Oklahoma football: Does Lee Morris get enough credit?

Oklahoma football’s Grant Calcaterra was placed on the Mackey Award watch list this week and while that is deserving, there’s an argument to be made that me might not be the best tight end on his own team.

Tight end has been a position of strength for Oklahoma football in recent years with Mark Andrews winning the Mackey Award back in 2017 and the program recruiting a pair of high-profile prospects in Grant Calcaterra and Austin Stogner to shore up the future of the position, but there’s an argument to be made that the most productive tight end on the roster last year was walk on Lee Morris.

While Calcaterra had more catches (26 versus 21), Morris had more yards (457 versus 396) and touchdowns (eight versus six). While Calcaterra came up with some of the clutch plays (including arguably the most clutch play of the season in an 18-yard touchdown catch on a third-and-10 that sealed the Big 12 title game for the Sooners) it’s hard to argue that Morris was probably more explosive.

Morris is averaging 22.5 yards per catch in his career and one touchdown for every 2.3 receptions. As a sophomore he caught only two passes and both were for touchdowns.

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So why doesn’t he get credit? Certainly some of it stems from being a walk on. While Calcaterra has lived up to every bit of his consensus four-star hype coming out of high school, Morris wasn’t even put on scholarship until this past year.

Another part of the problem is the NFL readiness of each player at the tight end position. At 6-foot-4, Calcaterra is a prototypical NFL tight end with tons of potential at the next level like Andrews before him.

On the other hand some might say that at 6-foot-2 and 215 pounds Morris is more of a true wide receiver than a tight end. Heck, the team lists him as a receiver in the media guide, but he usually swaps out with Calcaterra and runs many of the same routes as his counterpart, which has made him a tight end functionally through most of his Oklahoma football career.

While his position identity crisis might keep him off most national award watch lists, Sooner fans should be content having him on the roster because odds are good (nearly 50 percent for his career) that when he catches the ball the play is going to end in the end zone.

In the end that might be all that matters.