Prosser’s own, Kellen Moore, proved he was a ‘football savant’ long before Super Bowl win

Prosser High School senior offensive lineman Josh Jelinek was in the middle of a tough game one night in 1997 against one of the Mustangs’ Mid-Valley League opponents.

It was the kind of game where every player needed to be concentrating on the game plan at hand.

Then this youngster approached him on the sideline. It was a young Kellen Moore, the oldest son of Tom and Kris Moore.

Tom Moore was Prosser’s head football coach at the time.

“(Kellen) said something to me about my pass set,” said Jelinek, who would go on to play for the University of Idaho, the Tri-Cities Fever indoor football team, and is currently the head football coach for Richland High School. “He said I was a lot faster than my defensive opponent. So he said I should slow down, that it would help me.”

Jelinek was astounded, and perhaps a little annoyed.

“I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? Who is this 10-year-old kid?’” said Jelinek. “But you know? He was probably right. I’m sure Kellen won’t remember that story. But I tell this story because he was always a polite young man.”

The story reveals what Kellen Moore was always going to be: an outstanding football player, and after that, a National Football League coach.

On Tuesday, the New Orleans Saints announced that Kellen Moore agreed to become the team’s newest head coach — and at the age of 36, one of the league’s youngest head coaches.

The announcement surprises no one who has known him or watched him grow up in the agriculturally-based Eastern Washington town of about 6,600 west of the Tri-Cities.

Kellen’s father was at his home in Cherry Hill, N.J., when he talked with the Herald on Wednesday.

He and his wife were watching Kellen’s two youngest kids while Kellen, his wife Julie, and their two older children were in New Orleans making the rounds.

“I’m not surprised (Kellen was named head coach), given the last few seasons,” said Tom. “I’m surprised it’s happened so fast.”

Kellen Moore has had multiple NFL head coaching interviews the last four off seasons. So it was going to eventually happen that he got one of only 32 jobs in the world.

But it didn’t happen overnight.

Growing up around football

Tom Moore was looking for a coaching job out west after the economy in Illinois took a downturn in the 1980s. Factories were closing and people were leaving.

So his best friend, Craig Beverlin, told him to get out to Washington state. Beverlin had been hired to coach at Kamiakin High School in Kennewick. He told Moore that the head coaching position at Prosser was vacant.

Moore came out, interviewed at a few different schools around the state — including Bellevue High.

But Prosser felt right.

Tom Moore put together a really young and talented staff of coaches who all got along and were just starting their own families. It was a close-knit group.

Mark Little was a long-time teacher, assistant football coach and varsity girls basketball head coach at Prosser High School.

“I went to the hospital to see Kellen the day he was born,” said Little, now retired. “He was the first son of the guys I coached with.”

Little got a front row seat to watching Kellen grow up.

“Oh my goodness, this couldn’t happen to a better guy,” said Little. “First, I think about what a great guy he is. I’ve never seen him big-time anybody. But he’s been a football savant his whole life.”

“He was a little kid at the age of 10, just on the sidelines throwing with the quarterbacks and soaking it all in,” he said.

Tom Moore was considered by his peers as an offensive genius. He would put together an incredible career, with a 234-38 record over 23 seasons, with 21 league titles and four state championships.

He was inducted into the Washington State Football Coaches Association’s Hall of Fame in 2010. He and Beverlin were inducted together.

Over the years, Prosser had a lot of good football players.

But Tom Moore’s sons were two of the best. And people knew that before they even attended their first high school class.

As youngsters, Kellen and his brother, Kirby, were always at Mustang practices.

Doug Fassler was an assistant football coach from 1988 to 2022. He said that Tom Moore created a family atmosphere at Prosser.

“All of our kids were around the program growing up,” said Fassler. “Each would move up the ranks from being on the sidelines, to becoming the T-boy where they go grab the tee after the kickoff, to eventually becoming a Mustang. It was a lot of fun to have them around and watch them grow up.”

Fassler noted that at one point, Kellen had two receivers who would go on to play Division I football.

Cody Bruns went to the University of Washington, and brother Kirby Moore headed to Boise State to join Kellen.

“But I can remember watching these guys play Grid Kids youth football,” said Fassler. “It was odd to watch 10-year-olds throwing the ball all over the field at that age.”

Kellen always had his notebook full of plays with him.

And at a time when individual filmwork was novel, Kellen Moore was already a master at it in the eighth-grade — before he even donned a Mustangs uniform.

