At that age, most kids are focused on video games or just having fun with friends. Yet James Morgan had the unpolished roadmap to his future.
Brian Morgan was a state champion quarterback at Columbus Catholic in Marshfield, Wisc., going on to play in college at Division III St. Norbert before he started coaching quarterbacks himself. He can’t ever recall one of the players he tutored saying anything like that at such an early age. But if that’s what James wanted, he’d do what he could to help him get there. That meant working on dropbacks and mechanics on weekends. It meant conditioning. It meant additional practices.
But even that wasn’t enough to guarantee anything. James needed the natural arm talent to compete at the next level.
Brian realized James had that when his passes started to make his hand swell when the two had a catch.
Maybe if he grew, matured, and evolved as an athlete, he had a shot. He couldn’t just be a kid with a big arm.
And he’d have a chance to do both in high school.
Wisconsin is a little different than some states in that they have a school choice program, so there’s some sway in where a kid attends. As Morgan was readying to enter high school, he and his family looked at a few options they felt would best suit him. They liked Ashwaubenon High, partly because of the team’s air-it-out offensive approach. They settled on it after sitting down with Jonas.
“I don’t go out and look at kids that aren’t in high school yet,” Jonas said. “But James and his family came to us. They came in, we talked, and walked around the facilities. We did all of that. I explained to them and James our vision of leadership and our vision for success. They decided they wanted to come here.”
Morgan led Ashwaubenon to the playoffs all four years (something the school has done 21 straight seasons) and won one conference title. By the end of his senior season, he stood 6-foot-4. Morgan now initiated the morning workouts his dad sometimes needed to coax him into. Aside from starring on the football team, he ran track, with his 4 x 400 relay team winning states.
Each practice, Jonas said Morgan would do something that would have the entire coaching staff laughing. Not with humor, but disbelief. He made throws teenagers simply aren’t supposed to, the coach said. But his all-time favorite moment, and what he believes separates Morgan from others out there, actually came on an interception.
Jonas’ staff still runs a drill where the quarterback throws a pass in the flat to a defender, who then takes off for the opposite end zone. The quarterback needs to chase that player down and tackle him before he scores. The quarterback should not put his defense in a poor position because he screwed up, so he has to outhustle everyone to ensure a touchdown doesn’t happen.
“So we’re down by the goal line in a game,” Jonas said. “And James throws a pass in the flat and some kid picks it off. He’s going 99 yards for the touchdown. No doubt. Well, James runs down the entire field and catches the kid at the opposite 3-yard line. He chased him down 96 yards. He horse-collared that sucker and threw him about eight yards off the field. It was awesome—one of the best tackles I’ve ever seen from a quarterback.”
Morgan’s on-field success led to a three-star rating from Rivals.com. Six schools offered him scholarships. He accepted one to Bowling Green to play for coach Dino Babers. One issue: A year after Morgan arrived, Babers took the head coaching job at Syracuse.
Morgan started 11 games as a redshirt freshman for new coach Mike Jinx, throwing for 2,082 yards with 16 touchdowns and 15 interceptions, but Bowling Green won just four games. Morgan regressed in near every statistical category in 2017, so Jinx benched him for Jarret Doege. It became clear Morgan was no longer in the team’s plans. He had a decision to make.
“We had a conversation when that happened,” Brian Morgan said. “I told him he could take it two ways. You can feel sorry for yourself and give up on your dream, or you can keep working and look for another opportunity. He chose the latter.
“I’m proud of him for how he was able to deal with that situation. That was one of those times when you look at it as a dad, and the way he handled it, and realize he’s going to be alright.”
Butch Davis didn’t want to start over with a youngster. Florida International was coming off an 8-5 season, bowl game, and had the majority of their key starters returning. One who wasn’t? Quarterback Alex McGough, who graduated after tossing 17 touchdowns and eight interceptions. With not much behind him, Davis tasked his offensive staff with finding someone on the transfer circuit to compete for and potentially win the starting job. Maybe someone from Tennessee? Or LSU? Ohio State? A one-time high-ranking recruit who lost his starting job to another high-ranking recruit. There are plenty out there every year. You just need to find the right one.
Davis asked then-recruiting director Bryn Renner to come up with a list. He wanted a big, pro-style quarterback with a strong arm. Around the same time, James Morgan decided to transfer from Bowling Green. He’d sent Renner an email with a link to some of his highlights. Renner watched them, along with a slew of additional tape he found online. He sent that tape to offensive coordinator Rich Skrosky.
Skrosky saw the same things Renner did. Morgan fit the mold of what FIU wanted. Meeting him and his family when they came for a visit sold the longtime coordinator.
“When you look in that portal, you have so many kids from Power Five schools,” Skrosky said. “Sometimes you need to say to Coach Davis, ‘Coach … James Morgan is the best of the guys there.’
“He trusted our instincts. It turned out to be a great relationship for us.”
