From ‘Friday Night Lights’ to NFL Sundays: How Kellen Moore became Saints coach
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Kellen Moore became the NFL's youngest head coach at 37 in early 2025.
- Moore posted a 50-3 record at Boise State, shaping his coaching philosophy there.
- His coaching ascent includes coordinator roles in Dallas, LA, Philadelphia and now New Orleans.
Editor’s note: This is the third in a three-part series on Kellen Moore’s rise from Boise State football star to NFL head coach.
Boise State has played 168 football games since college football’s all-time winningest quarterback last stepped on the field in a Broncos uniform.
Within that time, the Broncos have won a Fiesta Bowl; clinched a College Football Playoff spot on The Blue to compete in another Fiesta Bowl; captured five Mountain West championships; had eight seasons of double-digit wins; and even witnessed one of their players nearly win the Heisman Trophy while leading the nation in rushing.
But if you spend any time around the city and the program, there’s one person who is still synonymous with the team’s longstanding success:
Kellen Moore is Boise State football.
“For the two years I was there, it was the Kellen Moore Show,” Cedrick Wilson Jr., who arrived at Boise State five years after Moore had left, told the Idaho Statesman in June outside New Orleans, where the new coach of the Saints was leading his first minicamp.
When a quick video that includes Moore flashes up on the Jumbotron at Albertsons Stadium, the cheers still get very loud. When he appeared in a local car dealership TV commercial in 2024, rolling up to a stoplight alongside former BSU star Leighton Vander Esch and Chris Petersen, who was Moore’s coach, it was the talk of the town.
Heck, in 2011 and 2012 — Moore’s final season was 2011 — the name “Kellen” appeared on a list of the the top 100 baby names in Idaho.
Moore and Petersen, of course, led Boise State during its most successful run as an FBS program. The starter from 2008 to 2011, Moore finished with an astounding 50-3 career record, cementing himself as one of the best to ever play for the Broncos.
But for all of his talent as a player, Moore always had his eyes on a different target within the sport.
“I always wanted to be a coach,” Moore told the Statesman in June as he made himself comfortable in a chair that was situated in front of a giant Saints logo on the wall.
New Orleans announced Moore as the 17th head coach in franchise history in the offseason, making him the youngest head coach in the NFL, at 37, and capping a rapid ascension that saw him go from retiring player to assistant coach to head coach in a matter of eight years.
For those closest to him, those who have coached him and played with him, and even among Boise State fans, nothing about Moore’s rise to the top is a surprise.
“He was wired that way from the very beginning as a player,” Scott Linehan, who’s known Moore since 2012 and is now a senior offensive assistant for New Orleans, told the Statesman. “You knew that was going to be his next step once his playing career was over.”
Kellen Moore: A ‘no-brainer’ recruit who became a star
The first time Petersen saw film of Moore, he said, his initial thought was, “Yeah, OK, pretty good.”
Nothing more, nothing less.
He noted that Moore was a guy who threw for a lot of yards. But he was also on the short side, not overly athletic, and didn’t enjoy running with the ball. He looked excellent in the pocket, but Petersen wasn’t completely sold.
“Half the time, the guys that look so good in high school, and they fit the mold physically … the list is endless of guys that haven’t panned out,” Petersen told the Statesman in a June interview.
But Justin Wilcox, then the defensive coordinator at Boise State and the man who scouted and recruited Moore out of the small Washington town of Prosser, was adamant. Every coach at every school Moore played against gave Wilcox the same message: “You need to take that guy, it’s a no-brainer.”
A guy whose only other offers came from the University of Idaho and Eastern Washington was a no-brainer for Boise State? Well, the move worked out fine, and perhaps it makes sense when you look at Moore’s upbringing.
He’s the son of legendary Washington high school coach Tom Moore, who led Prosser High to four state championships across 23 seasons. Some of Kellen’s earliest memories come from those chilly fall evenings walking to Art Fiker Stadium, where it felt as if all 5,000 or so people in Prosser dropped everything to support the Mustangs.
