Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 6-4
Ole Miss’99W’00L’02W’03WDuke’12L’13L’14L’15W’17W’18W
Show all 10 games
1999Independence BowlW 27-25
2000Music City BowlL 38-49
2002Independence BowlW 27-23
2003Cotton Bowl ClassicW 31-28
Duke
2012Belk BowlL 34-48
2013Chick-fil-A BowlL 48-52
2014Sun BowlL 31-36
2015Pinstripe BowlW 44-41
2017Quick Lane BowlW 36-14
2018Independence BowlW 56-27
Report card
Above the median on both sides of the ball — 53rd percentile offense, 60th percentile defense.
Duke, 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.
8-8 against his rivals at Ole Miss. Just 1-4 against Nick Saban.
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.
5-9 against his rivals at Duke. Winless in 6 tries against Bronco Mendenhall.
Signature games
These losses tie at the model's current max -- an editorial pick among a real tie, not a clean ranking.
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.
13-17 against his rivals. Winless in 6 tries against Bronco Mendenhall.
Signature games
These losses tie at the model's current max -- an editorial pick among a real tie, not a clean ranking.
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
Passed more than the situation called for under Montgomery and Roper.
10,628 run and pass snaps at Duke, 2008–2021, 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 4 ranked Duke classes of his own have averaged #58 nationally — best #49, worst #63.
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 2021 roster arrived on his watch — 107 of 107 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 11% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2008–2021Counting players who have since left: 11% of the 28 arrivals we can classify came through the portal.
This tenure spans the 2021 transfer-portal tracking floor: seasons before 2021 structurally cannot be classified portal-vs-not (they land in 'unknown' below), so the portal-share figure understates how many pre-2021 arrivals might have been transfers under the pre-portal-tracking transfer rules.
“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 Duke rosters have averaged 5 lb lighter than the FBS average (2010–2021 rosters on record) — lighter than 86% of FBS coaching runs since 2010.
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: 53 of 213 signees (25%) across his 2008–2021 tenure, drawn from 26 states in all. Next: GA (38).
56% of his signees come from NC and its 4 border states (GA 38, SC 12, VA 10, TN 7).
Off this map: 16 signees to the west (CA 10, AZ 2, others).
- median hometown distance
- 396 mi
- within 100 mi
- 10%
- within 500 mi
- 71%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 13%
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 8 of them himself. 1 more can’t be traced to who brought them in (no roster record). 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | R4.13 | Chris Rumph II | Outside Linebacker |  Los Angeles Chargers | |
| 2021 | R5.10 | Michael Carter II | Safety |  New York Jets | |
| 2021 | R5.18 | Noah Gray | Tight End |  Kansas City Chiefs | |
| 2021 | R6.26 | Victor Dimukeje | Defensive End |  Arizona Cardinals | |
| 2019 | R1.06 | Daniel Jones | Quarterback |  New York Giants | |
| 2015 | R1.28 | Laken Tomlinson | Offensive Guard |  Detroit Lions | |
| 2015 | R4.06 | Jamison Crowder | Wide Receiver |  Washington Redskins | |
| 2014 | R4.09 | Ross Cockrell | Cornerback |  Buffalo Bills |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | R7.43 | Sean Renfree | Quarterback |  Atlanta Falcons | 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.
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 · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
5th-best Duke tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Ted Roof (2003–2007) · succeeded by Mike Elko (2022–2023).
| Season | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||||||
| Record | 4-8 | 5-7 | 3-9 | 3-9 | 6-7 | 10-4 | 9-4 | 8-5 | 4-8 | 7-6 | 8-5 | 5-7 | 2-9 | 3-9 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | — | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | — | W bowl | W bowl | — | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||||||||
| OC | — | — | — | — | — | — | Scottie Montgomery | Scottie Montgomery | Zac Roper | Zac Roper | Zac Roper | Zac Roper | Zac Roper | Jeff Faris / Re'quan Boyette | |
| DC | — | — | — | — | — | — | Jim Knowles | Jim Knowles | Jim Knowles | Jim Knowles | Ben Albert / Matt Guerrieri | Ben Albert / Matt Guerrieri | Ben Albert / Matt Guerrieri | Ben Albert / Matt Guerrieri | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||||||
| Offense | 4 | 29 | 37 | 34 | 53 | 56 | 39 | 36 | 36 | 20 | 40 | 4 | 17 | 7 | |
| Defense | 60 | 37 | 1 | 1 | 8 | 16 | 42 | 27 | 30 | 82 | 47 | 59 | 7 | 0 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 42.2 | 52.6 | 46.1 | 47.6 | 47.0 | 39.3 | 44.7 | 40.3 | 47.4 | 51.3 | 56.0 | 50.7 | 47.9 | 47.9 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 46.9 | 58.9 | 41.4 | 37.1 | 47.6 | 30.3 | 39.4 | 43.2 | 32.9 | 39.0 | 39.8 | 38.8 | 38.4 | 21.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 32.6 | 32.0 | 31.1 | 40.0 | 41.0 | 40.0 | 36.4 | 29.9 | 42.4 | 35.4 | 44.7 | 36.1 | 42.3 | 41.7 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
Brings in smaller-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): David Helton (2014)
11th-best Ole Miss tenure of 17 by the numbers.
Followed Tommy Tuberville (1995–1998) · succeeded by Ed Orgeron (2005–2007).
| Season | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||
| Record | 1-0 | 8-4 | 7-5 | 7-4 | 7-6 | 10-3 | 4-7 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | — | W bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | 49 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | 73 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | 37.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | 32.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | 21.9 | |
15 NFL Draft picks: Todd Wade (2000), Kendrick Clancy (2000), Tutan Reyes (2000), Deuce McAllister (2001), Ken Lucas (2001), Derrick Burgess (2001), Terrence Metcalf (2002), Ben Claxton (2003) + 7 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.
2nd all-time at Duke
Was he good?
A mixed record — ahead of expectations by some measures here, behind by others. The honest read is that it depends which lens you use.
+21.9 pts at Duke · #54 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.