FIU didn’t hand Morgan the starting job the moment he arrived in Miami. He graduated from Bowling Green in May 2018 after just three years on campus, so he missed spring practices. He started as the backup in the summer. Skrosky quickly realized it would be temporary, though. The same arm talent which left Jonas dazzled in Wisconsin did the same for those just outside South Beach. There wasn’t one play a day where Morgan wowed the staff, Skrosky said, but several. The zip on his passes, touch on others, and overall accuracy had Skrosky convinced once Morgan figured out the offensive scheme, he’d be their guy.
And once Morgan did, he was. He threw for 2,727 yards, 26 touchdowns, just seven interceptions and completed 65.3 percent of his passes in 2018. FIU finished 9-4. They beat Toledo in the Bahamas Bowl.
“On this level, there’s a trait that you need,” Skrosky said. “You need to be comfortable in your own skin. That’s a trait that’s getting harder and harder to find. There’s an image of a quarterback and what someone believes they need to do to be a quarterback. But then there’s an actual quarterback. James is a quarterback. He loves everything about it. He doesn’t want the attention. He just loves being a quarterback, a leader in the locker room.
“This is a kid from Green Bay, Wisconsin. He just played two years in Ohio. Now he’s in South Florida. Miami is a bit different than Wisconsin and Ohio in just about every way. But he was endeared in the locker room in every way because he was James. The rural offensive linemen from the Florida panhandle loved him. The kids from Miami-Dade County loved him. They all respected who he was because they knew he was genuine. They knew it was James, and knew he was real.”
Things weren’t as successful for Morgan and FIU in 2019. The team lost several players from the year before, Morgan battled minor injuries, and the team limped to a 6-7 finish. Morgan’s yardage (2,585), touchdown (14), and completion percentage (58.0) all dropped. He did throw just five interceptions — the lowest number in any of the four years he played.
Still, the year before had put him on the radar of NFL teams. Scouts started calling FIU to ask about Morgan.
What kind of guy is he?
Why did the numbers drop?
Is there anything we should be concerned about?
“The first thing I told every one of them was that this kid will never fail for lack of preparation,” Skrosky said. “He’s a football dork. That’s as high of a compliment as I can give someone.”
Morgan didn’t get a chance to take part in FIU’s spring workouts his first year with the team. He made sure to take full advantage of them in 2019. During the offseason, coaches are only allowed so much interaction with their players. At FIU, players organize players-only practices. There’s no contact, but the guys get together to run through drills. Morgan took this to the next level.
As a captain, Morgan put together a string of 7-on-7 work. They ran the plays in Skrosky’s playbook, sure, but that wasn’t it. The nights and days before each practice, Morgan would watch hours of NFL film. He’d find a few plays he liked that Skrosky didn’t run, put them on cards, then take them out to practice. The team would work on them. If a couple of them worked well, he’d take them back to Skrosky.
“‘Hey, coach, so I saw this thing the Jets (hypothetically speaking) were doing,’” Skrosky recalled with a laugh. “‘It’s a flood concept, but they do it out of yadda, yadda. We tried it out today. You think we can add it to the playbook?’ I’d give it a name, so it fits our terminology, then I’d add it to the playbook. That’s James.
“He’d be in the building during the season watching tape, run down to my office and say, ‘Hey, coach, I realized they’re doing this on third down with their blitz concept. I think we can identify it this way’ It was all the time. Again: That’s just James. It’s who he is.
“Some kids want to go down to South Beach on their day off. Others want to watch film and do it the next day in 7-on-7.”
None of that surprises Jonas. He got calls, too, from scouts wanting to know if Morgan ever got in trouble at school. He told them all the same thing: Yes. Teachers called to complain about his star quarterback.
Why?
They kept catching him watching Huddle film of his Friday opponents in class.
“I would call James into my office and ask him about it,” Jonas said. “‘Are you watching film in chemistry again, James?’ He’d drop his head and smile.”
Jonas wanted to get annoyed. Until he realized Morgan had an A in every class he watched film.
“I started going back to the teachers and asking them what the problem was,” Jonas said with a laugh.
In the Jets’ perfect world, Morgan won’t ever play a meaningful snap. Darnold will develop into a franchise quarterback. He’ll lead the Jets to the playoffs and Super Bowl titles. All the while, Morgan will sit behind him. He’ll help Darnold identify tendencies. He’ll help point out things he misses. He’ll be a sounding board for ideas, a life insurance policy never enacted.
They didn’t draft Morgan to compete with Darnold. They don’t want him to play. Maybe in three years, if Morgan has a few good preseasons, they can trade him to a team where he will have a chance to start. It just won’t be with the Jets. Morgan playing regularly is a worst-case scenario the Jets don’t want to imagine.
When Morgan met Gase, he told him if drafted, that’s a job he’ll attack full force. He’ll do whatever he can to make the team better.
And that’s not an act.
“One thing I can say about James is he’s always going to be a team player,” Brian Morgan said. “He’s going to do whatever he can to help them win. If that means playing a backup role at this point, he’ll do it. He’s going to prepare as if he’s the starter, so if he’s called on, he’s ready, but his focus is going to be on the team. That’s something we always emphasized growing up — the importance of a team.
“There’s an interview he did locally. He mentioned ‘team’ 30 times. That’s what’s important to him. Team success is what’s important. He’ll do whatever the coaching staff asks to help the team be successful.”
