(North Texas media relations)

Graham Harrell was a record-setting quarterback at Texas Tech, setting several NCAA passing records within coach Mike Leach's quarterback-friendly Air Raid offense.

At North Texas, former Alabama quarterback Alec Morris is playing under Harrell in essentially the same offense.

That means Morris will have a chance to put up some big numbers if he can win North Texas' starting quarterback job, which he is on track to do.

The 6-foot-3, 230-pound Morris, a graduate transfer, left the Tide in January, transferred to North Texas and took the majority of the reps as the Mean Green's first-team quarterback this spring.

"He's done really well," Harrell, who is entering his first season as North Texas' offensive coordinator, said of Morris. "Early on, he was playing better than anyone else was, and we just had to advance someone as quickly as possible, and we tried to do that with him. That's kind of where he sits. We expect him to have a good fall camp. And if he does, then I'd expect he could be the starter easily around here."

North Texas hired another Leach disciple, Seth Littrell, as its head coach in December. Harrell was one of Littrell's first hires, joining Littrell's staff after two years working under Leach at Washington State.

One of the early priorities was finding a graduate transfer quarterback after quarterback issues played a large role in the Mean Green finishing just 1-11 last season.

It turned out to be Morris, who was looking for an opportunity to be a starting quarterback after serving as Alabama's third-string quarterback the last two years. Morris was a factor in the competition for the Tide's starting quarterback job leading up to last season, but ended finishing third behind Jake Coker and Cooper Bateman.

"It was definitely a difficult decision to leave Alabama. No doubt," said Morris, who had been at Alabama since 2012. "One thing that made it easier was that I had been around Alabama quite a long time. I had seen a lot of my really close friends graduate and leave, so the amount of relationships I had as far as truly close friends just being around, a fifth-year senior, guys graduate and they move on. So that was one aspect. But a lot of great relationships were made there that I had to leave behind for the time being, so it was no doubt a difficult decision."

Why North Texas? Location was one reason.

The school is less than an hour away from Morris' hometown of Allen, Texas. The other big one was the combination of Littrell and Harrell.

"I liked what type of program they said they wanted to have, and I liked the attitudes, and I liked the offense as well," Morris said. "So all things included, details like that (and being close to home) were really what made me want to come here."

The quarterback that likely would have been Morris' top competition for the starting job -- DaMarcus Smith, who started six games last year -- left the team in March.

Morris' remaining competition for the starting job is a redshirt freshman, a former two-star recruit and a walk-on.

Morris was 17 of 35 for 261 yards with three touchdowns and two interceptions during North Texas' spring game in April.

"He's big, has a good arm, he can throw it around, and he picked the offense up pretty quickly," Harrell said. "That's the thing that I thought would be his biggest obstacle, picking things up and learning it and getting comfortable with the offense, but he did a really good job with that in the spring and was able to progress pretty quickly.

"In this offense, the quarterback has a lot of responsibility and he's the one that makes the offense go, but it's a great offense to play in. It's fun, and you've got a chance to put up big numbers. We're excited about Alec. We're going to play an exciting brand of football and hopefully put up some great numbers and win a lot of games."