Jeff Tedford
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 9-3
California’03W’04L’05W’06W’07W’08W’09L’11LFresno State’17W’18W’22W’23W
Show all 12 games
2003Insight BowlW 52-49
2004Holiday BowlL 31-45
2005Las Vegas BowlW 35-28
2006Holiday BowlW 45-10
2007Armed Forces BowlW 42-36
2008Emerald BowlW 24-17
2009Poinsettia BowlL 27-37
2011Holiday BowlL 10-21
Fresno State
2017Hawaii BowlW 33-27
2018Las Vegas BowlW 31-20
2022LA BowlW 29-6
2023New Mexico BowlW 37-10
Report card
Offense carries it: 80th percentile offense, above the median defense at 50th.
Fresno State, 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.
7-4 against his rivals at California. Winless in 4 tries against Chip Kelly.
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.
4-3 against his rivals at Fresno State. Nobody he faced three or more times there has a winning record against him.
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.
3-2 against his rivals at Fresno State. Nobody he faced three or more times there has a winning record against him.
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.
14-9 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Steve Sarkisian.
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
Passed more than the situation called for under DeBoer, Moore and McCann.
4,400 run and pass snaps at Fresno State, 2017–2023, 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 one ranked Fresno State class of his own finished #83 nationally.
His class — he had the full signing cycleTransition — he was hired mid-cycleInherited — signed before he arrived
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; inherited and mid-transition classes still show here, faded, but stay out of the average.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2023 roster arrived on his watch — 87 of 112 players. The other 25 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 14% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2017–2023Counting players who have since left: 16% of the 89 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 Fresno State rosters have averaged 3 lb lighter than the FBS average (2017–2023 (5 seasons)) — lighter than 77% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Fresno State’s line averaged 3 lb lighter 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: 131 of 162 signees (81%) across his 2017–2023 tenure, drawn from 17 states in all. Next: AZ (5).
87% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (AZ 5, NV 4, OR 1).
Off this map: 15 signees to the east (TX 4, LA 3, others), 3 to the north (WA 3) and 1 to the west (AK).
- median hometown distance
- 199 mi
- within 100 mi
- 21%
- within 500 mi
- 83%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 8%
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 2 of them himself; 2 arrived under Tim DeRuyter.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | R4.25 | Jake Haener | Quarterback |  New Orleans Saints | |
| 2020 | R4.13 | Mykal Walker | Inside Linebacker |  Atlanta Falcons | recruited under Tim DeRuyter |
| 2020 | R6.02 | Netane Muti | Offensive Guard |  Denver Broncos | |
| 2019 | R6.01 | Keesean Johnson | Wide Receiver |  Arizona Cardinals | recruited under Tim DeRuyter |
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
3rd-best Fresno State tenure of 12 by the numbers.
Followed Tim DeRuyter (2012–2016) · succeeded by Kalen DeBoer (2020–2021) · returned in 2022 · succeeded by Tim Skipper (2024).
| Season | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2022 | 2023 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 10-4 | 12-2 | 4-8 | 10-4 | 9-4 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | — | W bowl | W bowl | |
| Coordinators | ||||||
| OC | Kalen DeBoer | Kalen DeBoer | Ryan Grubb | Kirby Moore | Pat McCann | |
| DC | Orlondo Steinauer | Bert Watts | Bert Watts | Kevin Coyle | Kevin Coyle | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | 63 | 81 | 63 | 87 | 50 | |
| Defense | 92 | 91 | 47 | 81 | 51 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 39.9 | 44.9 | 43.4 | 53.9 | 57.6 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 31.9 | 40.0 | 42.6 | 45.6 | 55.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 17.0 | 19.0 | 25.0 | 20.6 | 20.0 | |
Outperforms 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.
3rd-best California tenure of 19 by the numbers.
Followed Tom Holmoe (1997–2001) · succeeded by Sonny Dykes (2013–2016).
| Season | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||||||
| Record | 7-5 | 8-6 | 10-2 | 8-4 | 10-3 | 7-6 | 9-4 | 8-5 | 5-7 | 7-6 | 3-9 | |
| Postseason | — | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | — | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | 100 | 78 | 91 | 91 | 25 | 55 | 19 | 56 | 59 | |
| Defense | — | — | 71 | 27 | 50 | 32 | 83 | 77 | 61 | 85 | 48 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | 36.5 | 39.6 | 54.6 | 46.2 | 39.7 | 42.3 | 37.9 | 42.1 | 35.8 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | 43.7 | 34.7 | 38.8 | 32.7 | 49.5 | 41.3 | 31.0 | 34.0 | 39.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | 29.6 | 12.5 | 15.4 | 17.1 | 21.1 | 16.7 | 19.0 | 29.6 | 17.1 | |
44 NFL Draft picks: Kyle Boller (2003), Nnamdi Asomugha (2003), Scott Tercero (2003), Tully Banta-Cain (2003), Mark Wilson (2004), Adimchinobe Echemandu (2004), Aaron Rodgers (2005), J.J. Arrington (2005) + 36 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 California
Was he good?
The data leans positive: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+19.7 pts at California · #73 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.