UConn going from 1-11 a season ago to 6-6 and its first bowl game in seven years might not sound all that impressive — until considering just how bad things apparently were under former coach Randy Edsall.
From 2018 through 2021, the Huskies won four games total. In 2018, Edsall’s second year at the helm, the defense was a historical disaster, setting FBS records for points (50.4) and yards (617.4) allowed per game. That only begins to explain what a mess the program truly was.
In 2020, UConn was the first team to cancel its season because of the COVID-19 pandemic and things went south from there, with Edsall ditching his players for Florida, according to current coach Jim Mora.
“This was the first team to cancel football for COVID, right off the bat, and the head coach left for eight months and went to Florida,” Mora told The Athletic of his predecessor Edsall. “These kids told me they didn’t see him for eight months. They were up here stuck in dorms and working out in pods, eating by themselves and they didn’t have any games. They won one game last year and the coach is gone. I wanted them to feel love from the fans.”
Two games into 2021, Edsall, in his second stint with the program after having coached there from 1999-2010, announced he would retire at the end of that season. He didn’t last that long — the following day he stepped down.
It was also the second time that Edsall ditched the Huskies. After leading UConn to a Fiesta Bowl berth during the 2010 season, he didn’t fly back with the team following its loss to Oklahoma, instead taking the head job at Maryland.
Enter Mora.
The 61-year-old’s most recent coaching job before going to UConn was at UCLA, where the Bruins were 46-30 over six seasons before he was fired in 2017 following UCLA’s third-straight loss to crosstown rival USC. Mora, who was also a head coach for the Falcons (2004-06) and Seahawks (2009), then joined ESPN as part of its college football coverage until being hired by UConn.
“I had a void,” he told The Athletic. “I had unfinished business. This is what I’ve done my entire life, football, and I didn’t like how it ended at UCLA.”
After the Huskies lost four of their first five games this season — all to far superior teams, including Michigan, N.C. State and Syracuse — UConn won four of its next five. A 36-33 victory over Liberty on Nov. 12 made the Huskies bowl eligible.
A slow start wasn’t the only obstacle or drama the team dealt with this season, though.
Defensive coordinator Lou Spanos, who took over as interim coach after Edsall stepped down, left the program for what was described as personal reasons two weeks before the season opener.
“We haven’t seen him since the day he left,” Mora said. “We haven’t talked to him since the day he left. He’s just in the rearview mirror.”
Mora took over the defense and the Huskies — just three years removed from having the worst defense in FBS history — were in the top half in points allowed this season.
“In years past, if we started 1-4, we’d finish out 2-10, but this year, you could tell a difference,” Huskies linebacker Jackson Mitchell told the site. “Coach Mora gave us hope that we weren’t going to finish that way, that we could still make a bowl game.”
UConn will play Marshall in the Myrtle Beach Bowl on Monday in South Carolina.
