Every Gen-Xer remembers the days when recess fights were just part of a normal school day, and wouldn’t get you expelled under a zero-tolerance policy mandated by some blue-haired teachers-union president who despised no human trait or characteristic more than testosterone.

The teacher on recess duty would break you up and make you shake hands, and then you’d spend the rest of the week showing off your black eye or bragging about your busted knuckles.

There was always one kid in the class who was bigger than everyone else but kind of dumb and slow. Everybody liked him but would tease him mercilessly, and he would just take it and laugh it off.

Invariably, though, someone would take it too far, push him past his limits and the Shrek-sized oaf would pound the kid into a grease spot in the middle of the kickball diamond painted on the blacktop.

Kellen Moore is that kid.

Not the one who’d end up in the nurses station bleeding from the nose, ears and maybe even eyes. The big dumb one, who couldn’t get motivated to unleash his considerable pent-up fury until he simply had no other options.

Actually, in no way is Moore actually dumb, although he’d look a lot smarter if he’d close his mouth while pacing the sidelines. In fact, Moore is quantifiably an offensive genius, head and shoulders above his peers in a league stacked with the most brilliant football minds on the planet.

When he was offensive coordinator for the Philadelphia Eagles in 2024, the team averaged 367 yards and 27 points per game and, of course, went on to win the Super Bowl. Those numbers plummeted to 311 yards and 22 points in 2025, after Moore left to become head coach of the Saints.

Clearly Moore knows what he’s doing when designing plays and putting together a game plan.

But even in that successful 2024 season, Moore showed evidence he’d have to get pushed against a wall before he’d unleash the hounds. In 17 game-opening drives, the Eagles scored only two touchdowns. Every game, the team would eventually get its act together and dominate its opponent, cruising to a 14-3 regular-season record, but it started slower than the Moreno administration.

This has been a well-documented trait of Moore’s coaching tenure, wherever he’s gone. He famously went on a 20-game streak without an opening-drive TD while OC of the Cowboys.

He’s obviously well aware of it and has certainly attempted to fix it. He’s tried to run tempo early to approximate the urgency of late-game situations, but it hasn’t worked, probably because of a character trait of Moore’s that’s just part of his DNA.

Namely, Moore is conservative, and that is nowhere more evident than on his play calls when the Saints have a successful first-down play and are faced with a second and short. Former Saints head coach Sean Payton would regularly use these opportunities to create a splash play — go for something big, knowing that if you fail, you still have third and short.

Moore, on the other hand, goes with a dive play almost every time. He just wants to get the first down.

That’s true until the Saints are down a few scores, the clock is ticking and the lifeboats have been cut free to reduce weight. Then Moore becomes Doyle Brunson, risking his stack of chips on every play, and mostly coming through with pocket aces.

Urgency removes the dive from his list of options, and good things happen as a result.

In this week’s season-opening game against Detroit, Saints quarterback Tyler Shough was a mirror, reflecting his coach’s flaws on his 10 offensive teammates. In the first half, Shough was cautious, tentative and unsure of himself, showing not even the slightest hint of the aggressive gunslinger who would have been a lock for offensive rookie of the year had he not played understudy for the first half of the 2025 season.

Then, down 21 points, conservative play and play-calling were no longer options, so Moore did what Moore always does, swinging from the play-calling version of Ronald Reagan to that of AOC, and his quarterback immediately responded, throwing for three touchdowns and an NFL leading 410 passing yards.

The man has the skills — that’s obvious. Shough could literally prove to be the second-best to ever play the position for the Saints. But for that to be true, he’s got to do it for four quarters and not just two or, at best, three.

And that begins and ends with Moore.

Bill Walsh famously initiated the trend of scripting the first 15 plays. When Moore puts together his game script, he needs to go full George Costanza — just do the opposite of what he thinks is the right thing to do.

I mean, why not? The first-quarter results couldn’t possibly be any worse.