Kellen Moore was hired by the Los Angeles Chargers back in January, less than 24 hours after he and the Cowboys parted ways. It seemed a fast-moving development at the time, but it wasn’t exactly a surprise bolt out of the powder blue.
It turns out the relationship between Moore and his new team had really started several months earlier, when the Cowboys visited Costa Mesa for two days of joint practices with the Chargers prior to a 2022 preseason game.
Albert Breer of Sports Illustrated details the backstory of how Moore and Chargers head coach Brandon Staley hit it off during those summer sessions after a couple previous head-to-head gameday meetings.
Staley’s first game as a defensive coordinator came in September 2020, when the Rams beat Moore’s Dallas offense on opening day of that COVID season. For the 2021 campaign, Staley was the head man for the other L.A. team; his second game as coach saw his Chargers fall to the Cowboys.
Staley was impressed both times with Moore’s unit.
“It’s not like you could go in and just say, ‘Hey, we’re going to take care of Zeke [Elliott] and [Amari] Cooper and we’re going to be okay,'” Staley said in the SI piece. “It was like, ‘No, he’s going to be able to find a weakness in your defense at some point in the game and exploit it.'”
But it was during their joint practices last August that Staley and Moore got a real up-close look at how the other operates.
“Anytime you do one of those, you kind of get to know the other staff pretty well,” Moore recalled to The Athletic in February. “Spend a lot of time just getting practices organized, schedules and scripts and all that sort of stuff. And I really, really enjoyed my time with Brandon during those couple days.”
Staley added of Moore, “You get a feel for someone when you’re in that type of environment because it’s really competitive. And the fact that we were on the same field- we weren’t on opposite fields- we’re going against each other for two straight days, just gave me a really strong feeling of who he is.”
He went on, telling SI, “It really reminded me of the significant relationships I have, whether it’s with Kevin [O’Connell], Sean [McVay]; obviously Jonathan [Gannon] is my best friend.”
That August visit concluded with a Cowboys 32-18 preseason victory in which both teams held out most of their starters and let the bubble players handle most of the heavy lifting.
Moore and Staley stayed in touch afterward, texting each other now and again throughout the season to compliment the other’s latest gameplan and wish each other luck as the playoffs approached.
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The Chargers eventually blew a massive lead against Jacksonville to lose in the AFC wild card round on Jan. 14 and fired OC Joe Lombardi shortly thereafter; the Cowboys came up short versus San Francisco eight days later to close out the NFC’s divisional weekend.
Once believed to be an offensive wunderkind and maybe even the future head coach of the Cowboys, the 34-year-old Moore and his playcalling was suddenly the reason the team hadn’t been able to get over the hump to a conference championship.
Moore and the Cowboys announced their split on Jan. 29. He was hired by Staley to fill the Chargers’ OC post within hours.
“It happened fast,” according to Moore. “Once the Dallas thing got sorted out, and it all felt like going down different path would be good for everyone, I was able to connect with Brandon. We touched base, and shoot, it was, I don’t know, 24 hours and we were pretty much good to go. That’s the value of staying in contact with someone, having a relationship where we’d gotten to know each other prior to that, playing against each other. There was such a strong foundation with each other that we were able to skip a few of those steps that traditionally you’d go through in the interview process.”
Moore has reportedly continued to impress everyone within the Chargers organization, with Staley calling the team’s final minicamp practice last week “the best throwing session that we’ve ever had,” adding, “I left the field saying, ‘This is exactly why we hired Kellen.'”
Moore, for his part, has quickly become a huge fan of his new quarterback, Justin Herbert.
“I’m used to calling every play two times,” Moore said. “And there’s already been a couple times where I call it once, and I start calling it a second time, and he’s already into the huddle, he’s like, ‘I got it.’ Like, ‘I’m rolling.’ I’m sitting there trying to talk to him, and he’s ignoring me already because he’s got it memorized. It’s tremendous. It’s been really, really impressive.”
The Cowboys will face Moore for the first time as an opposing offensive coordinator when they travel to SoFi Stadium for a Monday night matchup with the Chargers on Oct. 16.
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