Joe Moorhead Never Stood a Chance at Mississippi State
Mississippi State fired second-year head coach Joe Moorhead following a 6-7 season and a loss in the Music City Bowl. Firing a coach this early into his tenure is rare, but Moorehead joins Willie Taggart and Chad Morris as the third coach this football season to be let go by their schools before their third season began. According to Sports Illustrated, it's been a decade since so many Power 5 coaches were fired this quickly. And Moorhead is apparently the first fired after a bowl appearance in a decade.
The question is, what chance did Moorhead stand? Not only is he in a conference with FIVE top-25 teams, he's in the same division as LSU and Alabama. Between those two programs, they have been ranked #1, #2 or both every single week this year.
Oh, and there's Auburn. The Tigers were most recently ranked the 9th best team in the country by the Associated Press and played for a national championship six years ago. The other team to finish ahead of Mississippi State this year was Texas A&M who went 9-4 in Jimbo Fisher's first season. Fisher was the coach of the team that beat Auburn six years ago.
I mean, come on. What did you expect him to do? He's in a conference full of legacy programs, some of which are in the midst of great runs. If you're not going to give a guy more than one year to work with his own recruits and try make the program his own, what are you doing?
Whoever takes the Mississippi State job is trying to race two Usain Bolts and a Justin Gatlin and whoever wins at the 2020 Olympics. And he's starting the race on the other side of the track. The people who fired Moorhead must know that, right? They can't be this dense. It's going to take time just to compete, let alone win. This sends a bad message to any prospective coaches who may consider this thankless and impossible job. So, good luck with all that Mississippi State.