When Chad Morris informed Dabo Swinney he was leaving Clemson to become the next head coach at SMU, it did not take Swinney too long to replace his old offensive coordinator.

“I have made a lot of decisions in the last six years and probably the easiest decision I made was replacing Chad,” Swinney said. “That took about thirty seconds because that plan has been in place for a while.”

The plan was to hire within and promote running backs coach Tony Elliott and wide receivers coach Jeff Scott as co-offensive coordinators.

“I coached Tony. I mentored Jeff. I have great confidence in those guys,” Swinney said.

It did not hurt that in their debut as offensive coordinators, the Tigers drilled Oklahoma, 40-6, in the Russell Athletic Bowl. The Clemson offense looked very efficient in scoring 20-first half points in leading the Tigers to its most impressive bowl victory to date.

Swinney believes the Russell Athletic Bowl experience has already and will help the Tigers’ offense transition a lot smoother into the 2015 season without Morris.

“The blessing for us was that Chad got the SMU job right after the (regular) season so we had a whole month as a coaching staff,” Swinney said. “Most times a coaching staff doesn’t get the opportunity to work together with live bullets until your first game of the season in the fall. We don’t have preseason games and we don’t get to play anyone in the spring. But for us, we got to roll up ourselves as a staff and get everybody in place, get (Brandon) Streeter in there, and get the press box the way we want it, and go play Oklahoma.

“It was a huge head start in the transition. That does not mean we are going to win every game and score on the first play call and all of that kind of stuff, but from a transition standpoint, we are way further ahead then what we would have been had we not had that opportunity.”

Tony Elliott instantly took to Chad Morris’ offense when he became the Tigers’ running backs coach in 2011.

So why has it been such a smooth transition for Clemson with Elliott and Scott now running the offense? Morris wasn’t a control freak. His offensive meetings were not run like a dictatorship. Instead he asked for input from all of his coaches. No one sat on their hands. Every coach was involved in the game plan.

“That is one of the thing I loved about Chad. He wanted everyone’s input and he delegated a lot,” Swinney said. “When you have that type of situation you are able to develop your staff. I feel like Tony and Jeff are going to be tremendous. Both of those guys are going to be head coaches one day as well.”

Scott said the preparation for he and Elliott to take over for Morris actually began shortly after Morris arrived. Elliott came in with Morris in 2011 as running backs coach, and instantly picked up the offense. Scott, who came on board fulltime with Swinney in 2009, also gravitated to it and wanted to learn more.

With the two former teammates picking Morris’ brain about how it all worked, he took them both under his wing and taught them everything he knows.

“As a coach, being around the game, you kind of know how it works. If you have had success you are going to get an opportunity,” Scott said. “Obviously, the last four years, it really started when Coach Morris got here. I knew early on, if I get an opportunity to be an offensive coordinator, this is the offense I want to run.”

Elliott and Scott both admit there is a difference in what they are doing now as opposed to the last four seasons. They are not just running their position groups and then coming back to the meeting room and adding input and being done with it.

“You do have more control on how the offense looks and what goes in, what is called and all of those types of things. You really have to look at the bigger picture as opposed to just having your position,” Scott said. “But really I think there is probably a little bit more excitement because you are able to do a little bit more things then you have been able to do in the past.”

The transition from Morris to Elliott and Scott is also aided by the fact Elliott and Scott have been long-time friends, teammates and co-workers. Their relationship dates back to when they were stretch partners as players at Clemson under former head coach Tommy Bowden.

Scott lettered three years at Clemson from 2000-’02, while Elliott lettered four years from 2000-’03.

“I don’t think there is anybody out there I rather co-coordinate with than Tony,” Scott said. “He and I hit it off whenever we were players here. We kept up whenever we were apart through the years. Then the last four years we worked together. I think we really balance each other with our knowledge. Neither of us are ego guys.”

Instead they are Clemson guys, who truly care about the success of Clemson.

“I think we work well together. We definitely communicate a lot, and the bowl game was, obviously great to experience, and then talk about the good and the bad afterwards and then going through spring practice. It is exciting,” Scott said.

Now they are excited about starting fall practice on Tuesday. Elliott and Scott spent a lot of their summer in the film room studying what they do, what other coaches do, while trying to get a flow for how they want to run their practice and call a game.

But it’s not all new. A lot of it started four years ago, when they both knew they were going to be offensive coordinators one day.