Joe Moorhead Back in Eugene and Recovering After Missing Stanford Game

On Thursday, Head Coach Mario Cristobal spoke to the media for the first time since Oregon’s devastating loss to Stanford last Saturday. The first thing that was asked about was an update on Joe Moorhead, who missed the Stanford game with a non-COVID related illness.

"Joe's getting better.” Cristobal said. “Joe is in Eugene and he's recovering. Our prayers and thoughts are with him and our support is with him as well. We're glad that he's finally home and getting better."

It’s certainly good to hear that Moorhead is back in Eugene and recovering. The hope is he'll continue to progress and that he can return to the Ducks program soon. In the meantime, life goes on for the Ducks, who have a lot to work on after last week’s loss, and part of that involves how to fill in for Moorhead until he returns.

“Nate Costa being here, being a quarterback, and having worked with the quarterbacks, you can make those moves through compliance to absorb that.” Cristobal said. “Nate’s a super bright mind and an excellent football coach as well so that certainly has helped out a lot.”

Nate Costa, the former Oregon quarterback and current senior offensive analyst, is a very interesting individual to be put in the position to run the quarterback room. After being a backup quarterback for the Ducks from 2009 to 2011, he joined the Oregon coaching staff in 2013 and continued with the team until 2015.

He then rejoined the staff in 2019 after coaching stops at IMG Academy and UCLA and has been with the team since, building relationships with the quarterbacks room for the past few seasons.

Running Backs Coach Jim Mastro called the plays last week against the Cardinal, and when asked if that would continue, Cristobal said that he'll maintain play calling duties in the event that Moorhead is unavailable.

“If Joe is out that'll be the scenario yes sir.” Cristobal said. “Now when we do call it, obviously we everything we do we collaborate, we do collectively. As we did when Joe was here as well. So the system is a system, we're not gonna change systems.”

Mastro, who invented the pistol offense back when he was with Nevada, has called plays in the past, and as Cristobal said the gameplan doesn’t change based on who is calling plays. With Mastro calling plays, Cristobal also mentioned that someone else will be in charge of the running back rotation, which will be a major task now that CJ Verdell is out for the season with an injury. This staff will need to find another back that will step up big time with Travis Dye becoming the primary back.

Join the Community