It quickly became Kellen’s life. The second that he could walk, he was tagging along with his dad to football practice. Before long, he was grabbing tees and spotting balls. By the age of 10, he was throwing footballs with the high school quarterbacks.
“It had a little ‘Friday Night Lights’ feel,” Moore said with a smile. “… My buddies and I, it was all about eventually becoming a Prosser Mustang. That’s really all we cared about.”
Before they became Prosser Mustangs, Moore and his friends were the Prosser Lions “Grid Kids,” an elementary school team that dominated by running a simplified version of the high school offense.
Moore eventually became the starting quarterback at Prosser under his father in his sophomore year, and even called his own plays his final two years. Moore finished his high school career completing 787 of 1,195 passes (.659) for 11,367 yards and 173 touchdowns while throwing just 34 interceptions. However, also like “Friday Night Lights,” Moore never managed to win a state championship.
When Kellen wasn’t focused on Prosser, Tom was taking him to college games and practices across the Northwest.
It was often to watch a former Prosser player, Moore said, leading to trips to Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Oregon State and even Boise State, among others.
All that time spent with his dad and brother, Kirby — who eventually played wide receiver at Boise State — helped mold Moore into who he is today. His dad would repeatedly talk about the fundamentals of football, something that made Kellen roll his eyes back then, but he said he now holds close to his heart.
“My foundation is my dad and Prosser Mustangs football,” Moore said. “That’s my foundation as a coach, the way philosophically I look at it, the way we play, the style we play.”
Training in a coach-like way at Boise State
Wilcox may have been the one to push for Moore to come to Boise State, but the teenage quarterback certainly frustrated Wilcox during practice. When Moore was a freshman running the scout team, Wilcox would come steaming into the coach’s office because Moore just carved up his defense.
The ball would come out of his hands lightning fast, and sometimes it would be to his third or fourth read.
“Don’t worry, we’re not going to see that this weekend,” Petersen would say laughingly. “They’re not going to throw it like Kellen throws it.”
And for the most part, they didn’t. Moore lost just three games as a Bronco (50-3) by a combined five points, and finished his college career among the top 10 in career passing touchdowns and passing yards in NCAA history.
When he became Boise State’s starter in 2008, he continued to terrorize the team’s defense in practice. Moore and then-offensive coordinator Bryan Harsin would practice every play four or five times each week; sometimes Moore would be given two plays, and he’d pick which one to run after analyzing the defense at the line of scrimmage, according to a Statesman story from 2009.
The scout team defense would also mix up its look — partly so Moore would be prepared for whatever he faced come Saturday, but also because they had to change things to try to counter him.
“We have to bring something new to faze him,” junior linebacker Derrell Acrey told the Statesman in 2009. “You get one shot — that’s it. Once he sees it, now he knows that we have it.”
While Moore was tearing it up on the field, behind the scenes, he was already studying and behaving with a coaching future in mind.
“One of the reasons he came to Boise State is because we had such good young assistants that he knew those guys were going to go places as well,” Petersen said. “So I think he felt good about the training he was going to get, not only as a quarterback, but also as a coach.”
Moore seconded that, saying that he connected with the “blue-collar mentality” of Boise State and how it “felt different in a good way” under Petersen. He added that the standards being set were incredibly high, which was attractive.
It was through the Boise State coaching staff, and specifically Petersen, that Moore realized it takes more than knowing the X’s and O’s to be a good coach. And by his junior year, Moore was even coaching segments of the quarterback meetings.
“As you go through this journey of coaching, (Petersen’s) perspective, so much of it is the interpersonal component,” Moore said. “I think that I learned so much from him, just the importance of how to connect with your team, messaging and leadership.”
Rising the NFL ranks quickly
Moore realized his playing career in the pros, such as it was, reached a crossroads in 2017.
