EAST HARTFORD — The 41-point lead, the 14 seconds remaining, called for the “victory formation,” from which the quarterback takes a knee to kill the clock. But UConn coach Jim Mora took a timeout to milk two more plays, putting the ball twice in freshman Soren Rief’s hands.
“When they told me to get on the bike and warm up, it was crazy, I was in shock,” Rief said. “Right before I went out, Coach Mora pulled me aside and said, ‘do this for your mom.’ That just meant everything to me and my family.”
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Moments later, the game ended and Mora went over to explain it to Florida International coach Willie Simmons, that there was no rubbing-in intended after the Huskies’ 51-10 victory at Rentschler Field. Then Mora went to his players, who were ready to celebrate his 100th victory as an NFL and college coach. Spontaneously, they lifted Mora onto their shoulders, something he said he’d never experienced after any of his previous 99 wins.
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“I didn’t think anyone knew,” Mora said.
There’s tissue that connects these moments, and it’s real. Rief, who gained 5,500 yards and won a state championship at Killingly High, lost his mother, Mary, to breast cancer last November, just before UConn responded to his entreaty and offered him the chance to join the program. The Riefs have been season ticket subscribers at Rentschler for 20 years, and Soren’s dream to be a Husky became his mother’s, too. Like most true freshmen, Reif expected to work behind the scenes this year, redshirt, scout team, invest the time and work to play in the future. But this was Crucial Catch Day, the players wearing decals on their helmets to honor family members lost to cancer.
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“We just wanted to give (Soren) an opportunity to honor his mom by living out a part of his dream, which is to play at UConn,” Mora said.
Maybe he could have done it earlier … whatever. Mora called time and made sure Rief got the ball twice, the second carry for nine yards, as his father, brother, grandmother and other friends and relatives watched from the stands. Rief clutched a game ball as he left Rentschler Field, to be added to other mementos of Mary in the family’s home in Griswold.
After letting Mora back down to the turf, the players surrounded him as the stadium emptied and they watched the series of video tributes collected. Peyton Manning, Charles Barkley, Ronnie Lott, Mora’s father, still the family leader in football wins with 184, all spoke. Manning and Lott, pro football Hall of Famers, both told Mora he has “done it the right way.”
“To hear them say that, it’s humbling,” Mora said. “I don’t know if I always do things the right way, my intention is to. … I try to.”
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Mora’s 100 wins includes 12 in his first season as a head coach, leading the Falcons to the NFC Championship Game in 2004, just 60 minutes shy of the Super Bowl. It included 46, with two bowl victories at UCLA, a place where 46 wins in six seasons was deemed not good enough.
And it included Mora’s record at UConn, which is now even at 22-22, with every reason to expect it will be north of .500 to stay when this, his fourth season is done. One could argue that these 22 are the most meaningful, the most impressive of all, since the Huskies had won all of 21 games between 2013 and 2022, the year Mora, now 63, took over.
“I joke around and say he’s old,” said Reymello Murphy, who caught three passes for 78 yards and a touchdown. “But he’s legendary. He’s been around football all his life. To be around somebody like that, a football genius, essentially, it’s once in a lifetime. You’ve got to soak it in, give him his flowers, it’s pretty cool to be around. He tells us, he embraces the hard stuff, he loves adversity, he loves going against the grain. He’s somebody that doesn’t back down from any challenge.”
During his four years in football purgatory, out of coaching, Mora took to “skinning,” attaching fabric to skies and walking up mountains in Idaho. It was good metaphoric training for the job awaiting at UConn, to make an independent FBS program not named Notre Dame somehow relevant. More people thought the program should be scrapped than believed it could ever win anything real.
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“He loves rock climbing, mountain climbing,” Murphy said, “and he uses that as an analogy in team meetings, talking about the season. You start from the bottom and you look up, you don’t know how far it is, you’ve just got to keep going. So we attack the day just like he tells us to. … He’s one old, amazing guy.”
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Mora, his pro experience playing perfectly in the pay-for-play, transfer portal age, got UConn to a bowl game in his first year, and another in his third, winning the Fenway Bowl last December, capping the best season since 2010. This season, the Huskies are 4-2 at the halfway mark, the two losses in overtime on the road. UConn has won 11 of its last 12 games against “group of five” conference schools and, after a bye week, has its next opportunity to knock off an ACC team, Boston College on Oct. 18.
“He just sets the tone,” said quarterback Joe Fagnano, who threw for 355 yards and four touchdowns. “He’s probably the hardest worker in the building. When you see someone who has been at the top level work the way he does, when he says something, it just holds that much more weight.”
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Mora’s 100 wins does not include many he scored as a defensive coordinator in the pros, including the day his 49ers defense snared five interceptions against Manning, who was playing for Mora’s father and the Colts. The NFL coach is still in there and characteristic of the breed, Mora can be wound rather tight, uber-intense, tunnel-versioned, abrupt, bent on control of every detail, and so he can ruffle feathers in a place like Storrs, Conn. Yet he’s found a home here, at what was a forsaken outpost of the college game, because the professional relationships that matter most are the ones with his players. Some of them, such as Jackson Mitchell and Rante Jones, have been inspired to stay at UConn and explore coaching careers under his tutelage, in some cases living in Mora’s house.
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“They know I have their best interests at heart,” Mora said. … And every great coach at UConn, past and present, will tell you that’s what allows you to coach players hard.
Mora’s 22 wins in 3 1/2 seasons at UConn, where so many said even this much couldn’t be done, have risen from those relationships, from gestures like the one in the waning minutes on Saturday, allowing Soren Rief to look skyward and tell his mom he made it, he’s a Husky with stats to prove it.
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“‘Actions over words,’ that’s really what we’re all about here,” Rief said. “My whole life, I’ve been going to UConn games. To be able to come and play here, it means the world to me.
