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Joe Moorhead Was Supposed To Fix Akron Football. Instead, He’s Turned Statistical Improvement Into An Art Form Of Losing

Mark Haines on August 18, 2025

The math doesn’t lie at Akron.

Three seasons into his tenure at Akron, the veteran coach sits on college football’s third-hottest seat with a 0.659 Hot Seat Rating™ in the Coaches Hot Seat® rankings. This number reflects significant underperformance against expectations, where 1.0 represents meeting expectations and anything below signals mounting pressure. His 8-28 record tells the story of a program trapped between statistical improvement and actual wins, a cruel mathematical reality that has defined his existence in Ohio.

The numbers reveal a stunning contradiction: a supposed offensive mastermind who can’t win games.

The Statistical Paradox That Defines Frustration

Moorhead’s three-year journey at Akron reads like a case study in how progress doesn’t always equal success.

2022 Season Reality:

Record: 2-10
Offense: 21.6 points per game
Defense: 33.5 points allowed per game
The diagnosis: An offense with potential, destroyed by defensive incompetence

2023 Season Nightmare:

Record: 2-10 (again)
Offense: 16.3 points per game (brutal regression)
Defense: 28.0 points allowed per game (solid improvement)
The diagnosis: Fixed defense, broken offense—same losing result

2024 Season Mockery:

Record: 4-8 (modest improvement)
Offense: 20.4 points per game (rebound)
Defense: 32.0 points allowed per game (regression)
The diagnosis: One step forward, one step back, still losing

Here’s what makes this maddening: Moorhead himself admits they’ve had “10 one-score losses in two years, including five by a field goal or less and four of those in overtime.”

These aren’t blowouts suggesting systemic failure.

These are heartbreaking defeats that reveal a program tantalizingly close to competence but consistently unable to cross the finish line.

When Statistics Lie: The Buffalo Game That Broke Everyone’s Brain

Last season’s 41-30 loss to Buffalo perfectly encapsulated Akron’s mathematical impossibility.

The numbers that should have meant victory:

Akron outgained Buffalo 452-390 total yards
Dominated through the air 378-210 in passing yards
Won the third-down battle 43% to 23%
Ben Finley threw for 378 yards and four touchdowns

The reality that happened: Buffalo spotted a 38-7 lead before Akron remembered how to play football.

When your quarterback throws for 378 yards and four touchdowns but you still lose by double digits, the problem isn’t talent—it’s execution, culture, and coaching.

Individual Brilliance Wasted by Collective Incompetence

The 2024 roster showcased exactly the kind of talent that should translate to wins.

Offensive weapons that should have dominated:

Adrian Norton: 831 receiving yards, 19.3 yards per catch, 7 touchdowns
Ben Finley: 2,604 passing yards, 16 touchdowns over 12 games
Jordon Simmons: 664 rushing yards on 6.0 yards per carry
Garrison Smith: 81.3% field goal accuracy

The coaching failure: When you have explosive playmakers at every skill position and a reliable kicker, yet still struggle to win games, the responsibility falls squarely on scheme execution and leadership.

These individual performances should have combined to create a winning formula.

Instead, they highlighted the coaching staff’s inability to synthesize talent into consistent team success.

The Defensive Regression That Destroyed Progress

Here’s where Moorhead’s tenure becomes truly damning.

After limiting opponents to 335.0 yards per game in 2023, the 2024 defense collapsed to allowing 414.4 yards per contest—nearly returning to the abysmal 2022 levels.

The regression wasn’t subtle:

Pass defense: Opponents completed 64.4% (up from 55.9% in 2023)
Run defense: Allowed 183.3 yards per game on 4.6 yards per carry
Takeaways: Just 7 interceptions and 9 fumble recoveries in 12 games
Turnover rate: 1.3 per game (pathetic for modern college football)

In a sport where possessions are precious, this defensive inability to create turnovers severely limited Akron’s margin for error.

The 2025 Roster Overhaul: Desperation or Smart Strategy?

Understanding the pressure he faces, Moorhead has aggressively addressed roster deficiencies.

Defensive reinforcements:

Over 10 new defensive linemen
Multiple linebacker additions
Several players exceeding 290 pounds
New cornerbacks and safeties for improved coverage

Offensive upgrades:

Multiple running backs over 205 pounds
Offensive line featuring players over 300 pounds
Reduced dependence on individual playmakers
Better short-yardage reliability

The critical question: Will these roster upgrades translate to actual wins, or just better statistics in losing efforts?

Schedule Reality: Opportunity and Pitfalls

The 2025 schedule presents both hope and danger.

