Two years ago, the Fordham football team posted a 1-10 record, and following the season, former head coach Tom Masella was relieved of his duties.
One month later, Joe Moorhead, who played quarterback for the Rams during the 1990’s, was named the school’s new head coach. The team’s turnaround since has been stunning.
The Rams have improved by 10 wins over the last two seasons, as they have posted an 11-1 mark in 2013. They received an at-large bid to the FCS playoffs — their first playoff appearance since 2007 — and will host Sacred Heart in the first round at 1 p.m. on Saturday afternoon (ESPN3, WFUV, 90.7 FM).
“Any time you have the opportunity to take over a new program, there are going to be inherent challenges involved with it,” Moorhead said in a telephone interview earlier this week. “The big thing that we focused on as a coaching staff was [that] we weren’t going to look at the past. We were going to focus on what we needed to do to lay the foundation of what we want our program to be.”
Moorhead said being familiar with the school helped him heading into the interview process.
“There really weren’t many surprises,” he said. “Having gone to school and played here, and being aware of what we have from a facilities and academic-restrictions standpoint, and the type of players we’re able to recruit — you want student-athletes to be representative of the student body.”
Moorhead and his coaching staff inherited a program in ruins, but rather than remind his players of how far they had to go to become a successful program, they simply told them what they needed to do.
“We didn’t even talk about the past,” he said. “We said, ‘Hey, fellas. These are the things that we identified as important to build a program, and there are things that are central to winning football games, and we’re going to focus all of our effort and energy on that.’ This is our philosophy as a coaching staff, and we just pressed forward, and the kids did a great job buying into it.”
Fordham improved by five wins last season, and was very close to being even better, as the Rams’ three losses to Patriot League opponents came by a total of eight combined points.
“I think we did a good job our first year, the kids began to understand the things that it took to be successful in terms of preparation, effort and execution,” Moorhead said. “We were a good team with a chance to be a great team, and as you transition from year 1 to year 2, I think the kids understood the steps we needed to take in terms of extra effort, little things and not making excuses to turn a 6-5 season into the type of season we’re having now.”
The Rams’ 2013 regular-season success was predicated largely on the strength of an explosive offense that averaged 38.4 points per game and topped 50 points five times. A majority of that talent will be back next season, with the exception of redshirt senior running back Carlton Koonce.
Big things will be expected from Fordham in 2014, which is all the more reason the team will be under some pressure to sustain it success from this season.
“[Just] because we had one good year, and we’re going to have 95 percent of our players returning, it’s [not] going to automatically equate into the same type of year next year,” Moorhead said. “However hard we worked, we have to work harder. How much film we watched, we have to watch twice as much. How much weights we lifted, we have to do twice as much. It’s tough to get there, but it’s even harder to stay there.”