All Morgan was at Miami was the best defensive player in football. He started at linebacker there for four seasons, left as the school’s all-time leader in tackles (532, with over 100 each year), and capped it by winning the Bednarik, Butkus, and Nagurski Awards his senior year, making it an easy call for the Panthers to draft him in the first round of the 2001 draft.
Which is pretty good, considering he wasn’t even a linebacker when he went there.
His family moved to Coral Springs, Fla, and he was a smallish running back at Taravella High School before signing with his beloved Canes. And that was a dream come true for him, considering the way he grew up and who he looked up to.
“I knew even before going there, just the tradition of the linebackers down there, and that’s part of the reason I wanted to go there,” Morgan said. “It’s like, Darrin Smith, Jessie Armstead, Micheal Barrow. All those guys like Bernard Clark before me, Ray Lewis, you knew that you had to live up to a certain standard, and you had to play the game a certain way.
“And I think down there like if you don’t play it a certain way, like you’re going to get weeded out pretty quick. That locker room is pretty tough down there, so if you’re not a tough ass and mentally tough, physically tough, you’re not going to last long down there.”
So two days into his career, he changed positions and began the hard work of fitting in.