Kellen Moore’s pro football career has taken him from Detroit to Dallas to Los Angeles to Philadelphia, and now for the first time in his career, Moore — formerly a player, quarterbacks coach AND offensive coordinator — will be the head coach of the New Orleans Saints. Each of these stops will likely inform the way that Moore coaches his team, implements schemes and approaches the day to day grind of the job.
But it turns out, we actually need to look further back into Kellen Moore’s football life to get an accurate picture of the kind of culture he plans to implement in New Orleans. We need to go back to when Moore was a four-year starter during the most successful stretch in the history of the Boise State Broncos football program.
“(Boise State) was awesome. It was unique. It was different than most college football programs.”Moore said on July 16 about his time at Boise State, according to Shaun Goodwin of The Idaho Statesman. “We were always creative, we were always cutting-edge, we were always playing a really aggressive brand of football in every phase.”
Note that creative, cutting-edge and aggressive, three words that Moore used to describe the way Boise State played during his time with the Broncos, doesn’t necessarily equate to recklessness. Moore threw just 28 interceptions in his 1,658 pass attempts while at Boise State. He also completed nearly 70 percent of those passes. Reckless was not a word you would’ve used to describe Kellen Moore or the Boise State Broncos.
Finding that fine line where you can be creative and aggressive without being reckless is nice, but what was truly the secret sauce for the Broncos wasn’t so much the schemes or game plans or the imaginary dial that told Moore and head coach Chris Petersen just how aggressive to be. Instead, it was the nature in which the coaching staff and players worked together to build something bigger and better than we were used to seeing from a program like Boise State.
Culture is the Buzzword in New Orleans This Offseason
It didn’t take long for newly-signed safety Justin Reid to see that Kellen Moore was able to get his fingerprints all over the Saints organization in short time after being named the team’s head coach in mid-February.
“First and foremost, it’s culture over everything. “The culture that’s built here and Coach Kellen, they just won the Super Bowl last year with Philly. He brought his strength staff over and a lot of those guys are familiar with winning,” Reid told Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk on May 30. “The culture in this locker room is right right now. We’ve got guys that believe in the system, that buy in. We don’t have bad character guys. And that’s the first step that you need in order to build a real team to go out and win.”
Reid even went on to say that the Saints were operating like a college program on day one of OTA’s this spring, complimenting the coaching staff’s attention to detail and devotion to conditioning. Again, this was all by design. Strip things down, go back to the basics, and maybe most importantly, surround yourself with people who see the game differently than you do in order to get as many varying perspectives in the room as possible.
“We don’t all have to see football the exact same way. And I think that’s the important part of this,” Moore said. “(Offensive coordinator) Doug (Nussmeier) and I won’t see everything the exact same. And that’s a good thing, you need that.”
Moore noted that at Boise State, his coaches created a “collaborative environment” in which every player on the roster and every coach on the staff had a say in the game plan, and that oftentimes, Friday night discussions of the game plan ended up taking on an entirely different life.
“It was different from most college football programs in that on Friday nights, you’re in a team meeting and it’s not about football,” Moore said. “It’s about something else in life that ties back to what we’re going to do on Saturday, but it was different. I thought that was a really special part of Boise that always connected with me.”
Kellen Moore Remains one of the NCAA’s Forgotten Stars
Kellen Moore threw only 104 passes during a brief NFL career that was mostly spent as a backup, but if we’re considering his college career too, then the three-time conference player of the year and two-time All-American is one of the most successful quarterbacks we’ve seen this century.
Consider, Moore was 49-3 as Boise State’s starter, and he ended his collegiate career with the most wins in NCAA history. He finished in the top ten in Heisman Trophy voting three times, and to this day, he’s thrown the 3rd-most touchdowns in FBS history. By any measure, and with all due respect to Ashton Jeanty, Kellen Moore remains the greatest player in Boise State history.
But above everything else, Kellen Moore’s presence alone established Boise State as a legitimate National Championship contender and one of the most consistent programs in the country.
Saints fans can only hope for a similar result in New Orleans.
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