Non-conference games:

Wyoming (winnable)
Nebraska (measuring stick against Power Five)
UAB (should win)
Duquesne (must win)

MAC schedule challenges:

Eight conference games, including Toledo and Central Michigan
Potentially favorable matchups against UMass and Kent State
More home games late in the season

The pressure point: If Akron stumbles in winnable non-conference games or struggles early in MAC play, the familiar pattern of close losses and moral victories could quickly resurrect coaching change discussions.

The Cultural Problem That Statistics Can’t Fix

The psychological burden of consistent losing has infected this program’s DNA.

When players and coaches expect close games to slip away in the fourth quarter, those expectations often become reality. Breaking this cycle requires more than tactical adjustments—it demands a complete cultural shift that validates belief in eventual success.

Moorhead’s track record suggests understanding:

Previous championship experience at multiple stops
Background as an offensive innovator
History of developing NFL-caliber talent

The concerning pattern: His previous head coaching stint at Mississippi State ended in frustration despite superior talent, raising questions about his ability to maintain program culture over extended periods.

Make-or-Break Mathematics

The 2025 season represents Moorhead’s final realistic opportunity to demonstrate sustained improvement.

The brutal math:

Overall FBS head coaching record: 22-40
Akron record: 8-28 over three seasons
Hot seat rating: 0.659 (third-hottest in FBS)
Winning percentage: .222

The irony: Moorhead was supposed to be the sure thing—the experienced head coach, the familiar face, the proven winner. Instead, he’s become living proof that coordinating success and leading it are entirely different skills.

Another disappointing campaign would likely end his tenure and potentially damage his reputation as a coordinator candidate.

Bottom Line: Incremental Progress Isn’t Enough

Akron’s 2025 season will be defined by whether Moorhead can finally convert statistical improvement and individual talent into actual victories.

The roster upgrades provide tools for success.

The schedule offers winnable opportunities.

The pressure demands immediate results.

The simple equation: With a 0.659 hot seat rating and his track record at Akron, Moorhead needs wins—not moral victories, not improved statistics, but actual wins that demonstrate tangible program advancement.

For a program that has managed just 8 victories in 36 games under his leadership, 2025 represents far more than another season of development.

It’s the final calculation in determining whether Joe Moorhead can solve Akron’s perpetual problem of underachievement, or whether his tenure will become another cautionary tale about the difference between coordinating brilliance and leading it.

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The Not-So-Sweet Survival Guide: College Football’s Week 11 Hot Seat Rankings

Mark Haines on November 5, 2024

It’s college football’s week 11 – that special time of year when athletic directors start pricing golden parachutes. At Arkansas, Sam Pittman (#1) watches Jaxson Dart throw for 515 yards against his defense and wonders if those moving trucks outside his office are just passing through . In Birmingham, Trent Dilfer (#2) has mastered the art of making UAB worse than “freakin’ Alabama,” while Temple’s Stan Drayton (#3) costs more per loss than some entire Group of Five coaching staffs.

Our Hot Seat Rankings start with these 10:

1. Sam Pittman – Arkansas

In the statistical carnage that was Ole Miss’s 63-31 dismantling of Arkansas, two numbers stood out like neon signs above a desperate Vegas casino: 515 and 6. That’s how many yards and touchdowns Jaxson Dart threw without a single interception—a feat no SEC quarterback had ever managed. His favorite target, Jordan Watkins, turned eight catches into 254 yards and five touchdowns, the efficiency that makes defensive coordinators contemplate career changes.

Lane Kiffin, college football’s resident chaos merchant, couldn’t resist twisting the knife with a post-game quip about airport tarmacs—a particularly cruel jab given that Sam Pittman might soon be familiar with them himself. In the merciless accounting of college football, Pittman’s seat isn’t just hot; it is approaching nuclear fusion.

2. Trent Dilfer – UAB

On Saturday, UAB’s Kam Shanks and Jalen Kitna shattered school records in a 59-21 victory over Tulsa that felt less like a breakthrough and more like a beautiful funeral. The numbers were staggering: Shanks’s 311 all-purpose yards, Kitna’s 404 passing yards, and six touchdowns—the statistics that usually save coaching careers. But in Birmingham, where Trent Dilfer has managed to transform a conference champion into a 2-6 cautionary tale, even victory feels like defeat.

The real story isn’t in Saturday’s box score—it’s in Dilfer’s infamous “It’s not like this is freakin’ Alabama” quip, the kind of comment that makes boosters reach for their checkbooks and their phones simultaneously. In less than two years, he’s taken Bill Clark’s ascending program—six straight winning seasons, two conference titles—and performed the sort of dismantling usually reserved for failed hedge funds or terminated football programs, something Birmingham knows too well.

