By Bill Koch
UC has had plenty of great quarterbacks in its long football history – Danny McCoin, Gino Guidugli, Zach Collaros, Tony Pike, and now Desmond Ridder, to name a few.
But there was only one Greg Cook, who remains the Bearcats’ gold standard at the position. The Cincinnati Bengals selected Cook with their first pick in the 1969 draft, and he lived up to their expectations by winning the American Football League Rookie of the Year award.
No less an authority than Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh, the offensive coordinator when Cook played for the Bengals, once said that if Cook hadn’t suffered a rotator cuff injury that prematurely ended his pro career he “could well have been remembered or noted as the greatest quarterback of all time.”
The highlight of Cook’s UC career was against Ohio University when he passed for a school record 554 yards on Nov. 16, 1968 in UC's 60-48 loss to the Bobcats at Nippert Stadium.
Forty-seven years later, on Friday night, Sept. 24, 2015, an unheralded redshirt freshman from Clay, Ala., named Hayden Moore came along and broke Cook’s record with 557 yards in a 53-46 loss to Memphis in front of a crowd of 45,172 at the Liberty Bowl and an ESPN television audience.
Until that day, Moore had never heard of Greg Cook and therefore didn’t realize the magnitude of what he had accomplished at first. But he does now.
“To hear that I broke the record of a guy like that, who had such high expectations and was that good, really put into perspective what I had done,” Moore said recently. “Everybody wants to bring that up. I want to be humble about it. It was a great game and it was insane how it turned out, but at the end of the day we still lost the game.”
When he played at UC from 2015-18, Moore was decidedly low-key. He didn’t like drawing attention to himself. Even after he was told immediately after the game at Memphis that he had broken Cook’s record, he didn’t have much to say.
“I’ll just give it all to the receivers and the offensive line,” he said. “They gave me so much time in the pocket.”
Playing in just the third game of his college career, Moore was called on with 3:35 left in the first quarter to replace starting quarterback Gunner Kiel – a noted passer in his own right - who was carted off the field with a neck injury he sustained when he was hit by Memphis cornerback Chauncey Lanier after a 3-yard run. Despite his relative lack of experience, Moore was all business as took the field. He received no instructions or encouragement from UC coach Tommy Tuberville, now a U.S. senator from Alabama.
He probably didn’t need them anyway. The previous week he had entered the game in relief of an injured Kiel in a 37-33 win against Miami (Ohio). So it wasn’t as if he hadn’t done this before.
“You just get thrown in,” Moore said. “There’s no time to talk. You put your helmet on and start throwing.”
Once Moore started throwing, he didn’t stop until the game was almost over. He finished with 31 passes in 53 attempts with four touchdowns and two interceptions. The Bearcats finished with a school record 752 total yards, breaking the previous record of 711 yards set against UConn in 2009. They amassed a school record 38 first downs. He got plenty of help from his receivers: Max Morrison (nine catches, 162 yards, two touchdowns), Shaq Washington (9-120-1), and Chris Moore (5-153-1).
But in the end, the Bearcats came up short on the scoreboard and fell to 2-2 overall, 0-2 in the American Athletic Conference.
The score was tied at 46-46 when Memphis running back Sam Craft scored a touchdown on a 3-yard run with 53 seconds to play, to give the Tigers a 53-46 lead, the 11th lead change in the game. UC took over on its own 25-yard line and drove to the Memphis 19. That’s where things fell apart for Moore and the Bearcats.
When Moore dropped back to pass, he was spun around by a Memphis defender. I’ll let Moore tell you want happened next.
“I tried to throw it to my running back and it had a little heat on it and hit him in the helmet,” Moore said. “It’s hard to really know what was happening on that play. I watched it over. I was spinning. I stayed up and I saw Tion Green in front of me. I tried to softly throw it to him but as I was spinning, with the momentum and I guess adrenalin, I threw it really hard. He was probably five to seven yards away and it bounced off his helmet perfectly into someone else’s arms.”
That someone else was Memphis linebacker Leonard Pegues. With 10 seconds remaining, the game was essentially over. Moore exited the field knowing he had played a great game, but with no idea that he had broken a hallowed UC record. The only thing that mattered to him was that his team had lost.
“I felt so much on that play,” Moore said. “You know it’s over and there’s really nothing you can do but just run off the field in awe. It was a terrible feeling.”
Before long, he understood what all the excitement was about.
“That was the first time in my career that I went on social media and I couldn’t catch up to the notifications,” Moore said. “I got hundreds of texts from friends and family because it was a Friday night ESPN game. It was crazy, especially for me as a freshman. I had not seen anything like that. It was cool, but at the same time I felt like I didn’t deserve it because we lost. I was enjoying it but at the same time it was kind of bittersweet.”
I tried to talk to Moore again about breaking Cook’s record a few weeks later, figuring that by then he would have a better perspective on it. But again, he didn’t have much to say.
“I probably brushed it off because I didn’t want to make it like I’m just thinking about my own stats,” said Moore, who now plays for Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League. “I was really mad that we lost. We should have won that game. I didn’t think much of it, but as you say, after my career at Cincinnati, I can look back on it now and I think, wow, that was actually pretty cool. That’s something I can have for the rest of my life. That’s my claim to fame I guess.”
