David Elson
Now
Career arc
Report card
Above the median offense — 55th percentile.
Western Kentucky, 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.
1-2 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Larry Blakeney.
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.
1,022 run and pass snaps at Western Kentucky, 2008–2009, 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.
Building the roster
One numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
This coach's entire tenure (2007-2009) 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.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
4th-best Western Kentucky tenure of 6 by the numbers.
Succeeded by Willie Taggart (2010–2012).
| Season | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 7-5 | 2-10 | 0-12 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | — | 12 | 51 | |
| Defense | — | 40 | 13 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 29.6 | 31.2 | 36.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 31.7 | 20.6 | 37.2 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 36.8 | 35.1 | 18.2 | |