Arthur Ward/CFL.ca
It’s kind of funny when you think about it. Kyran Moore certainly finds it funny, in a fortunate kind of way.
The path to his becoming a breakout star with the Saskatchewan Roughriders, all speed and shiftiness and determination, highlighted by a couple of big punt returns and punctuated last week by a play that showcased his refusal to be denied, began with a game that wasn’t even supposed to be played.
That game is part of Kyran Moore‘s success story. The play that showcased his determination is too.
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Moore makes a catch against the Ottawa REDBLACKS (Arthur Ward/CFL.ca)
But the most important part of the story is not that game and not that play, but the part of it that saw two men come together in what would become a mutual admiration society as a desperate football program scratched and crawled its way out of the murk of losing to team after team after team.
The game that wasn’t supposed to happen did happen – after a side trip to Disney World – and now, the man who used to be known as “Tiny,” but who is now nicknamed “Swerve,” is emerging as a key threat for the ‘Riders, after spending the first half of the season on the team’s practice roster.
“Tiny’s got more dadgum nicknames than anybody I’ve ever heard in my entire life,” laughs his college coach, Will Healy, over the phone. He’s not surprised at the new moniker that Moore is carting around, one given to him by former Roughrider Duron Carter, during training camp. Moore will gladly answer to Tiny, however, as it is a beloved name bestowed during his time with the Austin Peay Governors, his alma mater in Clarksville, Tennessee.
“My first year in college I weighed, like 145 pounds,” says Moore. “A senior was like ‘you tiny.’ And it just stuck.”
At five-foot-nine and now about 165 pounds, Moore is the latest in a traditional line of diminutive players to show that speed and elusiveness is all you need – provided they are packaged up with a tenacious attitude – to get things done in the CFL.
“The rules work to my advantage,” the 22-year-old native of Bessemer, Alabama says, gratefully, before adding: “Most of ‘em.”
Moore made his debut in green and white back in Week 11 against the BC Lions, but it was the following week where he made his first, impressive CFL mark, taking his maiden professional punt return opportunity all the way back against Winnipeg, 65 yards for a touchdown. Two weeks later, he took another one the distance – this time it was 90 yards – against Ottawa. Last week, versus the Montreal Alouettes, he had his biggest receiving game of the year, snaring 9 passes for 126 yards. Included was a 23-yard touchdown.
“I am so proud of him and his success,” says Healy. “I had no doubt he’d be really successful there.”
“I was a 30-year-old head coach who inherited the 253rd-ranked team out of 253 Division-One football teams,” says Healy of his entrance to the Austin Peay State program just after the 2015 season.
“A losing culture like we had will suck the life out of a lot of people,” he continues. “And he just kept fighting,” he says of Moore.
The Governors at one point had a losing streak of 29 games and that included all eleven during Healy’s first year on the job, in 2016. “Like, 1 and 32,” Moore says of his first three very trying seasons with the Governors. “Known for losing.”
Healy, turns out, was just what the team and Moore needed. Moore became just what the coach needed to help turn things around as the Governors rebounded to an 8-4 season in 2017. Before that breakout, the building blocks for it were being put in place even during the previous winless campaign, with Moore and Healy being important parts of each other’s progress.
“He changed the program as far as….” Moore pauses and struggles to find the right words to describe his former coach’s influence, before settling on just one. “Everything.”
“When he came in he had some structure,” Moore continues. “But he really made it family oriented. He was like ‘I hope that y’all can be great football players.’ But his main goal was to teach us to be better men, as far as when we grew up. To be better men, to be better husbands, to be better fathers.”
It was an ongoing message that young Moore really seemed to value and the coach noticed, admitting that when he first got to Austin Peay, some people warned him to be wary of the defensive back who was entering his third year. What he found, he says, was a young man who listened, who took it all to heart and who emerged as a leader.
“Tiny bought into that right away and, in turn, made everybody else buy into it as well,” says Healy, grateful for the help of some veteran leadership. “He’s got an infectious personality.”
Healy and Moore collaborated on a switch that would pay dividends for both coach and player; a conversion from defence to offence. The coach asked his young defensive back – who could obviously do a little of everything – whether he’d rather stay primarily a defender or switch to the other side of the ball.
“I told him that really my best position is corner, but I just like having the ball in my hands,” laughs Moore. “So I was like ‘coach, I’ll play wide receiver.’”
During that 0-11 2016 season, the Governors had a pivotal game and in it, Healy remembers, Moore provided critical leadership.
“He played something like seventy-five offensive plays,” says the coach. “And five plays at corner and had an interception and a PBU (what we refer to as a knockdown). And returned all of the kicks.” The Governors lost the game on the final play but they’d hung tough.
