Luke Getsy met with Starkville media for the first time publicly on Wednesday. During his media availability, Getsy often referred to his strong bond with first-year Mississippi State coach Joe Moorhead.

The relationship between the two coaches goes back to Getsy’s playing career, where he served as Moorhead’s quarterback at Akron. Following his playing career, Getsy stayed close to his coach, working as an assistant under Moorehead for two seasons. Now the two get to reunite in Starkville following successful careers as assistants for two of the most recognizable programs football has to offer.

Here are the highlights of Getsy’s Wednesday media availability, where he expresses his excitement to work for Moorhead once again and how difficult it was to leave his role with the Green Bay Packers. However, knowing he was leaving to reconnect with Moorhead was the difference.


(Video via Mississippi State Football)

Opening statement…

“I’m extremely excited to be here. It truly is an honor and a privilege to one, be at such an unbelievable university, and the opportunity to work with a great man, someone who has been very influential in my life, not only as a player but as a coach. I’m extremely excited about the opportunity. Any time you get the opportunity to come to this conference, the best in college football, it’s a great opportunity. I’m very excited and looking forward to the opportunity. My family’s excited to move down here. They’re getting down here in about two weeks. We’ll be off and running. The community has been fabulous – everything I’ve expected and more. I’m looking forward to getting to know each one of you and everyone in the community as well.”

On what made him interested in this job…

“I’ll work backwards. The opportunity to be in the best conference in all of football is an exciting opportunity and challenge. Mississippi State is a university I’ve watched my entire life and have an affiliation with and excitement with SEC football. It’s all an exciting brand of football, coming from the National Football League where there’s SEC players all over the place. The opportunity to come back and work with Joe (Moorhead) was definitely the No. 1 thing for me. He is very influential in my life. When I was getting recruited as a young quarterback in high school to the University of Pittsburgh, Joe was a graduate assistant there. Our relationship started way back then. I got the opportunity to play for him at Akron. I had the opportunity to coach for him in my first coaching job I ever had. The relationship goes way back. The success that he’s had, the evolution of his offense from where it was when we were back at Akron in 2008 to where it is now is something I wanted to get around, learn more from and be a part of as well. Hopefully with the experiences I had, I can add to it.”

On the difficulty of the decision to leave the Green Bay Packers…

“The Green Bay Packers is one of the best organizations, if not the best, in all of professional sports. The community there, everyone here would relate really well to. It’s very similar. It’s a college town-like atmosphere within a professional arena. It was tough leaving the community. It was tough leaving that organization. It is as well-run of an organization as there is. It was really hard to leave Mike McCarthy, someone who taught me in four years more than I had learned in my entire career. He’s inspired me to have the desire to be a head coach, both with his personality and with his leadership skills. He kind of showed me the way and proved to me that I can be who I am and have a lot of success doing it. I have great regard for him. It was an extremely difficult decision. I’m young enough in my career where opportunities are what I have to look at. Another thing that’s really important to me is I wasn’t going to leave a great man and not go work for another great man. I truly believe in Joe Moorhead, the person, first, and secondly, his leadership skills and abilities.  I truly believe in him. It made the decision to come here easy. It made the decision to leave Green Bay really hard.”

On Moorhead serving as the offensive play-caller…

“It’ll be very similar to where I just came from. The head coach has a lot of responsibilities and a lot of hats to wear. Yes, he’s going to be the play-caller on game days, and it is his offense first and foremost. The importance of the leadership of the offensive coordinator is critical. He’s not going to be able to do everything that he did at Penn State as far as his commitment to the offense, and it’s my responsibility to be his second-hand man, his right-hand man, always there to think alike, act alike and hopefully lead alike.”

On having previous experience with Moorhead…

“It’s important. Any time you’re starting fresh – that’s what we’re doing right now. We’re kind of going back to ground-zero, and we’re building from the foundation-up. We’re cleaning things up; we’re making things exactly the way (Moorhead) sees it. We’re all seeing it the exact same way. Any time you have guys who have experience in it, there’s things that I’m able to reflect on. There’s things (Andrew) Breiner’s able to reflect on and (Charles) Huff, as you mentioned. Anybody’s that’s been around the offense – there’s advantages to having that past history that we can reflect on and make really good decisions moving forward about what’s best for the offense.”

On the decision to push back the spring practice start date…

“It’s huge. It’s definitely a big benefit for us. It gives us a bit more time to get to know our players, more importantly than anything else. It gives us a little bit of time to get them prepared so they can go on and have success in the spring. Not starting until March 20 is going to be a big benefit to us so we can have a very successful spring.”