Inside The Huskies

Jim Mora Jr. Has East Coast Huskies Winning Once More

The former UW defender and Seahawks coach always is a Montlake option if needed in some minds.
Dan Raley|
Huskies coach Jim Mora reacts to the crowd before the start of a September game against Florida International.
Huskies coach Jim Mora reacts to the crowd before the start of a September game against Florida International. | David Butler II-Imagn Images

With Jedd Fisch's name continually bandied about for job openings at UCLA and Florida, whether he's interested or not, more than one University of Washington football follower has come up with a replacement solution just in case.

Jim Mora Jr.

That's Mora, as in the former Huskies safety and linebacker, briefly the Seattle Seahawks head coach and now the University of Connecticut Huskies coach.

The irony in all of this in-season name-dropping is not lost on the people involved because it was Fisch who once served as Mora's offensive coordinator at UCLA and then took over as interim coach when Mora was fired by the Bruins in 2017.

"If Fisch leaves, Mora would do anything to be the permanent coach, not looking at the job as a stepping stone," one UW supporter advised.

That's been a well-known fact for some time now because it was Mora, when he was the Atlanta Falcons head coach in 2004-06, who boldly declared on a KJR sports talk radio show he would take the UW job "even if [the Falcons] were in a playoff run."

Whether or not the comment was made in fun, Falcons owner Arthur Blank reportedly was not overly pleased by it and, after Atlanta fell short of the 2006 playoffs, let Mora go once the season ended.

Since getting fired at UCLA, Mora since has restored his coaching reputation at UConn, where he's guided those East Coast-based Huskies to a 7-3 record following a 37-34 victory over Duke at home on Saturday.

Former UW linebacker Bryun Parham, who transferred out of Fisch's program during last season after starting just once in four games, heads up Mora's defense. Over the weekend, he led his team with 15 tackles against the Blue Devils. He averages a team-best 9.6 tackles an outing this season.

Mora's team, which plays an independent schedule, is just 13 points from being unbeaten, with all of the losses coming in overtime.

Connecticut fell to Syracuse 27-20 in OT, to Delaware 44-41 in OT and to Rice 37-34 in double OT.

Mora coached UConn to 6-7, 3-9 and 9-4 records before this season, with a pair of bowl appearances.

At UCLA, beginning in 2012, his teams went 9-5, 10-3, 10-3, 8-5, 4-8 and 5-6 (before he was fired), with four bowl trips.

Against the UW, Mora captured two out of three head-to-head match-ups.

He beat the Steve Sarkisian-coached Huskies 41-31 in 2013 and Chris Peterson's first team 44-30 in 2014 before losing to Peterson's 2017 team 44-23.

Fisch, it should be noted, is in the second year of a seven-year UW contract that averages $7.75 million annually.

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Dan Raley
DAN RALEY

Dan Raley has worked for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution and Fairbanks Daily News-Miner, as well as for MSN.com and Boeing, the latter as a global aerospace writer. His sportswriting career spans four decades and he's covered University of Washington football and basketball during much of that time. In a working capacity, he's been to the Super Bowl, the NBA Finals, the MLB playoffs, the Masters, the U.S. Open, the PGA Championship and countless Final Fours and bowl games.

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