The 2021 UConn Huskies football team represented the

University of Connecticut The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Hart ...

(UConn) in the 2021 NCAA Division I FBS football season. The Huskies competed as an

independent Independent or Independents may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Artist groups * Independents (artist group), a group of modernist painters based in the New Hope, Pennsylvania, area of the United States during the early 1930s * Independ ...

, having left the

American Athletic Conference The American Athletic Conference (The American or AAC) is an American collegiate athletic conference, featuring 11 member universities and five affiliate member universities that compete in the National Collegiate Athletic Association's (NCAA) ...

following the 2019 season. They played their home games at

Rentschler Field Rentschler Field was an airport in East Hartford, Connecticut in use from 1933 to 1999. Originally a military facility, later a private corporate airport, it was decommissioned in 1999, after which the football stadium of the same name was bui ...

East Hartford, Connecticut East Hartford is a town in Hartford County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 51,045 at the 2020 census. The town is located on the east bank of the Connecticut River, directly across from Hartford, Connecticut. It is home to aerospac ...

. On September 5, following the team's 38–28 loss to FCS-school Holy Cross, head coach

Randy Edsall Randy Douglas Edsall (born August 27, 1958) is a retired American football coach, formerly the head football coach at the University of Connecticut from 1999 to 2010 and again from 2017 until his abrupt retirement in 2021. He also served as the h ...

announced he would be retiring at the end of the season. The following day, the school announced that Edsall had resigned effective immediately and defensive coordinator

Lou Spanos Louis G. Spanos (born March 27, 1971) is an American football coach who was the defensive coordinator for the UConn Huskies football team, a position he held until the start of the 2022 season. He was a defensive quality control and assistant lin ...

was named the interim head coach. On November 11, former

UCLA The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) is a public land-grant research university in Los Angeles, California. UCLA's academic roots were established in 1881 as a teachers college then known as the southern branch of the California St ...

coach Jim L. Mora was named the school's 31st head coach beginning with the 2022 season. Shortly after the hire he helped serve as an offensive assistant for the remainder of the season. The team finished the season 1–11.

Previous season

The Huskies finished the 2019 season 2–10, 0–8 in

(AAC) play, to finish in last place in the East Division. The 2019 season was the Huskies' last as a member of the AAC. The Huskies did not compete in the 2020 season due to the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic, also known as the coronavirus pandemic, is an ongoing global pandemic of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The novel virus was first identif ...

Departure from the American

In June 2020, it was announced that UConn's other sports programs would be joining the

Big East Conference The Big East Conference is a collegiate athletic conference that competes in NCAA Division I in ten men's sports and twelve women's sports. Headquartered in New York City, the eleven full-member schools are primarily located in Northeast and M ...

. Since the Big East does not sponsor football and the American did not want to keep UConn as a football-only school, it was decided that the football program would compete as an FBS Independent. The move to the Big East was primarily due to the university wanting to focus more on the men's and

women's A woman is an adult female human. Prior to adulthood, a female human is referred to as a girl (a female child or adolescent). The plural ''women'' is sometimes used in certain phrases such as "women's rights" to denote female humans regardl ...

basketball programs, feeling the move to the American had hindered those programs.

Schedule

Source

Roster

Game summaries

At Fresno State

Holy Cross

Purdue

At Army

Wyoming

At Vanderbilt

At UMass

The day before the game, interim head coach

, offensive coordinator/offensive line coach Frank Giufre, and tight ends coach Corey Edsall, along with offensive linemen Ryan Van Demark and Will Meyer, tested positive for

COVID-19 Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) is a contagious disease caused by a virus, the severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2). The first known case was COVID-19 pandemic in Hubei, identified in Wuhan, China, in December ...

. Defensive line coach Dennis Dottin-Carter served as the Huskies' head coach for the game.

Yale

Middle Tennessee

At Clemson

At UCF

No. 24 Houston

References

{{UConn Huskies football navbox

UConn The University of Connecticut (UConn) is a public land-grant research university in Storrs, Connecticut, a village in the town of Mansfield. The primary 4,400-acre (17.8 km2) campus is in Storrs, approximately a half hour's drive from Ha ...

UConn Huskies football seasons

UConn Huskies football The UConn Huskies football team is a college football team that represents the University of Connecticut in the sport of American football. The team competes in NCAA Division I FBS as an Independent. Connecticut first fielded a team in 1896, an ...