It was around 9 a.m. on Jan. 3 when Joe Moorhead was informed he had been fired as the head coach of Mississippi State after just two seasons. The Bulldogs finished 14-12 under his watch and 7-9 in the SEC — not bad for a program that is historically one of the worst in the conference — but it wasn’t enough to retain his job.
For many coaches around the country, Mississippi State’s decision was baffling, and when it became public, Moorhead instantly became one of the most sought-after coaches on the open market. By noon that day, he fielded roughly 7-10 calls about opportunities ranging from NFL coordinator and position-coach gigs to others such as a head coach or coordinator at the college level.
“I learned long ago from [coach Paul Rhoads] when I was at the University of Pittsburgh, when I was a [grad assistant], he gave me great criteria for considering job opportunities,” Moorhead said. “He always said, ‘It’s personal, it’s professional and then monetary.’ All of these things came about in a very short amount of time.”
The NFL, and more so the opportunity to coach at the highest level of football, was intriguing, but it didn’t take long for one job to stand out.
“I sat down with my family and the Oregon one just ascended to the top of the list for personal reasons, professional reasons,” Moorhead said. “And that last one, monetary, didn’t really matter because at this point, that’s really not too much of a primary focus.”
Having just won the Rose Bowl two days prior, Oregon was looking for a replacement for offensive coordinator Marcus Arroyo, who had accepted the head-coaching job at UNLV a few weeks earlier.
The Ducks were among the better offenses in the conference in 2019 behind current Los Angeles Chargers quarterback Justin Herbert and sophomore offensive tackle Penei Sewell, the Outland Trophy winner. It was clear, even before Moorhead got on the phone with coach Mario Cristobal, that Oregon was a program on the rise. That, in itself, provided an immediate level of intrigue.
Then the phone call actually happened.
Moorhead had never spoken with Cristobal before they connected, and it took only minutes for him to understand why Oregon had turned into a recruiting power since Cristobal’s arrival.
“My interest level was piqued very quickly just by his passion, his excitement,” Moorhead said.
A couple weeks later, Oregon made it official, and Moorhead, who built Fordham into an FCS power as a head coach and coordinated some of the country’s best offenses at Penn State in 2016 and 2017, was headed west.
He arrived in time to help close out the recruiting cycle and made it four practices into spring ball before the coronavirus pandemic shut down everything in March. At that point, he returned to Starkville, Mississippi, where his family remained ahead of their planned summer move.
After a couple months back in Mississippi, the idea of flying to Eugene, Oregon, wasn’t appealing, and neither was making the trip in a car with two kids and a dog. The solution? A 35-foot RV and 46 hours on the open road. The trip included a stop at Mount Rushmore and another night in a gas station parking lot, where they were flanked by 18-wheelers and backed up to a busy set of train tracks. It was a fun, memorable trip Moorhead said, but by the time they reached the western portion of the Mountain Time Zone, everyone was ready to be in Eugene.
“At that point you’re at hour 38 of this RV trip — two kids and a dog — and you’re racing to get to Eugene as fast as you can like you’re Clark Griswold,” he said.
From a coaching standpoint, it became a story of hurry-up-and-wait.
As the pandemic continued to prevent much in the way of in-person activities, Moorhead’s ability to teach his team the new offense was limited to video conferencing. It’s not exactly the situation he walked into when he arrived at Penn State before the 2016 season, but Oregon is hopeful he can have a similar impact.
The year before Moorhead landed at Penn State, the Nittany Lions averaged just 23.2 points per game and 348.6 yards of offense. In Year 1, those numbers jumped to 37.7 points per game and 432.6 yards per game and Penn State won the Big Ten and went to its fourth Rose Bowl in school history.
At Oregon, the same type of turnaround isn’t necessary. The Ducks already were one of the better offenses in the Pac-12 in 2019, but if they were truly going to take the next step in college football’s hierarchy and seriously contend for national titles, that side of the ball still needed to improve. In a 28-27 win against Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, it was four turnovers forced by the defense that allowed Oregon to escape on a night its offense sputtered to just 204 yards of total offense.
Moorhead’s goal is clear: “It’s the difference between very good and great, you know what I mean? So hopefully I’m able to do my part and continue this trend and this trajectory where Oregon is heading, and hopefully makes us a little more explosive.”
After a lengthy delay to the Pac-12 season, the first chance to see what the No. 12 Ducks will look like with Moorhead calling the plays is Saturday at home against Stanford (7:30 p.m. ET, ABC/ESPN App).
“Joe is one of those guys who is very well respected from different stops around college football,” said Stanford coach David Shaw. “All of his offenses have been balanced, they’ve been respectable, they’ve been able to run the ball, he brings a toughness to them; the play-action game as well as some of the spread concepts that he’ll hit you with.”
Shaw, along with just about everyone else who follows the Ducks, assumes Tyler Shough will be the starting quarterback, but Cristobal wasn’t ready to provide that confirmation on Thursday.
“When you’re playing Game 1, opening game of the season, there’s no value to a team giving up every detail of what they’re doing,” Cristobal said. “Respectfully, just decline to give out information on who’s starting at certain positions because we’d rather let the opponent figure that out, quite honestly.”
Added Shaw: “We just know they’re going to be well coordinated. They’re going to try and take advantage of what they perceive as our weakness, so we’ll see how the game progresses to see how they’ll attack us.”
One player the Cardinal won’t have to worry about is Sewell. Expected to be one of the first few picks in the NFL draft, Sewell, along with several members of the secondary, opted out of playing the 2020 season.
Even with those personnel losses, Oregon remains the betting favorite to win what promises to be a bizarre Pac-12 season, which will consist of six regular-season games, plus an additional divisional-crossover game for everyone the day of the conference title game.
