Archers acquire Jackson Morrill from Whipsnakes for 2025 draft pick
By Zach Carey | Aug 13, 2024
The Utah Archers traded their 2025 third-round draft pick to the Maryland Whipsnakes to acquire Jackson Morrill in the waning hours before the trade deadline.
After Utah placed Matt Moore on the injured list Tuesday morning, the Archers made quick work of acquiring an offensive piece to fill the hole left by Moore's absence.
Importantly, Utah acquired the California Redwoods’ 2025 third-round pick in a 2024 draft day trade. So, the club still holds four picks in 2025. Plus, by trading their own third-rounder instead of California’s, the Archers still own what is likely to be the better of those two third-rounders with the Woods currently on the outside looking in at the Cash App Playoff picture.
Last week, Archers head coach Chris Bates noted that the club felt like it didn’t need all five of the 2025 picks it owned.
“We don’t need five dudes [in 2025],” he said. “I start looking at the value of next year’s draft, it’s certainly nowhere near this year’s.”
Morrill has been a healthy scratch for the Whipsnakes since late June after several of Maryland’s offensive rookies came to the fore. But the Yale and Denver product has been a productive player when he’s had opportunities throughout his four-year career.
Morrill has averaged more than two points per game in four seasons. But after the Whips picked him up in a similar late-season trade last summer, he only made four appearances for Maryland. Now, he gets a chance with an Archers offense that could use a shot in the arm heading into Homecoming weekend and its push to run it back and win the 2024 Cash App Championship.
As for Morrill’s role with the Archers, he’ll likely take Ryan Aughavin or Dyson Williams’ spot on the 19-man roster this coming weekend. Moore missing time takes a strong dodging threat out of the picture. So Morrill projects to help ease the impact of his absence as a more capable threat to create offense for himself and others than Aughavin and Williams are.
In fact, back in 2023, Morrill put up five goals against the Archers as he punished Utah for switching picks by winning matchups against their short sticks.
The Archers love players who can fit in at attack or midfield. In Morrill, they pick up another guy who can bump up and down depending on the pieces around him. He can play attack, occupy a pole and be a dodging threat from X who provides a quarterbacking presence. Or he can come out of the box, abuse a short-stick matchup and run big-littles with guys like Grant Ament and Tom Schreiber.
For those reasons, he projects to seamlessly fit into the Archers’ offense. Obviously, there’s no guarantee until he’s on the field and gets comfortable with Utah’s personnel and scheme. But he fits an ideal, versatile player mold for a late-season move like this.
It’s worth noting that Morrill is in the final year of his contract and hasn’t been on Maryland’s active or protected roster since early July. So the Archers paid a third-round pick for him to play at most five games for them when they potentially could have tried to claim him instead.
That said, the Archers got their guy and now get a chance to evaluate Morrill without being committed to him as a piece of their future roster if the move doesn’t work out.
This is a good shot for Utah to take. It still has sufficient draft capital in 2025 and picks up a player with a diverse skill set who fills a position of need ahead of the most important games of the season.
