How Evan Morris became the latest Michigan State football kicker-turned-tight end

EAST LANSING — Rarely does a specialist transition into a position player in college football, let alone at the Power Five level.

Michigan State football did it twice. At the same time. With roommates who were once walk-ons.

Tyler Hunt began as a kicker/punter in 2020 and became the Spartans’ starting tight end the past two years. His pal, Evan Morris, took over this season where Hunt left off, another seemingly improbable path in going from a kickoff specialist to a starting Big Ten tight end.

“It's been obviously a good journey,” Morris said Monday ahead of MSU's travel to Indiana on Saturday. “I've had a fun time here. … I've grown as an individual in so many different ways. It's been extremely rewarding.”

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The fifth-year senior has started eight games this season at tight end for the Spartans (3-7, 1-6 Big Ten) after playing seven games over the previous three seasons predominantly on special teams. Much of Morris’ growth this fall has come as a blocking option on the edge of the offensive line, though he heads into Saturday’s game against the Hoosiers (3-7, 1-6) coming off a career-best two catches in last Saturday’s 38-3 loss to No. 3 Ohio State.

On the season, Morris has four catches for 8 yards but his 242 snaps are just two fewer than junior Maliq Carr, who leads MSU’s tight ends with 244 snaps. Morris also continues to contribute on special teams, but now as an upback on the kickoff return team instead of being the one booting the ball into play — he averaged 58.8 yards on 15 kickoffs with five touchbacks in 2019 (two games) and 2021 (one game).

“I always tell people, at this level, when you see a great player versus an OK player versus a bad player — nobody's bad — it's not physical ability,” said Morris, a three-time Academic All-Big Ten honoree. “I don't think at this level it's not a physical ability thing, it's mostly mental. Especially tight end and knowing so much, I knew that I could physically do it.”

Well, if he can do it ...

Morris arrived from Ovid-Elsie, a rural Division 5 school about a half-hour northeast of MSU’s campus. He played both tight end and defensive end for the Marauders, but kicking is how Morris worked his way onto Mark Dantonio’s final roster in 2019 as a preferred walk-on. He was rated the No. 18 punting prospect and No. 37 kickoff specialist by Kohl’s Kicking Camp going into his senior year of high school.

Quickly and surprisingly, Morris made his debut in the Spartans’ 2019 season opener against Western Michigan, getting four touchbacks on nine kickoffs. He kicked off two more times against Arizona State with another touchback, but Dantonio opted to preserve Morris’ redshirt and go with veteran Cole Hahn at the position.

He certainly didn’t look like a kicker, though: Morris stood 6 feet 5 and 221 pounds as a newcomer.

“You tell people, ‘I play football at Michigan State.’ ‘Oh, that's super cool. What position do you play?' And I'm like, 'Kicker.' 'Well, you don't look like a kicker,’” Morris said. “So I always had in the back of my head that it was it was a possibility (to change positions).”

It was a somewhat similar story for Hunt, who a year earlier got thrust into duty as a redshirt freshman after a season-ending injury to punter Jake Hartbarger. Hunt punted in five games in 2018 before tearing his ACL in practice but drew rave reviews from Dantonio for his athletic ability.

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During winter conditioning in 2020, Dantonio abruptly retired. Mel Tucker replaced him that February: A new coach with new assistants and new players eventually coming with him. Then came the coronavirus pandemic, which forced the cancelation of spring football and essentially froze rosters around the country.

It left Morris and Hunt, by that point both backup walk-on kickers, in limbo.

In that void, Hunt came up with a plan. After contributing on kickoff returns late in 2019, he approached then-assistant coach Mike Tressel, a carryover from Dantonio's staff, in spring 2020 about the idea of changing positions. The decision then went to the new tight ends coach, Ted Gilmore, and summer workouts affirmed the move.

Then during preseason camp that fall, Morris joined his roommate as a former specialist learning pass routes and blocking concepts in the tight end room.

Why? Because Morris saw how well it was working out for Hunt.

“I was like, 'Wait, Tyler did it and it doesn't seem that hard.' It actually ended up being very difficult,” Morris said. “But he guided me through every step of the way. And I was like, 'If you can do it, I think I can possibly do it.' So he kind of coached me in a way on how to you transition and then what to learn, because he was learning when I was learning at first. He kind of pushed me every step.”

Could he still kick?

Gilmore, a long-time Big Ten and NFL assistant coach, certainly was skeptical. But by the opener of the 2020 shortened season against Rutgers a few weeks later, Morris was working as a tight end in warmups and eventually got 20 plays on special teams that season.

“Oh, I had no blueprint. Trust me. I don't,” Gilmore said before the 2022 season about Morris and Hunt shifting positions. “I guess to that, I give both of them credit, because they work hard at it. Both of them are young men that take pride in what they're doing.

“Evan is a guy that will come down harder on himself than I could ever come down on him when he makes a mistake. And I think he's as tough as anybody in the room. Now, he may not be as athletic and gifted in some areas as the others. But if I jump in the foxhole and I'm in an alley somewhere, I want him with me. And I love that about him.”

Hunt emerged at tight end and started 17 of the 27 games between 2020-22, finishing his career with 37 catches for 312 yards and a touchdown, adding another rushing touchdown. Hunt, a former high school quarterback at tiny Gobles High northwest of Kalamazoo, also completed a 15-yard pass in his only attempt.

“He's probably one of the most natural athletes that I've ever seen,” Morris said of Hunt. “He's good at cornhole, he's good at basketball. He's obviously good at football. He can be good at bowling, he's really good at golf. He'll pick anything up.”

With Hunt’s graduation, Morris picked up his role as the hard-nosed blocking complement to Carr as more of a hybrid-receiver tight end.

“Evan's a big body. He's not scared to put his head in the hole, either,” Hunt said in 2021. “Evan's weird, because he's never had that kicker mentality to kind of shy away from contact. Instead, he just embraces contact.”

Morris said he and Hunt are “very much alike.” Hunt, after a foray working out as long snapper to try and latch on in the NFL, returned to his hometown this summer and is Gobles’ director of football. Morris went there this summer to work Hunt’s second youth camp and also envisions a career in athletic administration when he’s done playing.

But first, two more games remain for him to deliver more blocks and catch more passes.

“I think the biggest thing with my journey was consistency, because it was so it was so hard learning. ... Especially coming from a smaller town, it's so much different than Big Ten football,” Morris said. “You have to learn so many plays, you have to learn how to be a tight end all over again, let alone just transitioning into the college aspect.

“There was a lot of ups and downs in there where I saw a lot of progress at some points. But there was also times where I was like, 'ehhh, I don't know if this is gonna work out.' ”

Morris said he feels he can still kick if needed, but he feels the added weight and muscle he’s put on to withstand the rigors of being a Big Ten tight end has limited his ability to use his left leg like he once did. That physical transformation took Morris from 190 pounds when he was on the kicking camp circuit in high school to now 245 pounds as a fifth-year college senior.

Yet even though kicking is in his past, that previous life as a specialist will always be ingrained in Morris’ story of how he got to where he is now.

“Coming here as a walk-on, you don't think that you're gonna even get on the field as a kicker, let alone as a tight end,” he said. “Starting this year and doing good this year, I think, has been a huge journey. It's been great for me. I've loved every step of the way.”

Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him @chrissolari.

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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Evan Morris became the latest Michigan State football K-turned-TE