The little and lean lefty’s drawings were legible. The play designs carried a pristine prudence, an indication that the third-string Dallas Cowboys quarterback indeed belonged on the sideline.
“It wasn’t just some chicken scratch,” Frank Pollack recalls.
No, Kellen Moore’s diagrams cleanly diagnosed problems the offensive line coach asked him to solve. Those combo blocks within shotgun runs that kept clogging against certain fronts? Cleared. That backside blocker who’d always had a bad angle? Fixed. That empty cliché about being a coach on the field? That’s actually who Moore was when he first arrived in Dallas.
That’s also largely why, in 2015, Scott Linehan convinced the Cowboys to sign Moore. Sure, passing was a primary prerequisite. But the former offensive coordinator had always known the guy had an arm. Their high schools are rivals in southern Washington, and Linehan, keeping tabs on Sunnyside, once heard how a “little short lefty” from Prosser lit them up in a 61-3 beatdown. After Moore won more games at Boise State than any quarterback in NCAA history, Linehan, staffed by the Detroit Lions, convinced the organization to sign Moore as an undrafted free agent.
Moore never played a down for the Lions. Behind No. 1 pick Matthew Stafford, backup snaps weren’t really required. For those rare cases, the Lions already had a veteran backup: Shaun Hill. Linehan still believed Moore’s mind was an asset. He gave the rookie research projects like a quasi-quality control coach. What’s our opponent’s two-minute defensive philosophy? What are their calls in the red zone and on third-and-long? Moore, astute and organized, returned to their quarterback meetings with full PowerPoint presentations, videos attached.
“He would come back with way more than I asked,” said Linehan, now an offensive analyst at the University of Montana. “You could just tell by how his mind worked that he was destined for this profession.”
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Linehan had a saying: Do more than is expected. Moore “was the poster child for that,” he said. The projects expanded. Moore, knowing he’d be inactive on a given week, dove deeper into his studies. He scoured tape from around the league for tendencies and tells. He wielded his impressive ear. Scrutinizing hours of TV broadcasts, he’d relay a list of pre-snap calls picked up by network microphones. He owned his role. Linehan sometimes found Moore sitting with Stafford over lunch, sharing nuggets of info he’d found.
Moore was an especially useful resource late in the season, Stafford said. Neither of them had time to watch all of their opponent’s games. So, they’d split up the film. Stafford would ask Moore to find him two or three “take it or leave it” notes from his share.
“He always came up with some good stuff,” said Stafford, who’s since sought that same workflow with his backups with the Los Angeles Rams. “He was always hunting the tape for trick play ideas, finding ways to get guys open and do cool, fun stuff. You could tell early on he was going to be a coach.”
The Lions overhauled their coaching staff in 2014, and Linehan landed in Dallas. A year later, Detroit cut Moore in training camp. Within days, Linehan had his backup back. Moore’s spot on the Cowboys staff was later formalized: quarterbacks coach in 2018, offensive coordinator in 2019. Two bosses later, Moore left Dallas and an offense that had grown stale. Two jobs later, Moore is returning with a Philadelphia Eagles offense whose renewed flavor is partly due to his catalytic spice.
As Moore returns to Texas for the first time since his 2023 departure, it’s worth revisiting his roots. The traits that launched Moore’s early success are still what make him a cunning coordinator, those who coached and played with him say. Some still believe he’ll be a head coach one day. They remember a quiet coach whose mischief manifested in trick plays, a fastidious film junkie who still gets others hooked. They recognize the son of a high school coach’s familial investment into Eagles players like Saquon Barkley, and they don’t downplay the significance of Moore calling plays against his former team.
“I’m pretty sure he’s going to be pretty excited to play them,” said Skip Peete, who coached running backs with Moore in Dallas. “I guarantee he’s going to have some tricks up his sleeve.”
Kellen Moore started developing his coaching skills in Detroit when he couldn’t get playing time. (Rick Stewart / Getty Images)
The former third-string Cowboys quarterback arrived early for his first staff meeting.
A long conference table sat in the middle of the empty room.
Jason Garrett, recently retired as a player, considered where he’d first sit as an assistant coach.
Near the head of the table? Nah. Surely, his boss, Nick Saban, would sit there. Better to just get settled with a well-tenured Miami Dolphins staff. Better to just sit in the corner at the table’s other end.
More assistants arrived. The seats filled in. To Garrett’s surprise, an unused door opened. Saban walked in.
“He ends up sitting at the head of the table right next to me,” Garrett laughs.
