EDMONTON – Few players and coaches have their legacies as intertwined as Warren Moon and Hugh Campbell.
Edmonton’s legendary duo were pillars of the franchise in the late 1970s and early 1980s, putting on a run of football dominance that is unlikely to ever be replicated. Campbell and Moon were together for exactly five seasons as a head coach and quarterback combo, and in every single year they were together, Edmonton finished the season as Grey Cup Champions.
Campbell coached the Esks for one season without Moon, losing the 1977 Grey Cup to the Montreal Alouettes. Moon quarterbacked Edmonton in 1983 without the leadership of Campbell, capturing the CFL’s Most Outstanding Player award with a league-record 5,648 passing yards. However, Edmonton finished the year with an 8-8 record and did not win a single playoff game.
On their own they were hall of fame worthy, but together, they were football legends.
“It was a special time, and you don’t even realize that until you’re done and away from the game,” Moon said. “Those teams had great chemistry. We had great veteran leadership. We had a great coach that knew how to push all the right buttons. He knew how to take care of all the different personalities that we had.”
Every player from that Double E Dynasty era credits Hugh Campbell’s ability to stitch together a group of incredibly talented players and have them put aside ego or personal pride to serve the team. He was a modern leader in an era where your stereotypical football coach was a strict authoritarian, Campbell was known for his innate ability to relate to players and keep a positive locker room atmosphere.
“I think I was a lot younger. I was not that much older than the players,” Campbell said. “I think that if we had a secret to this success, it was just that we all were talking on the same lingo. We all kind of had the same thoughts about what was fun and when to get serious, and no one was allowed to get to feeling too important. Everybody was in line to get teased once in a while.”
“I think my contribution was forming a team over individuals. At the end of the season we always had a lot of guys left out of year-end awards, but looking back on it, you can only have so many all-stars from a team. We put up with whatever happened and said that the only award we care about is the one they don’t vote on.”
Moon and Campbell remained intrinsically linked after their time in the Canadian Football League. Campbell was hired by the Houston Oilers as a means of luring Warren down to Texas during the 1984 bidding war for his services.
The then 27-year-old quarterback went from an NFL afterthought, much in part to the stigma around African American quarterbacks, to a hotly competed for commodity. It was Moon’s familiarity with Campbell that ultimately led to the QB selecting the Oilers as his destination.
“Yeah, he was a huge reason for me. He saw something in me that a lot of other people, especially in the NFL, didn’t,” Moon said. “He thought I could play as a big-time quarterback no matter where I played and that was a very good boost to my confidence that he believed in me like that.”
Campbell coached the rebuilding Oilers for less than two seasons, returning to Edmonton in 1986 where he would remain a pillar of the franchise as General Manager and President and CEO until 2006. Moon continued his hall of fame career with the Oilers, Minnesota Vikings, Seattle Seahawks, and Kansas City Chiefs — retiring in 2000. In his 17-year NFL career, he was unable to win at the same level as he did with Campbell in Edmonton, with only three playoff victories under his belt after his stint in the CFL.
It was in Canada where Campbell and Moon were at their best, and they are forever an iconic part of the lore and history of Canadian Football.
“I’ll always be indebted to this league and this country for giving me the chance to play quarterback where my own country didn’t think I could do it,” Moon said. “If I didn’t have the chance to play quarterback up here and the opportunity, I probably would have given up the game because I didn’t think I could make it in another position. I wasn’t super fast or super athletic. I was an athletic enough guy to play quarterback, but not athletic enough to play a wide receiver or defensive back, something that most teams wanted me to play.”
“Canada gave me that chance to play quarterback and I made the most of it.”
Moon and Campbell are the first two members of the 1980s EE All-Decade Team to be revealed, with the rest of the squad to be unveiled at Sunday, August 11’s home game against the B.C. Lions. The remainder of the all-decade teams will be revealed at each of the Double E’s subsequent home games, culminating in a fan vote for the all-time team and the greatest collection of players to ever wear the Green and Gold.