Jim Mora's NFL experience is helping him make one of college football's toughest jobs look easy
If all you’ve seen of Connecticut’s football season is coach Jim Mora’s rant following the Wake Forest game, you might assume Mora isn’t having any fun. Mora admits he was furious Oct. 19 when he went viral following a non-call — which probably should have been pass interference — that ended his team’s chance to win a one-score game.
But while that moment drew the most attention, it doesn’t accurately reflect how 2024 is going for Mora and the Huskies. “This has been one of the most enjoyable years of my career,” Mora said, “because of the players that I’m fortunate to coach.”
Mora isn’t exaggerating. Though his coaching career stretches back to 1984 and includes an NFC championship appearance as head coach of the Atlanta Falcons and consecutive 10-win seasons as UCLA’s head coach, this year — his third at UConn — ranks with the best because the attitude of this team and because of what UConn has been able to accomplish relative to its degree of difficulty. The FBS independent is 7-3 heading into a game this week at Syracuse. (Two of the losses, Wake Forest and Duke, were to ACC teams by a combined eight points.) The Huskies haven’t won this many games in a season since Randy Edsall took them to the Fiesta Bowl in 2010. If UConn can upset Syracuse and then beat Massachusetts next week, it would win nine games for only the third time in its FBS history.
That isn’t supposed to happen at a place where football went independent so the ultra-successful men’s and women’s basketball teams could leave the American Athletic Conference and go back to the Big East, which doesn’t sponsor football. The current system is set up to make winning much more difficult at a place like UConn, but Mora and his mostly young staff have found victories with a roster that seems to truly enjoy putting in the work required to win.
“You know how much entitlement there is in college athletics — really in society,” Mora said. “We have zero sense of entitlement on our team. They will do anything we ask.”
It also helps to have a coach who doesn’t hate all the changes in college sports. Mora, who worked in the NFL for 24 years before he became the head coach at UCLA in 2012, feels quite at home in unlimited transfer/NIL era because it resembles the environment he grew up in as a coach. “My background is the National Football League, which really is somewhat similar to the new structure of college football,” he said. “Your portal resembles free agency. Your draft resembles recruiting. So it doesn’t faze me one bit that there’s been this transformation in college football where money has become an issue. So I’m able to operate in this world very comfortably because I’ve been in it most of his career.”
Mora understands that good players he finds and develops might leave. UConn’s highest rated high school signees tend to be three-star recruits who rank below No. 1,500 nationally. In the class of 2022, UConn beat out several FCS schools for tight end Justin Joly from Iona Preparatory School in New Rochelle, N.Y. Mora commands his staff to look for specific traits in under-recruited players. In Joly’s case, it was his 11-inch hands. As a sophomore in 2023, Joly led Huskies in receiving. Following the season, he entered the transfer portal and wound up at N.C. State.
That’s OK, Mora said. In the NFL, rosters turn over dramatically every year. The staff simply must understand that they need to mix draft success and free agency success. So even though UConn lost Joly to N.C. State, the Huskies got current starting quarterback Nick Evers from the portal after Evers left Wisconsin. Backup QB Joe Fagnano, who has had to relieve Evers in multiple games — including a comeback win at UAB earlier this month — came from Maine. Louis Hansen, who starts at tight end now, came to UConn before last season after spending two years at Michigan.
Mora believes the magic of the mix is recruiting players like tailback Cam Edwards, a star two-way high school player from Norwalk, Conn., who had no other FBS offers, and then letting those homegrown players help coaches understand which potential transfers will fit in culturally. Edwards, who has 527 rushing yards on 103 carries this season, initially came to UConn without a set position. Mora figured Edwards could be a back or a hybrid safety, but what really intrigued Mora was one personality trait. “He had a real toughness to him,” Mora said. “He played both sides of the ball equally well. We brought him in with the thought that we were going to let him find his way into a position.” Those players who come up with Mora’s staff then help the staff ID the transfers who fit properly.
The staff evaluates potential transfers from a football standpoint. Portal players who meet the on-field requirements come for an official visit, and after spending time with current players the Huskies then help the coaches understand who would work well on the roster. When the players click, they know it.
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“I felt like I was supposed to be here,” transfer tailback Mel Brown told reporters earlier this season when asked about his visit. Brown, who came from FCS school Gardner-Webb, has run for 510 yards on 94 carries. Redshirt freshman Durell Robinson, who played at Charlotte last season, leads the Huskies with 645 yards on 93 carries.
Mora also has evaluated well with his staff. Most assistants are in their 20s or 30s, and former DBs coach Dalton Hilliard, who played for Mora at UCLA, was the only coach Mora knew before taking the job. Working with a limited budget, Mora opted not to hire old buddies and instead looked for young coaches whose position groups produced impressive stats. He then called around to make sure the assistants taught their position groups well. Zoom meetings allowed him to get to know candidates without having to fly in multiple coaches from across the country. Mora found quarterbacks coach Brad Robbins at Tennessee Tech. Offensive coordinator Gordon Sammis, who was promoted this offseason from offensive line coach, came from William and Mary. Antonio Wilcox, the Huskies, 28-year-old running backs coach, came from Furman.
The age split has helped, the 63-year-old Mora said. “There’s an advantage to that,” Mora said. “They relate really well to the players. We kind of keep each other in line.”
Of course, none of those young assistants was telling Mora no when the head coach decided to pop off after the Wake Forest game. He comes by his gift for press conferences honestly. His father, also named Jim, served as the head coach of the New Orleans Saints and Indianapolis Colts. The elder Mora gave perhaps the greatest postgame press conference ever following a November 2001 Colts loss to the 49ers, whose defense was run by the younger Mora.
After the Wake Forest game, the younger Mora realized that perhaps the lone good thing about being an FBS Independent not named Notre Dame is that there is no conference office to fine you for complaining about the officiating. So Mora told his players to keep their mouths shut about the officials, praise their opponent and move ahead. He’d take care of the messaging.
“You’re all going to want to bitch about the call,” Mora told his team. “The bottom line is we’re not going to focus on it. Let me do it. Just let me go be the jerk. You guys stick to the standard line. ‘Hey, we’ve got to go play better.’ I’ll go out there and l’ll let it fly a little bit.”
Mora has been letting it fly since he got to Storrs. And if the Huskies can pull the upset at Syracuse on Saturday, they’ll make one of his favorite seasons even sweeter.