TicketsBy Bill Koch
GoBEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI – With 2:05 left in the first quarter of the University of Cincinnati's 42-32 loss at Navy on Saturday, UC quarterback Hayden Moore heaved a 46-yard touchdown pass to Devin Gray. It was the longest completion of the season for Moore, surpassing his previous longest by 17 yards.
Moore went to work again on the Bearcats' first drive of the second quarter, this time hooking up with Kahlil Lewis for 31 yards to the UC 46. And later in the second quarter he connected with J.J. Pinckney for another 46-yard completion to the Navy 15.
So in the space of about one quarter, Moore threw two 46-yard completions and surpassed his previous long pass of the season three times.
Clearly, this wasn't the Hayden Moore who entered the game averaging 168.3 passing yards per game, nor was it the same UC offense that had been so conservative through the Bearcats' first three games.
Moore completed 28 of 46 passes for 381 yards against Navy with three touchdowns and no interceptions. He distributed a pass to 10 different receivers. The 381 yards were second in Moore's career only to the school-record 557 yards he passed for at Memphis in 2015.
This is the same quarterback whose charge from UC coach Luke Fickell earlier this season was to simply manage the game without turning the ball over. Now here was Moore, flinging the ball over the field, which is exactly what Fickell had said earlier this season he didn't want him to do.
"You've got to be able to take shots at the things they've giving you," Fickell said when asked about the sudden change in philosophy. "The first few weeks that wasn't what was there. It's part of the game. It's part of the growing process. We've got confidence in him. We don't want him to ever think we don't have confidence in him and his ability to take some of those shots. Those are things that we know we have to be able to do.
"Now maybe we didn't do them in the first few weeks. The opportunities weren't there based on how people were playing us."
Moore, a junior from Clay, Ala., said after the game that the sudden effectiveness of UC's passing game was the result of everybody on offense doing their job – linemen blocking, receivers running precise routes, Moore making the right reads and hitting his targets, and receivers not dropping passes, as they had six times the previous week against Miami.
"We put everything together and we did a lot better with everybody doing their job," Moore said. "That's how we got things rolling."
Moore, who missed five games last year due to an ankle injury, was one of three quarterbacks that former UC coach Tommy Tuberville used almost interchangeably. But this year Moore is firmly in control of offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock's offense. After winning what Fickell said was a close battle with sophomore Ross Trail during the preseason, Moore has taken every snap from center through UC's first four games, completing 53.5 percent of his passes for 888 yards, an average of 221.5. He has thrown eight touchdown passes, just three fewer than he threw last year, and has been intercepted four times.
"We definitely see progress," Fickell said. "And it's not just the easy progress to see, that he threw the ball down the field and he threw for 300 and some yards. No, the progress is how did he identify that? Why did he throw the ball down there, not just because, hey, I was just gonna take a shot and that was the matchup we want. No, it was because of the things that we saw, the things that we read, what were they playing, when do we have those opportunities and take those calculated risks. I'm not saying they were risks, but it's not really good to throw the ball down the field into a cover two corner."
This is all good news for UC's receivers as they look ahead to the rest of the season.
"(Hayden's) confidence is through the roof," Gray said. "He's been playing amazing these last couple weeks. We have all our trust in him and he has trust in us. I think it goes both ways.
I think the offense has gotten better every week. We started off kind of slow. It was just minor details, little things here and there. Every week we've gotten better at that, getting to the details of things. We're starting to execute like we should. I've always had hope in this offense from the get-go. We all know how explosive we can be. It just comes down to the details and we're starting to get that down."
Whether Moore can duplicate that performance this week against Marshall, which has allowed an average of 252 passing yards through three games, will depend at least partly on what the Thundering Herd defense shows, but at least now the Bearcats know that if the opportunity is there, Moore and his teammates have the ability to make the most of it.
"When you know what you're doing, you know when the shots are there, I think that's where we're getting more confident in everything we're doing," Fickell said.
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January, 2015.