“That’s when our program really started changing,” Healy remembers. “Because guys like Tiny left it all on the field and it hurt so bad because they’d given so much and they were so close, that I think kids started believing that we could win games here.”
In 2017, the Governors posted their first win in thirty games and added an additional seven. Moore helped lead the way with 526 yards receiving to go along with 231 rushing yards and 579 kick return yards. He was named an All-American returner and Healy was named the Ohio Valley Conference Coach of the Year.
“What he did for me in two years was absolutely unbelievable,” says Healy. “He became a leader on our football team. Really changed his way of doing things.”
“We have, even more, realized his importance, not only from a locker room perspective but also from a playmaking perspective, not having him,” adds Healy, whose current edition of the Governors held a record of 2-3 after five games. “We’ve missed him.”
That final year in Clarksville may have turned a few heads but it was still very much uncertain as to whether Moore would get a pro look anywhere after graduation. That is, until the game that wasn’t supposed to be played took place, and a Roughriders’ scout just happened to be in attendance.
“And that’s how I got here,” says Moore.
Moore gets tackled by an Edmonton defender (The Canadian Press)
The Game That Wasn’t Supposed To Be Played came about last October, with Moore’s Austin Peay Governors approaching a bye week and the players and coaches looking forward to a little relaxation. That’s when fate – and the University of Central Florida Knights – intervened.
UCF, a powerful American Athletic Conference team that ultimately ended the season undefeated – by beating Auburn in the Peach Bowl – had seen a couple of games postponed due to Hurricane Irma earlier in the fall. They were looking for an opponent to take on, and offered the slot to the Governors.
Coach Healy asked his players if they were up for the challenge and they accepted it. No wonder. After years of struggle and loss after loss, the Governors found themselves with a record of 5-3 at that point, and you can imagine they were eager to keep playing.
“Not only did we go to Florida, he took us to Disney World,” says a laughing Moore about Coach Healy. “He made it fun.”
“All he asked was that when it was game time that we switch our mentality into going out there and playing the game.”
The Governors got smoked by a score of 73-33, it turns out, but still felt somewhat satisfied, considering the type of team they were playing (UCF has followed up on its undefeated season and is currently ranked
12th in America, just behind Penn State in the AP Top 25) and their own recent past. “We actually played very well,” remembers Moore.
He certainly did, totalling 363 all-purpose yards. Five receptions for 133 yards and a touchdown. Eight kick returns for 233 yards, including a 91-yarder for a major.
That was pretty good timing. The Roughriders had regional scout Sammy Gahagan in attendance and he was impressed by the senior’s performance. That, coupled with the fact that Coach Healy and Saskatchewan Head Coach Chris Jones knew each other from way back, provided the next steps for Moore, who got an invitation to audition for the green and when Gahagan reached out to him by text before the year was out.
After a good workout in the new year, followed by an impressive mini-camp during the spring, Moore was invited to training camp and landed his spot on the practice roster.
Jones, who’d earlier done his best to convince Moore to keep an open mind when it came to considering the CFL, liked more than just the talent he’d seen in the young recruit.
“He said ‘you have a lot of heart,'” remembers Moore.
Moore is proud of the two return touchdowns he’s provided for Saskatchewan this season, and the pass reception for a score, too. But that’s after a clarification. When first asked what his favourite highlight is, he talks about playing at Mosaic Stadium.
“Austin Peay it wasn’t a really big school so we didn’t have that many fans, the stadium didn’t hold that many people,” he says of Fortera Stadium (capacity of about 8,000).
“Just goin’ out on the field and looking at the stadium, looking at the sold out crowd, I’d be like ‘wow, I’m really playing in front of this many people.’ It’s nothing but a dream.”
It’s a less spectacular – at least statistically – play that he really gets jazzed about, though, when you ask him about memorable on-field moments in his rookie year.
It was just last week, in Montreal, when Moore’s determination was showcased on a fairly routine looking play; he caught a three-yard pass from quarterback Zach Collaros, deep in Saskatchewan territory and was met by one tackler almost immediately, linebacker Chip Cox. But he kept on trucking. A second tackler, a third, as Moore bulled his way forward, and then a fourth came on before he finally was forced down, adding a total of twenty yards after the catch to his total.
“Doing it and my teammates’ and my coaches’ reactions, I think that’s what makes it my favourite play,” Moore says before describing his mindset as the run unfolded. “I thought, well, I can try to drag ‘em all
to the end zone.”
Told about that highlight, Healy is not taken aback. “He was dragging a hundred and five kids on his back last year to change a program, so, nothing surprises me with him.”
“He’s a special kid.”
So says the coach who changed the fate of a young man who, in turn, helped drastically alter the direction of his team.
He’s now in Saskatchewan thanks to a game that wasn’t supposed to be played.
