Ducks Digest

Akron Hires Joe Moorhead to Become Next Head Coach

The Ducks will now be on the hunt for a new play caller after Moorhead's departure.

Max Torres

Oregon Offensive Coordinator Joe Moorhead will be the next head coach at Akron, the school announced Saturday morning.

Yahoo! Sports' Pete Thamel was the first to report the move. 

Moorhead came to Oregon after a brief tenure as head coach at Mississippi State. While in Eugene, he also worked with the quarterbacks in addition to calling plays for the Ducks. 

"I am humbled and honored to be selected as the next Head Football Coach at The University of Akron," Moorhead said in a press release. 

The Ducks have a lot of talent at quarterback behind Anthony Brown, however it's incredibly young and unproven talent that has hardly sniffed the field since joining the team.

Much has been made of the Oregon offense this year. Statistically speaking, the Ducks have the third-highest scoring offense in the conference averaging 31.4 points per game, and possess the fifth-best rushing offense in the Pac-12 (203.2 yards per game).

However, much of the criticism across the country has focused on the passing offense, which ranks eighth in the conference at 214.8 yards per game and for the most part lacked explosive pass plays downfield that are commonplace on the nation's top teams.

The Ducks are no strangers to the coaching carousel, as Head Coach Mario Cristobal has had to replace a coordinator every year since taking the helm in Eugene. In 2018 Defensive Coordinator Jim Leavitt followed former Head Coach Willie Taggart to Florida State. 

In 2019, Offensive Coordinator Marcus Arroyo was hired away to become the head coach at UNLV, and most recently Defensive Coordinator Andy Avalos went full circle and took the head coaching job at his alma mater Boise State. 

Running Backs Coach Jim Mastro will likely take over play calling duties moving forward seeing that he was tasked with that job when Moorhead missed time earlier this season due to a non-COVID related illness that required emergency surgery. 

Moorhead is the latest big offensive name to change teams this week after USC hired away former Oklahoma Head Coach Lincoln Riley to become the new face of the program in Los Angeles.

Oregon's offense was abysmal against Utah the second time around in the Pac-12 championship game Friday, scoring just 10 points and mustering up 221 total yards of offense.

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What Mario Cristobal said after Oregon lost to Utah in the Pac-12 title game

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Max Torres
MAX TORRES

Max Torres is the publisher and lead editor of Ducks Digest. He's covered the Oregon football and recruiting beats for four years. He's based out of Long Beach, CA and travels around Southern California and the country covering top high school football prospects.

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