GoBEARCATS.com
CINCINNATI – With 2:05 left in the first quarter of the University of Cincinnati's 42-32 loss at Navy on Saturday, UC quarterback Hayden Moore heaved a 46-yard touchdown pass to Devin Gray. It was the longest completion of the season for Moore, surpassing his previous longest by 17 yards.
Moore went to work again on the Bearcats' first drive of the second quarter, this time hooking up with Kahlil Lewis for 31 yards to the UC 46. And later in the second quarter he connected with J.J. Pinckney for another 46-yard completion to the Navy 15.
So in the space of about one quarter, Moore threw two 46-yard completions and surpassed his previous long pass of the season three times.
Clearly, this wasn't the Hayden Moore who entered the game averaging 168.3 passing yards per game, nor was it the same UC offense that had been so conservative through the Bearcats' first three games.
Moore completed 28 of 46 passes for 381 yards against Navy with three touchdowns and no interceptions. He distributed a pass to 10 different receivers. The 381 yards were second in Moore's career only to the school-record 557 yards he passed for at Memphis in 2015.
This is the same quarterback whose charge from UC coach Luke Fickell earlier this season was to simply manage the game without turning the ball over. Now here was Moore, flinging the ball over the field, which is exactly what Fickell had said earlier this season he didn't want him to do.
"You've got to be able to take shots at the things they've giving you," Fickell said when asked about the sudden change in philosophy. "The first few weeks that wasn't what was there. It's part of the game. It's part of the growing process. We've got confidence in him. We don't want him to ever think we don't have confidence in him and his ability to take some of those shots. Those are things that we know we have to be able to do.
"Now maybe we didn't do them in the first few weeks. The opportunities weren't there based on how people were playing us."
Moore, a junior from Clay, Ala., said after the game that the sudden effectiveness of UC's passing game was the result of everybody on offense doing their job – linemen blocking, receivers running precise routes, Moore making the right reads and hitting his targets, and receivers not dropping passes, as they had six times the previous week against Miami.
"We put everything together and we did a lot better with everybody doing their job," Moore said. "That's how we got things rolling."
Moore, who missed five games last year due to an ankle injury, was one of three quarterbacks that former UC coach Tommy Tuberville used almost interchangeably. But this year Moore is firmly in control of offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock's offense. After winning what Fickell said was a close battle with sophomore Ross Trail during the preseason, Moore has taken every snap from center through UC's first four games, completing 53.5 percent of his passes for 888 yards, an average of 221.5. He has thrown eight touchdown passes, just three fewer than he threw last year, and has been intercepted four times.
"We definitely see progress," Fickell said. "And it's not just the easy progress to see, that he threw the ball down the field and he threw for 300 and some yards. No, the progress is how did he identify that? Why did he throw the ball down there, not just because, hey, I was just gonna take a shot and that was the matchup we want. No, it was because of the things that we saw, the things that we read, what were they playing, when do we have those opportunities and take those calculated risks. I'm not saying they were risks, but it's not really good to throw the ball down the field into a cover two corner."
This is all good news for UC's receivers as they look ahead to the rest of the season.
"(Hayden's) confidence is through the roof," Gray said. "He's been playing amazing these last couple weeks. We have all our trust in him and he has trust in us. I think it goes both ways.
I think the offense has gotten better every week. We started off kind of slow. It was just minor details, little things here and there. Every week we've gotten better at that, getting to the details of things. We're starting to execute like we should. I've always had hope in this offense from the get-go. We all know how explosive we can be. It just comes down to the details and we're starting to get that down."
Whether Moore can duplicate that performance this week against Marshall, which has allowed an average of 252 passing yards through three games, will depend at least partly on what the Thundering Herd defense shows, but at least now the Bearcats know that if the opportunity is there, Moore and his teammates have the ability to make the most of it.
"When you know what you're doing, you know when the shots are there, I think that's where we're getting more confident in everything we're doing," Fickell said.
Bill Koch covered UC athletics for 27 years – 15 at The Cincinnati Post and 12 at The Cincinnati Enquirer – before joining the staff of GoBearcats.com in January, 2015.