UC has had plenty of great quarterbacks in its long football history – Danny McCoin, Gino Guidugli, Zach Collaros, Tony Pike, and now Desmond Ridder, to name a few.
But there was only one Greg Cook, who remains the Bearcats’ gold standard at the position. The Cincinnati Bengals selected Cook with their first pick in the 1969 draft, and he lived up to their expectations by winning the American Football League Rookie of the Year award.
No less an authority than Hall of Fame coach Bill Walsh, the offensive coordinator when Cook played for the Bengals, once said that if Cook hadn’t suffered a rotator cuff injury that prematurely ended his pro career he “could well have been remembered or noted as the greatest quarterback of all time.”
The highlight of Cook’s UC career was against Ohio University when he passed for a school record 554 yards on Nov. 16, 1968 in UC's 60-48 loss to the Bobcats at Nippert Stadium.
Forty-seven years later, on Friday night, Sept. 24, 2015, an unheralded redshirt freshman from Clay, Ala., named Hayden Moore came along and broke Cook’s record with 557 yards in a 53-46 loss to Memphis in front of a crowd of 45,172 at the Liberty Bowl and an ESPN television audience.
Until that day, Moore had never heard of Greg Cook and therefore didn’t realize the magnitude of what he had accomplished at first. But he does now.
“To hear that I broke the record of a guy like that, who had such high expectations and was that good, really put into perspective what I had done,” Moore said recently. “Everybody wants to bring that up. I want to be humble about it. It was a great game and it was insane how it turned out, but at the end of the day we still lost the game.”
When he played at UC from 2015-18, Moore was decidedly low-key. He didn’t like drawing attention to himself. Even after he was told immediately after the game at Memphis that he had broken Cook’s record, he didn’t have much to say.
“I’ll just give it all to the receivers and the offensive line,” he said. “They gave me so much time in the pocket.”
Playing in just the third game of his college career, Moore was called on with 3:35 left in the first quarter to replace starting quarterback Gunner Kiel – a noted passer in his own right - who was carted off the field with a neck injury he sustained when he was hit by Memphis cornerback Chauncey Lanier after a 3-yard run. Despite his relative lack of experience, Moore was all business as took the field. He received no instructions or encouragement from UC coach Tommy Tuberville, now a U.S. senator from Alabama.
He probably didn’t need them anyway. The previous week he had entered the game in relief of an injured Kiel in a 37-33 win against Miami (Ohio). So it wasn’t as if he hadn’t done this before.
“You just get thrown in,” Moore said. “There’s no time to talk. You put your helmet on and start throwing.”
Once Moore started throwing, he didn’t stop until the game was almost over. He finished with 31 passes in 53 attempts with four touchdowns and two interceptions. The Bearcats finished with a school record 752 total yards, breaking the previous record of 711 yards set against UConn in 2009. They amassed a school record 38 first downs. He got plenty of help from his receivers: Max Morrison (nine catches, 162 yards, two touchdowns), Shaq Washington (9-120-1), and Chris Moore (5-153-1).
But in the end, the Bearcats came up short on the scoreboard and fell to 2-2 overall, 0-2 in the American Athletic Conference.
The score was tied at 46-46 when Memphis running back Sam Craft scored a touchdown on a 3-yard run with 53 seconds to play, to give the Tigers a 53-46 lead, the 11th lead change in the game. UC took over on its own 25-yard line and drove to the Memphis 19. That’s where things fell apart for Moore and the Bearcats.
When Moore dropped back to pass, he was spun around by a Memphis defender. I’ll let Moore tell you want happened next.
“I tried to throw it to my running back and it had a little heat on it and hit him in the helmet,” Moore said. “It’s hard to really know what was happening on that play. I watched it over. I was spinning. I stayed up and I saw Tion Green in front of me. I tried to softly throw it to him but as I was spinning, with the momentum and I guess adrenalin, I threw it really hard. He was probably five to seven yards away and it bounced off his helmet perfectly into someone else’s arms.”
That someone else was Memphis linebacker Leonard Pegues. With 10 seconds remaining, the game was essentially over. Moore exited the field knowing he had played a great game, but with no idea that he had broken a hallowed UC record. The only thing that mattered to him was that his team had lost.
“I felt so much on that play,” Moore said. “You know it’s over and there’s really nothing you can do but just run off the field in awe. It was a terrible feeling.”
Before long, he understood what all the excitement was about.
“That was the first time in my career that I went on social media and I couldn’t catch up to the notifications,” Moore said. “I got hundreds of texts from friends and family because it was a Friday night ESPN game. It was crazy, especially for me as a freshman. I had not seen anything like that. It was cool, but at the same time I felt like I didn’t deserve it because we lost. I was enjoying it but at the same time it was kind of bittersweet.”
I tried to talk to Moore again about breaking Cook’s record a few weeks later, figuring that by then he would have a better perspective on it. But again, he didn’t have much to say.
“I probably brushed it off because I didn’t want to make it like I’m just thinking about my own stats,” said Moore, who now plays for Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League. “I was really mad that we lost. We should have won that game. I didn’t think much of it, but as you say, after my career at Cincinnati, I can look back on it now and I think, wow, that was actually pretty cool. That’s something I can have for the rest of my life. That’s my claim to fame I guess.”
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