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By Jon Machota 2h ago
FRISCO, Texas — It’s only three weeks into the season and arguably the biggest sports story in Dallas is what the Cowboys are going to do when Kellen Moore gets future NFL head-coaching offers.
The Cowboys’ offense was projected to be one of the NFL’s best this season and through three games it has lived up to expectations. Dallas is fifth in total offense (417 yards per game), sixth in scoring offense (30 points per game) and fourth in rushing offense (139 yards per game).
Moore, the team’s third-year offensive coordinator, was a candidate for the Philadelphia Eagles and Boise State head-coaching positions within the last nine months. Former Cowboys quarterback and CBS’ current lead NFL color analyst Tony Romo added fuel to the fire last week during Dallas’ 20-17 win over the Los Angeles Chargers.
“Kellen Moore is going to be a head coach next year,” Romo said during the broadcast. “Someone is going to pick him up. I think it’s about his time.”
The 33-year-old Moore fits well with a current trend in NFL head-coaching hires. He’s a young outstanding offensive mind. Nine of the league’s 32 coaches are 43 or younger with an offensive background. The most notable are 35-year-old Los Angeles Rams coach Sean McVay, 39-year-old Cleveland Browns coach Kevin Stefanski, 41-year-old Green Bay Packers coach Matt LaFleur and 41-year-old San Francisco 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan.
McVay and Shanahan have already led their teams to Super Bowl appearances. LaFleur has led the Packers to consecutive NFC Championship games in his first two seasons.
“Like coach (Mike) McCarthy said, he’ll probably get a head-coaching job very soon because he’s good at his job,” Cowboys wide receiver Amari Cooper said of Moore. “The trend in the league right now is you want these young guys because the game is always changing. So just to keep up with the game changing, probably that young guy who has a better relationship with players. But just because he’s capable, really.”
Moore recently said that he views any future head-coaching talk as an “offseason thing.” The son of a high school football coach, Moore wants to be a head coach, but he doesn’t want those opportunities to interfere with his current job.
“Once we get into the season, I don’t care about it,” Moore said. “In the offseason, when those opportunities present themselves, if they do, awesome. I’d love that opportunity one day, but we’ll see where that takes us.”
Since he interviewed for the Eagles head-coaching position in Florida back in January, Moore was asked Tuesday if he wanted to show them what they’re missing when the Cowboys dominated Philadelphia, 41-21, Monday night.
“No, I’m good,” Moore responded. “I love it here.”
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, McCarthy and quarterback Dak Prescott have talked several times over the last year about the importance of keeping Moore as offensive coordinator when McCarthy was hired in January 2020.
They all felt that one of the most important parts of Prescott’s continued growth and success was to keep the continuity between quarterback and play caller. Through three games, Prescott is in the league’s MVP conversation with an NFL-best 77.5 completion percentage on 86 of 111 passing for 878 yards, six touchdowns, two interceptions and 110.1 passer rating.
Prescott has characterized Moore’s play calling as “on fire” early in the season.
“It starts with his play calling,” Prescott said Monday night. “Just the way that we’re getting in and out of the huddle just shows his decisiveness in his plays and what he wants to get and what he’s trying to accomplish. Changing up the personnel or staying within a personnel because he sees it’s working, from play-action to the run game to just drop-back pass, it was all working. But I think it’s a credit to him for mixing it up and just going back to the things that show that they worked earlier. He’s in a groove and that’s where it starts.”
Moore, who describes the team’s offense as “aggressively taking what the defense gives you,” tried to downplay his impact Tuesday.
“It’s about players, guys,” Moore said. “This isn’t that complicated. Let the guys make plays. Put them in position, and let them go do work. It’s what Amari (Cooper), CeeDee (Lamb), all these guys do. It’s a lot of fun.”
Whether it’s on social media or local sports talk radio, fans have started to speculate about ways Jones can keep Moore in Dallas when the head-coaching opportunities come calling. Some have gone as far as to suggesting Jones could make Moore the Cowboys head coach. Jones elevated Jason Garrett from offensive coordinator to head coach in the middle of the 2010 season after Dallas started 1-7. But this is a much different situation.
Jones has never wavered in his support for McCarthy. And it’s extremely unlikely that the current team would play so poorly the rest of the season that Jones would even consider a head-coaching change. The much more likely scenario for keeping Moore would be that he interviews for head-coaching openings but ends up getting a significant pay raise to remain as Dallas’ play caller for another season to build off what they’ve established.
“First of all, hats off to him,” Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said of Moore on the 105.3 The Fan pregame show Monday night. “He deserves to be interviewed. He’s not a well-kept secret anymore. He has a great football mind. His dad was a football coach. He was a great player at Boise State. He played in the NFL. His (coaching) future is all in front of him.
“We just want to take advantage of him while he’s here and get all the good we can because his day will come one day.”