The irony? Dilfer’s still collecting his $1.3 million salary while his team plays like they’re working for minimum wage against real competition. In the economics of college football, that’s the kind of inefficiency that doesn’t survive long—even with Mark Ingram in charge.

3. Stan Drayton – Temple

In the economics of college football, Temple University has managed to create a case study in how not to allocate resources. They’re paying Stan Drayton—a career running backs coach—$2.5 million annually to perform heart surgery. At the same time, Florida Atlantic handed Tom Herman the same job for the price of a luxury sedan. It’s the kind of financial decision that would have kept the late Lew Katz up at night, pacing his private jet’s cabin, checkbook in hand.

The cruel mathematics of Temple’s predicament reveals itself in two numbers: 55-0, the score by which SMU dismantled the Owls on national television, and $7.5 million, the remaining cost of Drayton’s contract. In a different era, when Temple had its own version of a Wall Street activist investor in Katz, this market inefficiency would have been corrected by Monday morning. But his son Drew, now on the Board of Trustees, treats the family fortune like a conservative bond portfolio—safe, steady, and utterly useless for the kind of radical intervention Temple football requires.

The tragedy isn’t just in losing—everyone loves Drayton the Man. It’s watching a university bet its football future on a position coach while having no hedge against failure. In North Philadelphia, where campus security costs outweigh football aspirations, they’re learning that love doesn’t show up in the win column.

4. Billy Napier – Florida

For three hours and fifty-six minutes on Saturday, Billy Napier lived in an alternate universe where Florida football still mattered. His Gators, held together with duct tape and populated partly by what appeared to be a local moving crew (they’d shown up early, anticipating a blowout), had somehow matched the mighty Georgia Bulldogs punch for punch. The score sat at 20-20, and Napier could almost feel his seat temperature dropping from nuclear to merely scalding.

But Georgia, like a cat toying with an injured mouse, was merely setting up the punchline. Carson Beck had thrown three interceptions, seemingly playing to Florida’s level, until you realized it was all part of the script. In four brutal minutes, the Bulldogs engineered a 75-yard drive, snatched an interception, and scored again—transforming what could have been Napier’s career-saving upset into just another SEC cautionary tale.

The cruelest part? Those last four minutes proved that the previous 56 had been merely Georgia’s idea of performance art, a masterclass in giving false hope to the doomed.

5. Dave Aranda – Baylor

At Baylor, Dave Aranda’s job security has behaved like a volatile tech stock—swooning early, rebounding late, and keeping traders guessing. After opening 2-4 with wins against only Air Force and something called Tarleton State, Aranda’s position looked about as secure as a crypto wallet password. But in the fluid market of college football coaching, even the most bearish positions can reverse course.

Two consecutive wins against Texas Tech and Oklahoma State have performed the kind of market correction usually reserved for Federal Reserve announcements. The remaining schedule—TCU, West Virginia, Houston, and Kansas, none currently above .500—looks less like a gauntlet and more like a carefully curated path to bowl eligibility. “Six wins and he’s back,” whispered one industry insider, with the kind of certainty usually reserved for insider trading tips.

The irony? Aranda, the defensive genius who once commanded premium value in the coaching marketplace, finds his future tied to the most basic of metrics: win six games or clean out your office. In Waco, where faith and football intersect with ten-figure endowments, salvation comes from a .500 record.

6. Sonny Cumbie – Louisiana Tech

In Huntsville, Texas, on a Tuesday night that felt more like a Samuel Beckett play than a football game, Sonny Cumbie’s Louisiana Tech team managed to lose 9-3 while winning almost every statistical category that matters. They outgained Sam Houston 312-268, held a rushing attack that averaged 200 yards per game to just 105, and forced two turnovers. By any rational measure, they should have won. But college football, like tragedy, follows its peculiar logic.

The box score reads like a hedge fund’s risk assessment report gone wrong: four turnovers, two turnovers on downs, and three points to show for it all. Twice, the Bulldogs penetrated within the 5-yard line in the fourth quarter alone, finding new and creative ways to self-destruct each time. This kind of performance makes athletic directors update their coaching search firms’ contact information.

The cruel irony? Cumbie’s defense played well enough to win a conference championship game. Instead, they watched their offense turn the red zone into a haunted house, fumbling away what little hope remained of salvaging their season. At 3-5, with Jacksonville State looming, Cumbie finds himself selling the one commodity no one in college football wants to buy: moral victories.