“Kellen would always be looking for VHS tapes,” said Tom. “There were these old Chuck and Duck videos, and he’d order these VHS films of college football games. He’d get on this thing called the internet — I didn’t know much about it at the time — and he’d look for video of any quarterback who threw for 400 yards or more.

“He was in eighth-grade, and he had stacks of these tapes,” Tom continued. “We watched them all of the time.”

Little said Kellen got that work ethic from Tom.

“That filmwork, he learned that from his dad,” said Little. “And it was a huge advantage for us. He’d also carry around his notebooks of plays.”

Every spring break, instead of going to Mexico or Disneyland, the Moore family would head to a college campus to watch spring football practice. Montana, Montana State. Eastern Washington and Central Washington. Anywhere a team was practicing.

“We all loved it,” Tom said. “It was great.”

By the time Kellen was a junior, he was so good at breaking down opposing defenses as a quarterback, that dad allowed him to call his own plays for the next two seasons.

Fassler, as Prosser’s defensive coach, got to see a lot of Kellen at quarterback every day in practice.

“He was so accurate and made such good decisions that it was rare to see a ball hit the ground at practice or in a game,” said Fassler. “He was rarely hit in games because he knew where to go with the ball if he was under any pressure. As a defensive coach, it was a lot more fun for me to watch our offense perform when they were on the field.”

Prosser made it to the state finals in Kellen’s junior year, losing to Ferndale. In his senior season, the Mustangs would lose in the state semifinals.

Boise State University quarterback

Kellen Moore went to Boise State, where he started at quarterback in his redshirt freshman season and didn’t stop for the next four years.

In his four seasons, his teams compiled a 50-3 won-loss record — the most wins ever by a college quarterback.

He tossed 142 touchdown passes at BSU, and threw for 14,667 passing yards with a 69.8 completion percentage. All numbers are among the best among college quarterbacks.

Then it was on to the NFL in 2012.

Moore spent three seasons with the Detroit Lions, then three more with Dallas. The majority of them were as a backup quarterback.

But he suffered a serious injury in training camp in 2016.

“His coaching career really started after he broke his ankle in camp,” said Tom. “He really didn’t recover (in the 2017 season). The coaches told him they probably weren’t going to keep him as a player. The good news was that they wanted to make him a quarterbacks coach.”

Sunnyside High grad Scott Linehan was the Cowboys offensive coordinator at the time.

A former NFL head coach himself, Linehan knew the Moore family well.

So for Kellen, it was a smooth transition from player to assistant coach.

After one season at QB coach, the Cowboys elevated Moore to offensive coordinator in 2019, and Moore spent the next four seasons at that position for Dallas.

In 2023, Kellen became the Los Angeles Chargers’ offensive coordinator, before moving to Philadelphia this past season as the Eagles offensive coordinator.

This season, the Eagles were a Top 10 offense. And in fact, four of his six offensive units as OC were Top 10.

Philly finished with a 14-3 record, was NFC East champ, won the NFC championship, and the Super Bowl.

Tom Moore stepped away from being a head coach at Prosser in 2009. And he and Kris have spent the last few years living in whatever NFL city Kellen worked out of to help with the grandkids.

He has come to understand the behind-the-scenes work it takes to succeed in the NFL.

“The timing has to be right,” said Tom. “You never know when these opportunities are going to come up.”

A bright future

It is almost every parent’s dream to have their children do better than them in life.

Tom Moore is bursting at the seams with pride in both of his sons.

“It’s been great. (Becoming a head coach), it’ll happen to Kirby too,” said Tom.

It may come first at the college level.

Kirby has established himself as a standout offensive coordinator the past two seasons at the University of Missouri — where the 34-year-old must go up against the Southeastern Conference’s top defensive units on a weekly basis.

Mark Little says he won’t be surprised by any success either of his sons have.

“Both boys have this incredible understanding of football,” said Little. “I think it was 100 percent that Kellen was always planning to be a coach after his playing days. I don’t doubt that at all. That’s the family business, and that family has three incredible coaches.”

There used to be a sign at the Prosser city limits. It said “Welcome to Prosser. A pleasant place with pleasant people.”

Little says that sign is gone now, “but it’s still a pleasant place.”

And the people of that place couldn’t be more excited for Kellen Moore.

“He’s so easy to root for,” said Little. “This is beyond cool, and the whole town of Prosser is so proud of him.”