Mississippi State tries to be ahead of the curve with Moorhead 

Joe Moorhead

By Matt Zemek

Dan Mullen worked out pretty darn well for Mississippi State.

Mullen didn’t become a giant in Starkville, but it’s hard to become a legend at one of the SEC’s off-the-radar programs, in a place where recruiting advantages and natural selling points are harder to come by. Mullen needed a few years to find his footing at Mississippi State, but his terrific 2014 season catapulted the program to an Orange Bowl appearance. Mullen then spent the 2017 season coaching the pants off an overmatched Ed Orgeron and LSU. He coached Nick Saban to a standoff and very nearly engineered an upset of the Crimson Tide. Gus Malzahn of Auburn has a case to make in this debate, but if you wanted to say that Mullen was the second-best coach in the SEC West at the time he left Mississippi State for Florida, you could certainly build a sound argument for him. That’s not bad at all.

Mullen certainly left Mississippi State football a better program compared to when he arrived in the Magnolia State.

Given Mullen’s progress in Starkville, it was only natural that MSU — when forced to find a replacement — found another creative offensive tactician and teacher.

James Franklin is, of course, a coach with a history in the SEC, having served at Vanderbilt for several seasons. Franklin migrated north and found rocky terrain at Penn State. His career there was going nowhere… until he chose a man named Joe Moorhead to be his offensive coordinator. The move transformed Franklin’s career, because ever since Moorhead got his hands on Trace McSorley and Saquon Barkley and the Penn State receivers, the Nittany Lions’ offense took off. That offense hung 49 points on USC in the Rose Bowl. That offense could strike from any spot on the field at any given point in time. Moorhead gave McSorley a better understanding of where to throw the football, an equivalent of teaching a golfer where to miss — and not miss — on an approach shot to the green. Moorhead designed pass routes in ways which gave his receivers leverage in one-on-one situations against defenders. McSorley either gave his receivers a chance to catch a ball in the air… or the pass was incomplete with  the defender having very little chance of making an interception.

It is true that Penn State’s receivers were amazing in plucking McSorley’s passes at the catch point, but a lot of that was by design. Moorhead put tall receivers in matchups where they were likely to win those individual battles. McSorley put the balls where they needed to be placed. Penn State’s passing offense supplemented Barkley’s brilliance in the backfield to give the Nittany Lions a nearly unbeatable combination. PSU football is now flexing its muscles and recruiting at an elite level.

Moorhead changed a lot of what Penn State did. He more particularly changed Penn State’s results and fortunes.

Moorhead has spent almost all of his Division I (FBS) coaching career in either the Northeast or Upper Midwest: Akron, Connecticut and Penn State. He also was head coach at FCS school Fordham. A fellow named Nick Saban coached in the Big Ten before making a much bigger name for himself in the SEC. Bret Bielema scratched that same kind of itch at Arkansas after thriving at Wisconsin — that move didn’t work out as well. Nevertheless, Moorhead has declared — in his actions if not his speech — that the challenge of coaching in the SEC is something he wants to confront. Testing his ability to develop players, and subjecting his playcalling chops to intense scrutiny, are the risks Moorhead is happy to take. He wouldn’t have accepted this job otherwise. Moorhead is in many ways a second Mullen, an elite coordinator at a Power 5 powerhouse moving to one of the tougher jobs in the SEC.

Moorhead’s ability to cultivate a highly potent “jump-ball” passing offense at Penn State is no accident when viewed in terms of Mississippi State’s goals and aspirations. The people of Starkville know full well that Alabama’s foremost SEC nemesis over the past four years was the rival program in Oxford — Hugh Freeze’s Ole Miss Rebels. What did Ole Miss do better than any other SEC team against Bama when Freeze was still on the sidelines? The answer is not hard to produce: Ole Miss had tall and rangy receivers who won one-on-one in the air against the Bama corners. Ole Miss didn’t try to sledgehammer the ball between the tackles against Alabama’s massive, fire-breathing front seven. The Rebels under Freeze understood better than anyone else in the SEC that Alabama has to be beaten with vertical passes. No coach dislikes a 12-play, 80-yard, seven-minute drive against Alabama, but that kind of drive — that kind of ball-control success — just isn’t realistic. Alabama has to be beaten with the quick strike and the big play. Ole Miss did that better than anyone else in the SEC West or the league at large.

Mississippi State athletic director John Cohen surely saw what Freeze had done to bother Saban and, processing all the information and context at his disposal, made a situationally astute hire by tabbing Moorhead as Mullen’s replacement. This doesn’t guarantee that the hire will work out, but the thought process behind the hire could not have been more logical. Cohen might not have found the right man, but he certainly used the right formula when contemplating what his program needed. It is up to Moorhead to implement the vision he himself has for MSU football… and which Cohen clearly shares.

Auburn and Gus have had trouble cultivating quarterbacks within their program. Nick Marshall (2013) and Jarrett Stidham (2017 and this year) were transfers. LSU has had trouble cultivating any kind of consistent offense. Texas A&M’s offense has had its moments but has often sputtered. Arkansas is in a similar position. Ole Miss is likely to regress in the wake of NCAA penalties. Mississippi State probably won’t match Auburn this year if only because Stidham will prevent the Tigers from falling. However, if Moorhead is the real deal, MSU could very conceivably and realistically become the second-best program in the SEC West before too long. No, that doesn’t mean one should expect this to happen, but the coaching landscape in the rest of the division certainly opens the door for the Bulldogs.

Joe Moorhead wanted the challenge of coaching in the SEC. Is this a case of “Watch what you wish for — you just might get it,” or is Moorhead embarking on a coaching tenure in which he will radically improve the fortunes of yet another program?

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