Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 4-4
2004Peach BowlL 10-27
Louisville
2010Beef 'O' Brady's BowlW 31-28
2011Belk BowlL 24-31
2012Sugar BowlW 33-23
2013Russell Athletic BowlW 36-9Texas
2014Texas BowlL 7-31
South Florida
2017Birmingham BowlW 38-34
2018Gasparilla BowlL 20-38
Report card
Above the median on both sides of the ball — 57th percentile offense, 56th percentile defense.
South Florida, 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.
5-3 against his rivals at Louisville. Just 1-2 against Butch Jones.
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.
3-3 against his rivals at Texas. Winless in 3 tries against Gary Patterson.
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.
0-3 against his rivals at South Florida. Just 1-2 against Geoff Collins.
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.
8-9 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Gary Patterson.
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
Called about what the situation called for under every play-caller.
2,617 run and pass snaps at South Florida, 2017–2019, 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
Six numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 2 ranked South Florida classes of his own have averaged #71 nationally — best #65, worst #77.
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.
Followed him here
Louisville→
Texas2014Texas→
South Florida2017Players who transferred from his old program to his new one through the portal in the same year he made the move. Name-matching across data sources misses some, so every count is a floor, not an exact number.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2019 roster arrived on his watch — 100 of 113 players. The other 13 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2017-2019) 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 South Florida rosters have averaged 7 lb heavier than the FBS average (2017–2019) — heavier than 87% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, South Florida’s line averaged 4 lb heavier 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: 56 of 65 signees (86%) across his 2017–2019 tenure, drawn from 4 states in all. Next: GA (7).
- median hometown distance
- 139 mi
- within 100 mi
- 38%
- within 500 mi
- 91%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 4%
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 were his own recruits yet: all 2 roster-verified picks arrived under Willie Taggart.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | R3.26 | Deadrin Senat | Defensive Tackle |  Atlanta Falcons | recruited under Willie Taggart |
| 2018 | R5.37 | Marquez Valdes-Scantling | Wide Receiver |  Green Bay Packers | recruited under Willie Taggart |
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
3rd-best South Florida tenure of 9 by the numbers.
Followed Willie Taggart (2013–2016) · succeeded by Jeff Scott (2020–2022).
| Season | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 10-2 | 7-6 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||
| OC | Sterlin Gilbert | Sterlin Gilbert | Kerwin Bell | |
| DC | Brian Jean-Mary | Brian Jean-Mary | Brian Jean-Mary | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 68 | 36 | 24 | |
| Defense | 79 | 21 | 53 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 33.4 | 37.6 | 39.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 29.5 | 27.8 | 40.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 36.7 | 36.6 | 30.8 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
7th-best Texas tenure of 12 by the numbers.
Followed Mack Brown (1998–2013) · succeeded by Tom Herman (2017–2020).
| Season | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 6-7 | 5-7 | 5-7 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | — | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||
| OC | Joe Wickline | Jay Norvell / Joe Wickline | Sterlin Gilbert | |
| DC | Vance Bedford | Vance Bedford | Vance Bedford | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 18 | 43 | 30 | |
| Defense | 87 | 49 | 55 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 36.7 | 28.8 | 37.7 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 24.7 | 23.1 | 27.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 25.0 | 25.7 | 34.6 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
7 NFL Draft picks: Malcom Brown (2015), Jordan Hicks (2015), Mykkele Thompson (2015), Quandre Diggs (2015), Geoff Swaim (2015), Hassan Ridgeway (2016), D'Onta Foreman (2017)
3rd-best Louisville tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Steve Kragthorpe (2007–2009) · succeeded by Bobby Petrino (2014–2018).
| Season | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 7-6 | 7-6 | 11-2 | 12-1 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 48 | 57 | 91 | 97 | |
| Defense | 63 | 71 | 65 | 92 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 36.9 | 38.6 | 41.9 | 37.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 37.4 | 33.9 | 32.8 | 36.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 25.0 | 13.3 | 18.9 | 7.4 | |
8 NFL Draft picks: Johnny Patrick (2011), Bilal Powell (2011), Byron Stingily (2011), Greg Scruggs (2012), Calvin Pryor (2014), Marcus Smith (2014), Teddy Bridgewater (2014), Preston Brown (2014)
Followed Ron Zook (2002–2004) · succeeded by Urban Meyer (2005–2010).
3 NFL Draft picks: Channing Crowder (2005), Ciatrick Fason (2005), Reynaldo Hill (2005)
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+6.2 pts at Louisville · #337 of 1290 · middle half