It was announced on Thursday that the Cowboys had requested an interview with Philadelphia Eagles offensive coordinator Kellen Moore, who’s obviously still in the midst of his team’s prep for their Divisional Sunday matchup with the Los Angeles Rams. No doubt Moore would love the chance to run his own ship after six years as an OC, but Stephen A. is telling the Cowboys to hold their horses on this hire.
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On the latest episode of First Take, Smith praised Moore’s offenses with the Cowboys from 2019 to 2022, but said that the way he was pushed out was flat-out disrespectful. The leading analyst also believes Moore doesn’t have the pedigree of a Coach Prime or Coach Belichick that would allow him to go toe to toe with pompous owner Jerry Jones.
Smith made sure to clarify that he believes Moore would be an excellent candidate for most NFL head coaching jobs—just not under Jones.
“All the complaints that everybody has about Jerry Jones, how would it be any different with Kellen Moore? … You’re not gonna push around Bill Belichick, you’re not gonna summarily dismiss Primetime Deion Sanders. But with Kellen Moore, that’s more of the same… You gotta deal with, and know, how to offset the impact of Jerry Jones. He ain’t the dude for that job; he’s already proven it.”
Kellen Moore has taken some flak during his career as an NFL offensive coordinator. His four-year tenure in Big D and his one-year stint with the Los Angeles Chargers both ended less than ideally, despite his offenses posting impressive numbers during his time there.
He signed with the Eagles last offseason and has significantly rebuilt his image by designing the offense in 2024. Philly ranked in the top 10 in scoring and total offense, boasting the 2nd-best rushing attack in the league, driven by the top running back in the NFL.
Now, the Cowboys have come calling again, this time for their top job. And, while Stephen A. believes that would be a mistake because of Moore’s history with Jones, Dan Orlovsky offered a different perspective.
Kellen Moore could be the “perfect” guy to reset Cowboys culture
Stephen A. Smith does make a good point about Jerry Jones’ history of bullying less experienced or more malleable personalities. However, his ESPN pundit-mate, Dan Orlovsky, believes that Moore hasn’t had a chance to show how strong he would be. The former backup NFL QB believes Moore—another former backup QB who actually played with Orlovsky in 2014—could be the guy to create a proper culture in Dallas.
“You don’t know what type of culture builder first-time coaches are gonna be, until they become a culture-builder… By a lot of what we’ve witnessed this year it seems like the culture in Philly is pretty good when it comes to dealing with the adversity of the team.”
While the Eagles have continued to win, we’d hardly call the culture over there anything near “pretty good”. They have had drama all year, and it has continued into the postseason. Winning cures all, though.
Orlovsky also mentioned that Moore has been around guys like Mike McCarthy, Brandon Staley, and Nick Sirianni, as if that was a good thing. McCarthy had his moments, but those other two are hardly who you’d want as head coaching mentors.
Moore is certainly an excellent offensive coordinator. But we’ve seen that go both ways when those types of offensive gurus are given the big boy job. Maybe you get a genius like Sean McVay, maybe you get a dud like Josh McDaniels.
Wherever Moore goes—if he does indeed go, which we don’t believe he should, as he could build something with that Philly offense over a couple of years—he’s going to improve their scoring output, no question. However, whether or not he’s a leader of men or the guy to stand up to Jerry Jones remains to be seen. We’re putting our money on not.
