When Jim Mora took over as UConn’s football coach prior to the 2022 season, there was a prevailing question throughout the college football world: Does he really want to coach that badly?
This was somebody who once coached in the NFC championship game during his first season with the Atlanta Falcons. He also went to bowl games during each of his first four seasons at UCLA, although his last two years there weren’t so great.
Still, he had four years as a head coach in the NFL and six more at UCLA and then became a television football commentator, clearly a cushy life compared to the grind of coaching.
Obviously, Mora, who turns 63 on Nov. 19, missed the challenge of coaching. He really must have missed it enough to go to UConn.
When he took over prior to the 2022 season, the UConn job was considered one of the most challenging (translated – worst) in the FBS.
It was a team without a conference or much of a profile. Most of all, it was a program mired in losing.
And UConn is doing what is seemingly impossible for anybody not named Notre Dame – competing well as an independent.
Still, it’s a tough job. Is this how anybody wants to spend one’s golden years?
Apparently, Mora does.
Consider that UConn was 1-11 the season before Mora took over, but it is even worse than that. UConn was 3-32 the previous seasons of competition (having not fielded a team in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic).
Want more numbers?
UConn posted 10 straight losing seasons prior to Mora’s arrival. Yet he did the seemingly impossible by earning a bowl bid in his first season when UConn went 6-7 in 2022. The Huskies ended the year losing 28-14 to Marshall in the Myrtle Beach Bowl.
Mora was looked on as some sort of miracle worker until the 2023 season when the Huskies fell to 3-9. Only season-ending wins over Sacred Heart and UMass prevented the year from being a total disaster.
Last week’s 31-23 win at UAB improved UConn to 7-3 and ensured the program’s first winning season since going 8-5 in 2010. Who would have thought at this juncture of the season that UConn would have as many wins as Georgia?
We know that Georgia (7-2) has played one fewer game and plays in the SEC, but you get the picture. UConn overcame a 20-3 deficit against UAB to beat the beleaguered Blazers.
To top it off, UConn won the game with its backup quarterback playing in relief. UConn starter Nick Evers suffered an injury in the third quarter and backup Joe Fagnano, who has seen significant action this season, led three fourth quarter scoring drives as the Huskies outscored UAB 21-0 in the fourth quarter.
Fagnano completed 5 of 12 passes for 72 yards, two touchdowns, and no interceptions. Cam Edwards rushed for 82 yards and a touchdown on 11 carries. Edwards, a local product from Norwalk, Connecticut, has been very efficient this season, rushing for 527 yards and five scores. He is among three UConn players with 500 or more rushing yards involved in this balanced attack. The others are Durell Robinson (645 yards and seven touchdowns) and Mel Brown (510 yards and two TDs).
What’s more impressive is that UConn has been competitive in nine of its 10 games. The only exception was an opening 50-7 loss at Maryland, which is 4-5. The other losses were 26-21 at Duke, which is 7-3, and 23-20 at home to Wake Forest (4-5).
One game in particular highlights UConn’s good fortune. In a 29-20 victory over a struggling Temple team, UConn won after two late goal-line stands. Leading 23-20, the Huskies stopped the Owls for no gain on third-and-goal from the 1, and then on fourth down, UConn forced a fumble that Jordan Wright returned 96 yards for a touchdown as time expired.
Probably the best win was a 47-3 victory over a Buffalo team, which beat Northern Illinois, which beat Notre Dame. OK, let’s not get carried away by mentioning UConn and Notre Dame in the same sentence, but the point is, it was a big win.
For UConn, any win is big.
The Huskies are idle this week before ending their regular season with road games at Syracuse and UMass. It’s not a stretch to suggest UConn should split those games and finish 8-3.
Regardless of the next two contests, UConn is bowl-eligible for the second time in Mora’s three seasons. That is something that few could have envisioned before Mora’s arrival. It still might be premature to say the program has turned things around, especially after last season, but the Huskies are going in the right direction, led by a coach who obviously saw more potential in the program than many of the doomsayers.
