Cal Tackle Nick Morrow: A Work in Progress With a High Ceiling

The former high school tight end/defensive end will play in his first college game as the starting left tackle vs. UC Davis

Nick Morrow /

Cal opens its season a week from today against UC Davis, with the Bears apparently boasting better depth and experience along the offensive line that they've enjoyed in a few years.

Including returning players and transfer additions, the Bears have seven O-linemen who have combined for 218 games and 150 starts in their careers.

Four of them will start against the Aggies along with Nick Morrow, who will see action in his first college game at a position he’s never played. 

A 6-foot-8, 305-pound redshirt freshman from Flagstaff, Ariz., Morrow (pronounced MAR-o), played tight end and defensive end in high school. Cal took a look at him at a camp in Berkeley and envisioned him as a tackle.

And next Saturday — having not played in a game since high school senior season in the fall of 2021 after gray-shirting in 2022 and redshirting last year — Morrow will be the Bears’ starting left tackle.

“His ceiling is extremely high,” Cal coach Justin Wilcox said. “Is he close to hitting that yet? Nope. Not quite. He’s going to be learning a lot along the way. 

“But if he sticks with it and keeps buying into the training and weight lifting and eating -- just the life-style that it takes to be a great left tackle -- he has a very, very bright future.”

That confidence that the coaching staff has shown him drives Morrow to keep striving toward that ceiling.

“I’m definitely very excited by it,” he said. “Maybe when I first got here, first started playing the position it might have been harder to see. 

“But as I’ve been learning and getting more comfortable and confident, it’s been good to think about and know they have that kind of belief in me.”

Making the move to OT was a not an unexpected adjustment for Morrow. Pretty much every school that recruited him talked about him making that transition.

Reflecting on the camp the coaching staff first spent with Morrow, Wilcox said, “We worked him out at tight end and D-end and said I don’t think he’s either of those but he’s going to be something.”

Morrow delayed his enrollment at Cal as a gray-shirt, giving him a chance to begin changing his body for a new assignment. He weighed 250 in high school but has added 50 pounds to a long frame that can handle it.

“It’s felt very natural since I got here and started being able to get into it more. I think it’s been a great transition,” Morrow explained.

Even so, Morrow was fairly overmatched in his early practices in the spring of 2022. 

“I remember the first practice, we almost couldn’t have him in with some of the D-ends because he was just unfamiliar with the position, was brand new, was still growing physically,” Wilcox said. 

“And now he’s our starting left tackle. Just to be fair to him, he’s still a work in progress, but in a really good way. Because he has things you can’t teach.”

That starts with his height — a legit 6-8, Morrow confirms. And athletic enough that the former high school basketball center had dreams of playing point guard. 

The second coming of Magic Johnson?

“Tried to . . . didn’t look the same,” he conceded.

The move to tackle has been more promising.

“I’ve definitely come a long way. But I know I have a lot to continue to improve on and just continuing to be the best player I can be,” Morrow said “Consistency — that’s the big thing we talk about. Playing to a level that I know I can consistently and being able to do it over and over again.”

Wilcox talks in the video above about how the Bears have plugged in players at different O-line positions throughout fall camp to fill holes due to injuries and to develop more flexibility.

It’s unclear, for instance, whether starting right guard Sioape Vatikani, who has missed much of camp with a foot injury, will be ready to go in the opener. 

In any case, Morrow won’t be the only player who sees snaps at left tackle, but he’s going to play a lot, Wilcox said.

“He’s probably not going to be perfect,” Wilcox said. “But each time he goes out there he’s going to learn something very valuable. He’s going to put that in the bank. He’s got a bright future.”