Houston Nutt
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 4-5
Arkansas’98L’99W’00L’01L’02L’03W’06LOle Miss’08W’09W
Show all 9 games
1998Florida Citrus BowlL 31-45
1999Cotton Bowl ClassicW 27-6
2000Las Vegas BowlL 14-31
2001Cotton Bowl ClassicL 3-10
2002Music City BowlL 14-29
2003Independence BowlW 27-14
2006Capital One BowlL 14-17
Ole Miss
2008Cotton Bowl ClassicW 47-34
2009Cotton Bowl ClassicW 21-7
Report card
Above the median offense — 55th percentile.
Ole Miss, 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
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.
1-0 against his rivals at Boise State.
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.
5-6 against his rivals at Arkansas. Winless in 4 tries against Mark Richt.
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.
5-5 against his rivals at Ole Miss. Winless in 4 tries 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.
11-11 against his rivals. Winless in 5 tries against Mark Richt.
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.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
2,485 run and pass snaps at Ole Miss, 2008–2011, 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
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Followed him here
Boise State→
Arkansas1998Arkansas→
Ole Miss2008Players 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 2011 roster arrived on his watch — 121 of 121 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2008-2011) 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.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 29 of 83 signees (35%) across his 2008–2011 tenure, drawn from 15 states in all. Next: FL (14).
49% of his signees come from MS and its 4 border states (AR 6, AL 3, TN 2, LA 1).
Off this map: 2 signees to the north (IL, NY) and 1 to the west (CA).
- median hometown distance
- 263 mi
- within 100 mi
- 12%
- within 500 mi
- 77%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 2%
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 can be traced to who brought them in — there’s no roster record for these players here. 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | R4.17 | Bobby Massie | Offensive Tackle |  Arizona Cardinals | Estimated |
| 2011 | R6.34 | Jerrell Powe | Defensive Tackle |  Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2010 | R2.04 | Dexter McCluster | Running Back | Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2010 | R3.09 | John Jerry | Offensive Guard |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 2010 | R5.05 | Kendrick Lewis | Safety | Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2010 | R6.06 | Greg Hardy | Defensive End |  Carolina Panthers | Estimated |
| 2009 | R1.23 | Michael Oher | Offensive Tackle |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2009 | R1.24 | Peria Jerry | Defensive Tackle |  Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | R3.20 | Mike Wallace | Wide Receiver |  Pittsburgh Steelers | Estimated |
| 2009 | R7.22 | Jamarca Sanford | Safety |  Minnesota Vikings | 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.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
10th-best Ole Miss tenure of 17 by the numbers.
Followed Ed Orgeron (2005–2007) · succeeded by Hugh Freeze (2012–2016).
| Season | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 9-4 | 9-4 | 4-8 | 2-10 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 79 | 46 | 28 | 7 | |
| Defense | 85 | 90 | 34 | 20 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 31.2 | 33.2 | 29.0 | 30.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 38.3 | 35.2 | 26.3 | 26.4 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 22.5 | 28.2 | 38.1 | 6.9 | |
8th-best Arkansas tenure of 22 by the numbers.
Followed Danny Ford (1993–1997) · succeeded by Bobby Petrino (2008–2011).
| Season | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||
| Record | 9-3 | 8-4 | 6-6 | 7-5 | 9-5 | 9-4 | 5-6 | 4-7 | 10-4 | 8-4 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | — | — | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | 83 | 29 | 23 | 32 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | 10 | 67 | 98 | 77 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | 30.2 | 24.6 | 21.8 | 25.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | 30.1 | 52.2 | 29.3 | 27.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | 66.7 | 29.6 | 20.0 | 18.8 | |
32 NFL Draft picks: Brandon Burlsworth (1999), Melvin Bradley (1999), Madre Hill (1999), Ryan Hale (1999), Kenoy Kennedy (2000), Bobbie Williams (2000), David Barrett (2000), Anthony Lucas (2000) + 24 more
Followed Tom Mason (1996) · succeeded by Dirk Koetter (1998–2000).
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 Arkansas
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+11.9 pts at Arkansas · #175 of 1290 · top quarter