7. Joe Moorhead – Akron

Joe Moorhead’s return to Akron had all the elements of a classic homecoming story—the prodigal coordinator returns, older and wiser, ready to transform his former program. It was the kind of narrative Hollywood makes movies about. Instead, it’s become a documentary about entropy: two straight 2-10 seasons, with 2023 following the same inexorable path toward dysfunction.

Saturday’s 41-30 loss to Buffalo reads like a physics problem where all the equations work backwards. The Zips outgained Buffalo 452-390, dominated through the air 378-210, and won the third-down battle 43% to 23%. Ben Finley threw for 378 yards and four touchdowns—numbers that in any rational universe translate to victory. But Akron, like a time traveler who can only arrive after the critical moments have passed, spotted Buffalo a 38-7 lead before remembering how to play football.

The cruel irony? Moorhead was supposed to be the sure thing—the experienced head coach, the familiar face, the proven winner. Instead, he’s become living proof that in college football, like quantum mechanics, observation changes the outcome. In Akron, where they’ve spent decades trying to solve the equation of relevance, they’re learning that even the smartest professors sometimes fail the final exam.

8. Mark Stoops – Kentucky

Mark Stoops has achieved something that should be impossible in the physical universe of college football: becoming Kentucky’s all-time winningest coach (73 victories) while simultaneously watching his support evaporate like bourbon at a tailgate. It’s the kind of contradiction that makes quantum physicists scratch their heads—how can someone be the most successful coach in school history and a source of fan rebellion?

The 2024 season opened like a Southern Gothic novel—high expectations, veteran talent, and a schedule that read like a list of ancient curses. By week two against South Carolina, the plot had turned dark: the offensive line collapsed like a condemned building, and fans who’d once praised Stoops’ program building started treating his flirtation with Texas A&M like a betrayal in a Faulkner story.

The cruel irony? In a state where basketball championships are measured like bourbon vintages, Stoops made football matter. He turned seven straight bowl games into an expectation rather than a miracle. As whispers suggest he might walk away, Kentucky faces a terrifying question: What if their greatest football coach ever was also their last chance at sustained relevance? In Lexington, where basketball season can’t start soon enough, they learn that success and satisfaction rarely arrive in the same bottle.

9. Hugh Freeze – Auburn

In the Gothic horror story that is Auburn football, Hugh Freeze has managed to accomplish something previously thought impossible: making Jordan-Hare Stadium about as intimidating as a petting zoo. The latest chapter? A 17-7 loss to Vanderbilt that read less like a football game and more like an exorcism gone wrong—except the demons won.

The numbers tell a story of decay that would make Edgar Allan Poe proud: 4-10 against SEC opponents since his arrival, an offense that treats the end zone like it’s radioactive, and a fan base discovering that their traditional autumn rituals of victory have been replaced by something far more sinister: mediocrity. They’re not just losing; they’re losing to Vanderbilt at home, the kind of plot twist that makes Stephen King seem unimaginative.

The cruel irony? After enduring what they called “the worst coach in SEC history, ” Auburn hired Freeze to be their savior.” Now, as Freeze watches his quarterback Payton Thorne perform weekly reenactments of college football’s greatest disasters while Jarquez Hunter stands idle on the sideline, they learn a painful lesson: sometimes the cure can feel worse than the disease. On the Plains, where “War Eagle” once struck fear into visitors, they discover that not all resurrection stories have happy endings.

10. Lincoln Riley – USC

Lincoln Riley’s USC experiment has begun to resemble a Silicon Valley startup in freefall—the kind where the CEO starts banning journalists, restricting information flow, and contemplating whether to return the deposit on the party clown. The numbers tell the story of this implosion: 5-11 in their last 16 games, a stark reversal from the 17-3 start that had USC boosters dreaming of their next Pete Carroll.

Saturday’s 26-21 loss to Washington felt less like a football game and more like a hedge fund’s last trading day. Miller Moss threw three interceptions, each one driving down USC’s stock price a little further. The remaining schedule—Nebraska, UCLA, Notre Dame—looms like a series of margin calls. A bowl game, once considered a foregone conclusion in the Riley era, now feels about as sure as a cryptocurrency recovery.

The tragedy isn’t just in the losing—it’s in watching Riley transform from offensive genius to besieged executive. We expect his next move to come straight from his Oklahoma playbook: painting the windows black in Heritage Hall and the McKay Center. In L.A., where style points count double, Riley’s program has become something worse than unsuccessful: It’s become uncool.

Check out our complete list here. Share your thoughts here.

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