Coach Jim Mora: "Not The UConn That You Used To Know"
Those were the words of UConn head coach Jim L. Mora, at the Sixth Annual Educating Athletes New Jersey High School Football Coaches Event of the Year at Waterside Events in North Bergen, New Jersey on Monday, December 13, 2021.
UConn football has entered its rebuilding offseason. After finishing 1-11 in 2021, the team is headed in a brand new direction and seems destined for a renaissance under the new leadership implemented by coach Mora.
The former NFL and UCLA headman has been at the forefront of bringing an electrifying change to the program in just a few short weeks.
“We’re attacking recruiting, we’re trying to go anywhere and everywhere there’s good football players that we think fit the mold of a UConn student-athlete,” said Mora.
One state clearly on the radar is New Jersey, which produced 56 players on NFL week one rosters (10th most in the nation) and is clearly a fertile ground for college football recruiting.
Additional states his staff will be targeting include many football hotbeds along the east coast such as New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Virginia, Georgia and Florida, in addition to Connecticut.
The first National Signing Day under Mora this past Wednesday produced 13 High School players and three transfers - athletes that verbally committed to the program, nearly half of which, who hail from Connecticut, including Gatorade Player of the Year Victor Rosa.
“What drew us to the guys we were recruiting is, number one, their football character. They love football, they’re competitive at football and number two, their character as people. We want high character individuals in our program,” said Mora. “At the end of the day we want people that want to be at UConn, that want to help us turn this thing around, that are wildly competitive, they have to have football in their lives and they’re just passionate about being a part of a special team.”
Mora will be hitting the recruiting trails with the intent of turning UConn football into a national contender.
“You can learn a lot from what didn’t work,” said Mora. “We’re not looking at 1-11. We’re not looking at what we were but what we’re capable of being and what we will become, that’s the most important thing we can do.”
Mora emphasized the importance of setting the right culture and mindset in building the team, including coaches that will create that mindset.
“No matter what the task is in the building, whether it’s somebody folding a towel, to somebody evaluating a player to a quarterback throwing the ball down the field, we’re all having a championship mindset.”