Despite enjoying a college career that most quarterbacks can only dream of, including being a Heisman Trophy finalist, Moore went undrafted in 2012, in part because he was considered undersized and his arm strength was suspect. He signed as an undrafted free agent with the Detroit Lions but didn’t play a single snap in Detroit, eventually signing with the Dallas Cowboys in 2015.
He eventually got his first two starts as an NFL quarterback at the end of his first season in Dallas. He lost both games, but threw for 435 yards in the season finale, becoming just the fifth quarterback in Cowboys history to throw for over 400 in a single game.
Dallas went into the following season with Moore, Tony Romo and the freshly drafted Dak Prescott. A broken ankle during the 2016 training camp basically shelved any hope Moore had of a playing career the rest of the way. He spent the entire season on the injury report, which led to him spending more time on the coaching side of the game.
“(Offensive coordinator) Scott (Linehan) gave me some little projects. I don’t know if he ever actually looked at any of them, but little projects to study film and do that sort of stuff,” Moore said. “And I think it allowed them to see me from a different lens, show me in a different role, and allowed me to experience the other side of this profession.”
Moore was on the Dallas roster for one more season, in 2017, but he didn’t take a snap. It was the following offseason, while sitting on a beach in Hawaii, that he received a call from then-Cowboys head coach Jason Garrett that changed the entire trajectory of his life.
“What do you think about coaching?” Moore recalls Garrett asking. “You know, we’ve got a situation here, and the quarterback job is open.”
After one season as the quarterbacks coach, Moore was promoted to offensive coordinator. His Dallas offense led the league in total yardage in 2019 and 2021, as well as having the most points scored in 2021.
He parted ways with the Cowboys after the 2022 season and landed the offensive coordinator position with the Los Angeles Chargers under head coach Brandon Staley.
“I liked his background, his focus on quarterback, and what they were able to do at Boise,” Staley, who’s now Moore’s defensive coordinator in New Orleans, told the Statesman. “My first game calling defense in the NFL was with the Rams, and I played against Kellen. So I know how hard it was to play against him.”
The Chargers fired Staley after that season, and Moore wasn’t retained, but that led to perhaps his golden opportunity: the offensive coordinator position under head coach Nick Sirianni with the Philadelphia Eagles.
In his lone season as a coordinator there, Moore designed an offense that ranked second in the NFL in rushing, in large part thanks to running back Saquon Barkley, and won Super Bowl LIV with a 40-22 smackdown of the Kansas City Chiefs.
Moore ‘excited to build’ in New Orleans
While trying to keep both eyes on the Super Bowl, Moore also had to pay attention to the Bayou. He had two interviews with the Saints before the Super Bowl, won it on a Sunday, and was in New Orleans by Wednesday to sign a deal as the head coach.
“It felt like this job was just a really, really good opportunity. The timing was right. It felt like I’d grown a lot going from Dallas to L.A. to Philly,” Moore said.
“When you go through those transitions and you go to new places, you get to really get yourself out of your comfort zone, which I think helps you grow. And going to New Orleans, it was really about the people that gravitated me to here.”
Moore isn’t walking into an easy position. The Saints are coming off a 5-12 season, and haven’t enjoyed a 10-win season since 2020. Matters were made even tougher for Moore when veteran quarterback Derek Carr retired in May, leaving the Saints with a group of young quarterbacks to choose from to lead the offense.
Despite the hurdles, Moore said his first few months have been “great,” and he urged Boise State fans to help cheer him on another adventure.
“Bronco Nation, we’ve got a couple of Broncos here. I do apologize, we do have some Vandals on our staff, but we love them,” Moore said with a smile, referring to coaches with a University of Idaho background.
“It’s been great, it’s an awesome place, it’s a really special program, I think we’ve got great people here, and it reminds me a lot of Boise when I was able to go there,” he continued. “We’re excited to build this thing.”
This story was originally published August 1, 2025 at 4:00 AM.
