Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-1
2005Alamo BowlW 32-28
2006Cotton BowlL 14-17
Report card
Above the median offense — 58th percentile.
Nebraska, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Each season is his team’s percentile among every team with that stat (the share it beat), averaged over his completed seasons here; a mid-season takeover year and the season in progress aren’t graded. Letters: A+ 90th percentile and up, A 80, B+ 70, B 60, B− 50, C+ 45, C 40, C− 30, D 15, F below.
Stats
Big games
The big-game ledger
How he does in the games that matter most — rivalry record, performance broken out by real opponent tier, one-score games, and his toughest historical matchup.
2-2 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Bob Stoops.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
2,211 run and pass snaps at Nebraska, 2004–2007, his own games, one row per offensive coordinator. Each cell is how much more often he passed than the rest of FBS did in the same situation (field zone, down, distance, score, quarter, same season), in percentage points.
Pass rate, stint by stint
Where each stint’s offense sat between run-first and pass-first, and how far it moved from one season to the next, against the FBS-wide average of 41% pass. The band is that stint’s real season-to-season range, not a fixed-width box.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Three numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2007 roster arrived on his watch — 38 of 38 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2004-2007) predates 2021, when transfer-portal tracking begins in this database. Portal usage cannot be measured for this tenure at all -- this is not the same as '0% portal'.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 18 of 54 signees (33%) across his 2004–2007 tenure, drawn from 15 states in all. Next: KS (8).
44% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (AZ 4, NV 1, OR 1).
Off this map: 1 signee to the east (MD).
- median hometown distance
- 558 mi
- within 100 mi
- 18%
- within 500 mi
- 46%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 36%
The map counts signed recruits across his tenure; the distance figures cover his current roster, transfers and walk-ons included. Two different groups, kept separate on purpose.
The NFL pipeline
The NFL pipeline
players drafted into the NFL off his teams here. None can be traced to who brought them in — there’s no roster record for these players here. 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | R5.07 | Zackary Bowman | Cornerback |  Chicago Bears | Estimated |
| 2008 | R5.29 | Carl Nicks | Offensive Tackle |  New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 2008 | R6.31 | Bo Ruud | Outside Linebacker |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2007 | R1.13 | Adam Carriker | Defensive End |  St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| 2007 | R2.31 | Brandon Jackson | Running Back |  Green Bay Packers | Estimated |
| 2007 | R3.23 | Stewart Bradley | Linebacker |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2007 | R4.05 | Jay Moore | Linebacker |  San Francisco 49ers | Estimated |
| 2006 | R2.08 | Daniel Bullocks | Defensive Back |  Detroit Lions | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | R6.34 | Sam Koch | Punter |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2006 | R6.37 | Le Kevin Smith | Defensive Tackle | New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2006 | R7.12 | Titus Adams | Defensive End |  New York Jets | Estimated |
| 2005 | R1.23 | Fabian Washington | Defensive Back |  Oakland Raiders | Estimated |
| 2005 | R2.04 | Barrett Ruud | Linebacker |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| 2005 | R2.08 | Josh Bullocks | Defensive Back | New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 2005 | R3.17 | Richie Incognito | Offensive Guard | St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
A pick counts toward his tenure when the player’s final college season was one he coached, a checkable rule rather than a claim about who developed the player. A blank note means the player is on a verified roster and arrived on his watch. “Estimated” means no roster record, so the final season is assumed to be the year before the draft.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Inheritor inherited a power and neither built it higher nor let it collapse
4th-best Nebraska tenure of 18 by the numbers.
Followed Frank Solich (1998–2003) · succeeded by Bo Pelini (2008–2014).
| Season | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 5-6 | 8-4 | 9-5 | 5-7 | |
| Postseason | — | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 38 | 5 | 71 | 89 | |
| Defense | 30 | 69 | 56 | 7 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 39.2 | 46.3 | 41.4 | 47.6 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 54.3 | 45.6 | 42.3 | 41.2 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 60.0 | 31.1 | 46.2 | 44.8 | |
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
-10.4 pts at Nebraska · #1220 of 1290 · bottom quarter