Last Updated on February 5, 2021
At 82, Tom Moore is a Working Man. He is up and running by 4 a.m., plotting and planning.
He has a unique job skill. He’s a bit of a football guru, working on the offensive side, while helping some guys named Manning and Brady hone their quarterback skills.
On Sunday morning, Moore will rise up early again for work, participating in his fifth Super Bowl, this time as an assistant with the Tampa Bay Bucs.
“There is absolutely nothing about not working that turns me on,” said Moore, who addressed the media for the first time this season on a Zoom call this week. “I want to coach as long as I can, as long as someone will hire me, and that I can do the job that I’m supposed to do … I want to come back next year, and the next year, and the next year and the next year.”
Moore has been at this for 41 seasons in various incarnations in the NFL, first as a wide receivers coach with the Pittsburgh Steelers in 1977. The most notable piece of his resume is his time with the Indianapolis Colts (1998-2010) where he worked with quarterback Peyton Manning as offensive coordinator.
He’s got another great one to work with in Tom Brady, who at 43, is preparing to play in his 10th Super Bowl.
“I have a lot of respect for Coach Moore,” Brady said. “I’ve had a lot of great conversations about football. He has great football knowledge. He’s kind of a football encyclopedia. Whatever he says, I obviously try to incorporate, whether it’s techniques, fundamentals or how he sees the game, because he’s had a lot of success. I love hearing different ideas, and he does a great job for us.”
Like Brady and Manning, Moore is widely respected in the NFL. There are certain concessions he has made because of his age, especially cognizant of working around people in the middle of a pandemic.
He has taken both doses of the COVID-19 vaccine and limits his interactions to his daily drive from home to the office, and very little else.
Moore will be coaching in his fifth Super Bowl and looking for his fourth Super Bowl win if the Bucs defeat the Kansas City Chiefs on Sunday. Moore won two titles with the Steelers and one with the Colts.
“I’m 82 years old,” he said. “Every night I go to bed, I can hardly wait to get up in the morning, get back to the office to go back to work with these people. That’s, to be quite frank with you, why I got into coaching. That’s why I like coaching so much because I like the people that I’m around. They’re my kind of people.”
Related: Meet George Toma, the 91-year-old Sodfather of Super Bowls.
