Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-4
1997Independence BowlL 9-27
1998Gator BowlL 28-35
2000Fiesta BowlL 9-41
New Mexico
2015New Mexico BowlL 37-45
2016New Mexico BowlW 23-20
Report card
Offense carries it: 54th percentile offense, bottom-quarter defense at 11th.
New Mexico, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
Defense
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.
Fans
No fan talk about him on our list yet. His record is on Career.
Stats
Big games
Pick a job to see its years on their own.
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.
6-7 against his rivals at Notre Dame. Winless in 3 tries against Nick Saban.
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.
6-2 against his rivals at New Mexico. Winless in 5 tries against Mike Bobo.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
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.
12-9 against his rivals. Winless in 5 tries against Mike Bobo.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
ATS is his record against the spread: did his team beat the closing betting line, winning by more than it or losing by less? Lines start in 2013; a dash means fewer than 6 of those games had one. One-score games carry no spread record: a big favorite that wins a close game has almost always failed to cover, so that number would say nothing about the coach.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Ran more than the situation called for under DeBesse, Magee and Dailey.
6,062 run and pass snaps at New Mexico, 2012–2019, 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
Five numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 2 ranked New Mexico classes of his own have averaged #120 nationally — best #118, worst #122.
His class — he had the full signing cycle
Rank is each signing class’s national recruiting rank (#1 is best). Only a class he had a full signing cycle to build counts as his.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2019 roster arrived on his watch — 108 of 108 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2012-2019) 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.
Size up front
Size up front
Offensive linemen on his New Mexico rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2012–2019). In the two seasons before he arrived, New Mexico’s line averaged 4 lb lighter than the FBS average.
Average listed weight of every offensive lineman on each season’s roster, holdovers included, against every FBS roster that season (2010 on; a program needs 3+ seasons under him to appear). Weights are the ones programs publish, and programs list differently. This describes size only — not scheme, and not quality.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 57 of 190 signees (30%) across his 2012–2019 tenure, drawn from 26 states in all. Next: TX (49).
35% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (AZ 8, NV 2).
- median hometown distance
- 657 mi
- within 100 mi
- 14%
- within 500 mi
- 26%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 16%
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. He brought in 1 of them himself.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | R7.11 | Jason Sanders | Place Kicker |  Miami Dolphins |
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.
News
No outlet on our list has written about him by name yet. His record is on Career.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Inheritor inherited a power and neither built it higher nor let it collapse · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
14th-best New Mexico tenure of 22 by the numbers.
Followed George Barlow (2011) · succeeded by Danny Gonzales (2020–2023).
| Season | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||
| Record | 4-9 | 3-9 | 4-8 | 7-6 | 9-4 | 3-9 | 3-9 | 2-10 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | L bowl | W bowl | — | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||
| OC | — | — | Bob DeBesse | Bob DeBesse | Bob DeBesse | Bob DeBesse | Calvin Magee | Joe Dailey | |
| DC | — | — | Kevin Cosgrove | Kevin Cosgrove | Kevin Cosgrove | Kevin Cosgrove | Kevin Cosgrove | Jordan Peterson | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||
| Offense | 48 | 70 | 68 | 57 | 95 | 13 | 8 | 22 | |
| Defense | 6 | 0 | 5 | 26 | 4 | 14 | 19 | 8 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 17.1 | 23.7 | 18.0 | 19.8 | 16.8 | 24.5 | 25.9 | 37.1 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 11.3 | 7.5 | 5.7 | 10.3 | 11.6 | 19.4 | 18.2 | 33.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 48.6 | 45.5 | 55.0 | 35.9 | 48.6 | 35.1 | 15.0 | 31.4 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
7th-best Notre Dame tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Lou Holtz (1986–1996) · succeeded by Tyrone Willingham (2002–2004).
| Season | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 7-6 | 9-3 | 5-7 | 9-3 | 5-6 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | L bowl | — | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | |
21 NFL Draft picks: Allen Rossum (1998), Luke Petitgout (1999), Jerry Wisne (1999), Mike Rosenthal (1999), Malcolm Johnson (1999), Hunter Smith (1999), Autry Denson (1999), Kory Minor (1999) + 13 more
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
3rd all-time at New Mexico
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+2.0 pts at New Mexico · #549 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.