Chris Petersen
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 7-6
Boise State’06W’07L’08L’09W’10W’11W’12WWashington’14L’15W’16L’17L’18L’19W
Show all 13 games
2006Fiesta BowlW 43-42
2007Hawaii BowlL 38-41
2008Poinsettia BowlL 16-17
2009Fiesta BowlW 17-10
2010Maaco Bowl Las VegasW 26-3
2011Maaco Bowl Las VegasW 56-24
2012Maaco Bowl Las VegasW 28-26
Washington
2014Cactus BowlL 22-30
2015Heart of Dallas BowlW 44-31
2016 semiPeach BowlL 7-24
2017Fiesta BowlL 28-35
2018Rose BowlL 23-28
2019Las Vegas BowlW 38-7
Report card
Top-quarter on both sides of the ball — 82nd percentile offense, 86th percentile defense.
Washington, 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.
12-1 against his rivals at Boise State. Just 1-2 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.
8-4 against his rivals at Washington. Just 1-3 against Todd Graham.
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.
20-5 against his rivals. Just 2-4 against David Shaw.
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.
Defining games during this era
From our list of the 50 most defining games of the Playoff era, ranked by how much each game mattered, not by date.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for under every play-caller.
5,330 run and pass snaps at Washington, 2014–2019, 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 Washington classes of his own have averaged #16 nationally — best #15, worst #16.
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
Boise State→
Washington2014Players 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 — 107 of 107 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2014-2019) 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 Washington rosters have averaged 6 lb heavier than the FBS average (2014–2019) — heavier than 83% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Washington’s line averaged 10 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: 43 of 104 signees (41%) across his 2014–2019 tenure, drawn from 13 states in all. Next: WA (32).
51% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (OR 5, AZ 4, NV 1).
Off this map: 6 signees to the east (TX 4, MD, others) and 4 to the west (HI 4).
- median hometown distance
- 674 mi
- within 100 mi
- 34%
- within 500 mi
- 43%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 20%
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 14 of them himself; 12 arrived under Steve Sarkisian. 6 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | R4.16 | Jacob Eason | Quarterback |  Indianapolis Colts | |
| 2020 | R5.15 | Nick Harris | Center |  Cleveland Browns | |
| 2019 | R1.31 | Kaleb McGary | Offensive Tackle |  Atlanta Falcons | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2019 | R2.01 | Byron Murphy | Cornerback |  Arizona Cardinals | |
| 2019 | R2.20 | Drew Sample | Tight End |  Cincinnati Bengals | |
| 2019 | R2.29 | Taylor Rapp | Safety |  Los Angeles Rams | |
| 2019 | R4.32 | Greg Gaines | Defensive Tackle | Los Angeles Rams | |
| 2019 | R5.04 | Ben Burr-Kirven | Inside Linebacker |  Seattle Seahawks |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | R5.34 | Jordan Miller | Cornerback | Atlanta Falcons | |
| 2019 | R7.20 | Myles Gaskin | Running Back |  Miami Dolphins | |
| 2018 | R1.12 | Vita Vea | Defensive Tackle |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | |
| 2018 | R2.12 | Dante Pettis | Wide Receiver |  San Francisco 49ers | |
| 2018 | R4.20 | Will Dissly | Tight End | Seattle Seahawks | |
| 2018 | R6.42 | Azeem Victor | Inside Linebacker |  Oakland Raiders | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2018 | R6.43 | Keishawn Bierria | Outside Linebacker |  Denver Broncos | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2017 | R1.09 | John Ross | Wide Receiver | Cincinnati Bengals | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2017 | R2.01 | Kevin King | Cornerback |  Green Bay Packers | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2017 | R2.04 | Budda Baker | Safety | Arizona Cardinals | |
| 2017 | R2.11 | Sidney Jones | Cornerback |  Philadelphia Eagles | |
| 2017 | R6.31 | Elijah Qualls | Defensive Tackle | Philadelphia Eagles | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2016 | R6.45 | Travis Feeney | Outside Linebacker |  Pittsburgh Steelers | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2016 | R7.15 | Dwayne Washington | Running Back |  Detroit Lions | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2015 | R1.12 | Danny Shelton | Defensive Tackle | Cleveland Browns | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2015 | R1.18 | Marcus Peters | Cornerback |  Kansas City Chiefs | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2015 | R1.25 | Shaq Thompson | Outside Linebacker |  Carolina Panthers | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
| 2015 | R2.12 | Hau'Oli Kikaha | Outside Linebacker |  New Orleans Saints | recruited under Steve Sarkisian |
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.
Builder meaningfully raised a program that wasn't one
5th-best Washington tenure of 18 by the numbers.
Followed Steve Sarkisian (2009–2013) · succeeded by Jimmy Lake (2020–2021).
| Season | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||
| Record | 8-6 | 7-6 | 12-2 | 10-3 | 10-4 | 8-5 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | W bowl | CFP loss | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | |
| Coordinators | |||||||
| OC | Jonathan Smith | Jonathan Smith | Jonathan Smith | Jonathan Smith / Matt Lubick | Bush Hamdan / Matt Lubick | Bush Hamdan | |
| DC | Pete Kwiatkowski | Pete Kwiatkowski | Pete Kwiatkowski / Jimmy Lake | Pete Kwiatkowski / Jimmy Lake | Pete Kwiatkowski / Jimmy Lake | Pete Kwiatkowski / Jimmy Lake | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||
| Offense | 57 | 61 | 89 | 89 | 73 | 47 | |
| Defense | 82 | 90 | 95 | 76 | 90 | 96 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 38.9 | 45.2 | 48.7 | 43.4 | 32.4 | 46.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 38.0 | 35.9 | 55.2 | 38.2 | 31.7 | 47.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 26.3 | 26.7 | 18.8 | 16.7 | 36.0 | 49.0 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and outperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
1st-best Boise State tenure of 9 by the numbers.
Followed Dan Hawkins (2001–2005) · succeeded by Bryan Harsin (2014–2020).
| Season | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||
| Record | 13-0 | 10-3 | 12-1 | 14-0 | 12-1 | 12-1 | 11-2 | 8-4 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||
| Offense | 93 | 77 | 90 | 89 | 96 | 81 | 66 | 74 | |
| Defense | 74 | 79 | 95 | 96 | 100 | 80 | 71 | 52 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 27.8 | 33.6 | 41.5 | 42.0 | 47.9 | 43.4 | 41.8 | 40.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 25.5 | 30.9 | 42.8 | 38.2 | 40.8 | 41.7 | 37.1 | 34.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 51.6 | 45.7 | 22.0 | 34.1 | 30.0 | 39.1 | 34.9 | 44.4 | |
20 NFL Draft picks: Gerald Alexander (2007), Legedu Naanee (2007), Korey Hall (2007), Derek Schouman (2007), Ryan Clady (2008), Orlando Scandrick (2008), Kyle Wilson (2010), Titus Young (2011) + 12 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.
1st all-time at Boise State
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+18.4 pts at Washington · #81 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.