The source of the anxiety that supports the punchline of that story is Garrett’s humility and insecurity. He knew he’d skipped steps. He knew coaches like Saban had started out as lowly graduate assistants. Or maybe they’d been high school coaches who, after years at the college level, finally got a shot at the NFL. But once Saban, up close and personal, began that first meeting, Garrett’s reality became clear: he’d need to fulfill his seat at the table, whether he believed he deserved it or not.
So, over a decade later, as head coach of the Cowboys, Garrett knew exactly why he was comfortable hiring Moore. Saban had initially resisted interviewing Garrett. But they’d met at the Senior Bowl, and Saban quickly recognized Garrett understood both the fundamentals and intricacies of the position, and, more importantly, how to confidently present those to quarterbacks as the teacher in the room. With Moore, Garrett said, “there never was a question of him having presence enough to run a meeting.”
“There’s a lot of third-string quarterbacks in the NFL who have a lot of great ideas in the quarterback room,” said Garrett, now a studio analyst for NBC. “And they’re smart guys, but, OK, now you’re going to transition, and now you’re in the front of the room, and now you have to coach the whole thing, you have to coach it from A to Z, you have to know the fundamentals of things, you have to know all the answers to all the questions. You can’t just be a suggestion guy in the back. So, just understanding that. There’s a lot of guys, ‘Oh, I could coach.’ Well, sure you could coach, but the idea is we want you to coach well.”
Garrett had already seen Moore’s mentorship. Moore (fibula) and Tony Romo (back) suffered bone fractures during the 2016 preseason that later forced them into retirement, and suddenly the fate of the Cowboys’ season rested on fourth-round rookie Dak Prescott, for whom Linehan said “there was no real expectation.” A quarterback room that included position coach Wade Wilson, himself a 17-year signal caller, poured into Prescott, who, while securing Pro Bowl and Rookie of the Year honors, led the Cowboys to the playoffs with an NFC East title.
Theirs was not a simple offensive system. The verbiage Romo spoke fluently as a 13-year veteran “was pretty extensive,” Linehan said. They shortened the terms within the play calls. They chose to go no-huddle more so Prescott had more time at the line of scrimmage to diagnose defenses. Their primary focus became keeping the “operation clean” — an indelible influence on the foremost tenet Moore still quotes today.
Kellen Moore made the Cowboys offense more player-friendly for then-rookie Dak Prescott. (Tom Pennington / Getty Images)
Moore’s involvement earned Prescott’s loyalty. Moore’s clarity and command of their system’s structure made him the clear candidate to replace Linehan as coordinator in 2019. Garrett says Moore continued to clean up the offense’s language, “making it more player-friendly, making it all fit together.” Jon Kitna, hired as the quarterbacks coach that year, remembers meeting with Garrett, Moore and former offensive line coach Marc Colombo at the Pro Bowl, where they all committed to “be intentional” in the way they installed their system, to “make it make sense for players.”
“What you don’t like as a quarterback is gray area,” said Kitna, who quarterbacked the Seahawks, Bengals, Lions and Cowboys in 14 seasons. “You want to know what your answers are. You want it to be black and white. I thought Kellen just constantly did a good job of that. … The job is to give answers to that guy that’s pulling the trigger back there. You don’t want him standing back there without answers for anything that comes up.”
The Eagles ran out of answers for Jalen Hurts during their 2023 collapse. Devoid of solutions against the blitz, drives frequently stalled. Hurts’ pre-snap checks delineated into dysfunction. He threw for a career-high 15 interceptions. So, Moore’s addition was sensible. As with Prescott, Moore has since cleaned up the process for Hurts in the pocket. Hurts owns the NFL’s seventh-best EPA per attempt against the blitz (0.40), according to TruMedia. That’s an exponential improvement from 2023 (-0.03, 40th). His turnovers, which totaled seven in a troubling first four games, have been nonexistent in his last four.
Some of the success is due to the support system in the quarterbacks room. Position coach Doug Nussmeier, who replaced Kitna in 2020, also followed Moore in his 2023 stint with the Los Angeles Chargers. Former practice squad quarterback Will Grier (released Thursday) was also Moore’s third-string quarterback in Dallas. Moore hasn’t given backups Kenny Pickett and Tanner McKee the sort of research projects he once completed for Linehan, but McKee says he supplies Hurts with tidbits on techniques he picks up from watching quarterbacks around the league.
Moore knew a clean operation begins at the foundation of the system. Any system. Nick Sirianni has long insisted parts of his previous offenses would be retained, and, indeed, Moore isn’t the first coordinator to encourage Hurts to pursue one-on-one matchups over progressions, or dominate defenses with a zone-read attack. But the Eagles have never had anyone like Saquon Barkley. Moore and Sirianni are both pulling from their pasts to maximize the two-time Pro Bowl running back who’s opening the offense’s options more than anyone.
