Joe Moorhead’s first Mississippi State team had played four games when Dan Mullen returned to Starkville.
Moorhead had inherited Mullen’s players, his quarterback and a program that had spent nine seasons growing from a five-win SEC team into one that reached No. 1 in the country, produced Dak Prescott and became a regular bowl participant. Mullen had left Mississippi State after the 2017 regular season to become Florida’s head coach. Ten months later, he walked back into Davis Wade Stadium wearing orange and blue.
Florida won 13-6.
Eight years later, the coaches are headed toward another meeting after taking considerably different routes away from the place that first connected them. Mullen is rebuilding his coaching career at UNLV. Moorhead is in his fifth season at Akron. Saturday’s game at InfoCision Stadium does not need a manufactured rivalry between them. The actual connection is unusual enough.
Mullen arrived at Mississippi State in 2009 after working as Urban Meyer’s offensive coordinator at Florida. The Bulldogs went 5-7 in his first season and reached a bowl in each of the next seven. His best team came in 2014, when Mississippi State started 9-0, rose to No. 1 in the Associated Press poll and finished 10-3. By the time Mullen left for Florida in November 2017, he had gone 69-46 across nine seasons.
Mississippi State did not hire Moorhead to tear that structure apart.
Moorhead arrived from Penn State, where he had coordinated an offense built around quarterback Trace McSorley, running back Saquon Barkley and an RPO-heavy system that helped turn the Nittany Lions into one of the Big Ten’s most productive offenses. At his introductory press conference in Starkville, Moorhead made the condition of the program he inherited one of his first points.
“This wasn’t a job where we had to go in, bulldoze the house, dig up the foundation, pour the foundation and put the walls back up,” Moorhead said. “That’s not the case for this job. Coach Mullen and his staff did a fantastic job. The foundation is laid; the walls are up. We just have to make sure we add to it.”
Mississippi State had changed enough during Mullen’s tenure that Moorhead was inheriting expectations along with the roster.
Then Mullen came back.
The Sept. 29, 2018 game had all of the obvious emotional material surrounding it. Mullen was in his first season at Florida. Moorhead was in his first at Mississippi State. The Bulldogs entered ranked No. 23, and 61,406 people filled Davis Wade Stadium for Mullen’s first game there as a visiting head coach.
The game itself looked little like the offensive résumés of the two coaches suggested it might.
Mississippi State led 6-3 at halftime after a pair of Jace Christmann field goals. Florida did not score a touchdown until late in the third quarter, when Feleipe Franks threw a lateral to Kadarius Toney and Toney found tight end Moral Stephens for a 20-yard touchdown. Evan McPherson added a fourth-quarter field goal, and Florida’s defense finished the 13-6 win by holding Mississippi State to 202 total yards.
The Bulldogs rushed for 104 yards and threw for 98. They converted two of 12 third downs and failed on both fourth-down attempts. Florida produced 357 yards but needed a receiver pass for the game’s only touchdown.
The week had largely been framed around Mullen’s return. Moorhead treated the matchup differently when he met with reporters beforehand. He praised Mullen’s work at Mississippi State but said his own program’s preparation would not change because of who stood on the other sideline.
“The head coach is Dan Mullen,” Moorhead said that week, before noting Mullen’s success as an assistant and “a tremendous stint as the head coach here at Mississippi State.”
Mullen left Starkville with the win.
Florida finished that season 10-3 after beating Michigan in the Peach Bowl. Moorhead’s first Mississippi State team finished 8-5 and reached the Outback Bowl. Their paths separated further from there. Mullen went 11-2 at Florida in 2019 and 8-4 in 2020 before being fired during the 2021 season. Moorhead coached one more year at Mississippi State before the school dismissed him following the 2019 season.
Moorhead rebuilt his career as an offensive coordinator, most notably at Oregon, before Akron hired him as head coach in December 2021. He is now in his fifth season with the Zips. Mullen spent three seasons working for ESPN before UNLV hired him in December 2024.
The jobs they hold now bear little resemblance to Mississippi State in 2018.
Moorhead inherited one of the more difficult rebuilding jobs in the Football Bowl Subdivision at Akron. Mullen took over a UNLV program coming off consecutive appearances in the Mountain West championship game and immediately inherited expectations of maintaining that level. Their teams enter Saturday from different places, but both coaches are still dealing with familiar offensive questions.
Moorhead’s Akron offense uses many of the principles that have followed him throughout his career: run-pass conflicts, quarterback involvement, RPOs and attempts to force defenders into a wrong answer before the ball leaves the backfield. Mullen has spent UNLV’s bye working through a different part of the same problem, determining which parts of his offense Jackson Arnold and the players around him execute well enough to keep.
“I might like a play, but if he’s not comfortable running it, it really doesn’t matter what I like,” Mullen said this week. “I’m standing on the sidelines. No one’s coming to hit me and I don’t have to throw a ball.”
Mullen and Moorhead were never members of the same staff, and neither developed under the other. Their history came from occupying the same job at consecutive points, with Moorhead inheriting the roster and expectations Mullen left behind.
Moorhead once took over the program Mullen built. Ten months later, Mullen returned to Starkville and beat him there.
Eight years later, they meet again with neither coaching Mississippi State.
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