There have been a lot of successful era throughout the history of Michigan State football, and long-time assistant Morris Watts was part of multiple — as well as a forgettable era.
Although he wasn’t a fixture of Michigan State football, he spent a good chunk of his career in East Lansing and was on some really good teams under Perles and Saban.
Unfortunately, the long-time assistant and one-time interim head coach passed away on Friday at the age of 90, just eight years after he retired from coaching. He won a Rose Bowl under Perles as the offensive coordinator in the 1980s and also learned from one of the greatest coaches of all time before he bolted for LSU, leaving the program in Bobby Williams’ hands.
Watts isn’t one of those household names in East Lansing, but he had a major helping hand in some really good seasons and he coached under some legendary names.
I will say that he probably deserved more love than he got at Michigan State and that’s probably because the end of his Spartan career happened during one of the most forgettable seasons in the past few decades. He still helped lead the program through a rough patch.
Watts was a good enough coach to stick around the game for 60 years.
Morris Watts was around for some great Michigan State seasons
Though he only ever got to coach three games as interim head coach for Michigan State, going 1-2, he was able to have enough success to carve out a career that lasted until 2018 with his last coaching job being the offensive coordinator at Texas Southern.
Spartan fans should be remembering him more for his time as offensive coordinator rather than his interim head coaching stint in 2002 that lasted just three games.
Watts was hired as the offensive coordinator by Perles in 1986 and he saw five straight winning seasons which included a Rose Bowl victory in 1988. He led some really impressive offenses, took a one-year detour with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, and then returned in 1992 through 1994. He returned and saw his first sub-.500 season in 1992 and then had another in 1994.
When Perles left, Watts went to LSU to be offensive coordinator there until Saban hired him back in 1999 where he helped lead Michigan State to its first 10-win season since 1965. He stuck around after Saban left for LSU under Williams and unfortunately, that was a forgettable era of Spartan football. The Spartans went 16-19 over the next three years.
Watts was a good coach whose Spartan career ended rather unfairly.
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