“It looks different, and we’re a different team now,” Hurts said. “I think that’s what everyone really has to understand and accept. We have a new team. We have another play-caller that’s different. It’s a new approach. We’ve got new players. … That’s different talent. And it can be optimized in different ways.”
Kellen Moore (left) motivates Eagles players by asking them to contribute plays to the offense. (Mitchell Leff / Getty Images)
Peete stepped into his co-worker’s office and squinted at the fuzzy footage on the computer screen.
Moore was watching “some grainy old college play,” Peete recalled.
Moore looked over his shoulder: I think it’s going to work.
“I’m like, ‘Bro, how’d you find this?’” said Peete, now coaching running backs with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. “He goes, ‘Oh, somebody told me about it so I looked it up and found it on YouTube.’”
Peete pulled up a chair. They reverse-engineered the play. They added it to their call sheet.
It’s a well-worn tale of football nerdiness. But Moore is his own brand of geek. He’s the kind that gets you to sit down at the proverbial board game, wearing some silly hat and be totally bought in. Passion begets passion. Moore’s unique skill, several say, is motivating his players by getting them involved. What plays work for you? Which plays do you want called? At any time, Moore might receive a text from an Eagles player with a video attached. One of A.J. Brown’s three touchdown receptions was a play he’d suggested from his three years with the Tennessee Titans.
“I’ve sent some plays to him,” said Barkley, flashing a secretive grin. “I’m not going to put out the plays I sent him yet because hopefully they work in the coming future. But he’s all about that. He welcomes that. I think it’s cool when you manifest stuff like that but also having a coach that’s open to all unique ideas and trick plays and all that good stuff.”
Ah yes. Those Boise State boys. They have a penchant for trick plays. Adam Henry, who coached the Cowboys receivers in 2020 and 2021, remembers how Moore drew up a double-reverse pass for Cedrick Wilson Jr., a former Boise State receiver who tossed an 11-yard touchdown to Prescott against the New York Giants. (Several coaches are convinced Moore will have one in store for the Cowboys on Sunday).
Those trick plays “get players excited,” said Henry, now with the Buffalo Bills. They’re reminders that football’s a fun game. But, like any play, Moore knows they must make sense. Barkley says Moore has a good feel for the players, that he’s got a good filter for suggestions that don’t fit their style.
“Some people come into a situation and they don’t make it fit,” Garrett said. “They say, ‘Oh, you see what the Chiefs are running? Let’s put that in.’ ‘You see what the 49ers are running? Let’s put that in.’ You know, and just random stuff that doesn’t fit into anything that you’re doing. The art of the thing is to make it all fit together and make it all complement each other and make it all seem like it’s not foreign to everybody.”
Moore was so meticulous in constructing his call sheet, Henry believed Moore had taken an Excel course. (Moore, grinning, said he just spends a lot of time on the computer.) Moore stuck with tasks coordinators typically dish to quality control coaches, Henry says. By typing up notes from meeting to meeting, Moore edited his play scripts on the go.
“It’s similar to people who say the more you write something, the more you remember it,” Moore said. “The more I type it into the call sheet and put it in certain situations, I can find it quicker during the game.”
Seen Moore on the sideline? That’s also intentional. Ever since Dallas, Moore has preferred being near the action, near his players, where he can best have a back-and-forth on what immediately impacts the game.
“It’s a difference,” Barkley said. “When we’re running a gap scheme and it’s hitting and I’m like, ‘Hey, let’s go, I’m liking it,’ he’s right there. He gets a feel for the game and knows when something is working and when something is not.”
Philadelphia’s increased efficiency on offense has coincided with the doubling of its usage of under-center alignments since the Week 5 bye. It’s an aggressive structure several offensive plays favor. Although the Eagles, at 81 plays, are on pace to deploy their most under-center plays in the Sirianni era, the numbers are nowhere near what the Cowboys totaled under Moore in 2021 (456) and 2022 (487), according to TruMedia. Peete said the arrangement suited Ezekiel Elliott and Tony Pollard, angry runners who benefited from a more downhill style.
Such is the product of collaboration, which Sirianni has long insisted has occurred. It’s another reason why Moore was a fit in Philly. When Mike McCarthy replaced Garrett in 2020, Moore was one of only three holdovers McCarthy retained.
“He didn’t just walk into the offensive staff room and say, ‘Look, here’s the Dallas Cowboys 2019 playbook. Here’s how we’re going it. You guys learn it,’” said Joe Philbin, a former Dolphins head coach and offensive line coach on McCarthy’s Cowboys staffs. “That was not his style whatsoever.”
Jourdan Rodrigue contributed to this report.
(Top photo: Mitch Stringer, Timothy T. Ludwig / Imagn Images)
