Penn State Sports Magazine
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/703041
J oe Moorhead spent the past four sea- sons as head coach at Fordham, where he used a fast-paced offense to lift the Rams out of the lower depths of the Football Championship Subdivi- sion and into the playoffs. He could have stayed at his alma mater for a long time had he wanted, but Penn State coach James Franklin approached him last De- cember about becoming the Nittany Li- ons' offensive coordinator. And it turned out that the former Akron and Con- necticut assistant was ready to return to college football's highest division. The transition, he said, has gone smoothly. "Having been a position coach and an offensive coordinator for the majority of my career has really al- lowed me to focus very specifically on coordinating the offense, coaching the quarterbacks, and recruiting my area and helping with the offensive guys," he said. "That's allowed me to step away from the big picture, so to speak, and concentrate more on specific tasks." Penn State did not enjoy much success on offense in the two seasons preceding Moorhead's appointment. The Nittany Lions finished 13th in the Big Ten in total offense both of those years, averaging only 348.4 yards and 23.2 points per game in 2015. But they've steadily added to their stockpile of skill position talent, a group headlined by sophomore run- ning back Saquon Barkley and junior wideout Chris Godwin. And just as im- portant, they've been building depth on their offensive front, which had been badly eroded by injuries, attrition and the NCAA's harsh sanctions when James Franklin took over the program two years ago. Moorhead is a former Fordham quar- terback who, as a coach, has been known for his development of QBs. He has spent the past seven months working to implement his no-huddle spread attack, and if the Blue-White Game was any in- dication, that process is going well. Quarterbacks Trace McSorley and Tom- my Stevens combined to complete 33 of 44 passes for 381 yards, four touch- downs and only one interception in the final scrimmage of the spring. The chal- lenge will get a lot bigger beginning in September, but the changes Penn State has made, including the hiring of former Minnesota offensive coordinator Matt Limegrover as offensive line coach, have generated plenty of buzz. Recently, Moorhead took the time to discuss the evolution of Penn State's of- fense with Blue White Illustrated web- site editor Nate Bauer. Here's what he had to say… BWI Were there things you saw as a head coach that help inform what you do now as offensive coordinator? MOORHEAD I think experience is life's best teacher, and the things you learn as a head coach are the things you really can't plan for. There's really no manual for some of the things that occur, and a lot of it is trial and error. I would say that's the biggest thing as a head coach – you like to be detail-oriented, you like to be efficient and have great time-man- agement skills. As a head coach, I was also coordinating the offense and for two of the seasons was coaching a position, so you really had to be specific with your time and with what you were doing. BWI How do you become a quarter- back guru? What does it take to turn into that? MOORHEAD I don't know if I'm nec- essarily a guru, but I've played the posi- tion in organized football since the fifth grade, so I've always seen myself as a quarterback. I think playing the position through high school, through college, a little bit afterwards, when your playing career ends – not necessarily by choice – going into coaching in a lot of ways extends your playing career so to speak, and you can live vicariously through the guys and the things they do. So I'd say that's been the biggest part of it. BWI Does the experience of players to- day resemble in any way how you came up, maybe in terms of the style of quar- terbacking, or… MOORHEAD I'd say perhaps. Coach Franklin mentioned this the other day, because he saw a young man who went to my high school, Justin Kurpeikis, who played here [at Penn State] and they were talking at an event and he said he thought it was very ironic that Coach Moorhead is the proponent of a system where the quarterback runs around and is a dual threat when he couldn't run at all. And I said, "Yeah, that is very iron- ic." I think the difference [lies in] the in- struction and the development of the quarterback position at a much younger age. Kids are very well coached at the high school level – they're going through seven-on-sevens. … A lot of times, ninth-graders, or even before, have their own gurus who are working with them on fundamentals and tech- nique, so I think that kids who are com- ing into college are much more prepared from a fundamental and technique 2 0 1 6 P E N N S T A T E F O O T B A L L FULL SPEED AHEAD Joe Moorhead-coached oenses produce yards and points. Can he turn around PSU? T H E O F F E N S E