Jim Grobe
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 4-2
2002Seattle BowlW 38-17
2006Orange BowlL 13-24
2007Meineke Car Care BowlW 24-10
2008EagleBank BowlW 29-19
2011Music City BowlL 17-23
Baylor
2016Cactus BowlW 31-12
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.
1-5 against his rivals at Ohio. Winless in 4 tries against Randy Walker.
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.
Winless in 5 tries against Dabo Swinney.
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.
0-2 against his rivals at Baylor.
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.
1-7 against his rivals. Winless in 5 tries against Dabo Swinney.
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
Called about what the situation called for.
1,090 run and pass snaps at Baylor, 2016–2016, 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.
Followed him here
Ohio→
Wake Forest2001Players 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 2016 roster arrived on his watch — 37 of 108 players. The other 71 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2016-2016) 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 Wake Forest rosters have averaged 5 lb heavier than the FBS average (2010–2013 rosters on record).
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: 14 of 18 signees (78%) across his 2016–2016 tenure, drawn from 4 states in all. Next: CA (2).
- median hometown distance
- 117 mi
- within 100 mi
- 37%
- within 500 mi
- 85%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 6%
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 were his own recruits yet: all 1 roster-verified picks arrived under Art Briles.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | R7.25 | Kyle Fuller | Center |  Houston Texans | recruited under Art Briles |
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
Followed Art Briles (2008–2015) · succeeded by Matt Rhule (2017–2019).
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
3rd-best Wake Forest tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Jim Caldwell (1993–2000) · succeeded by Dave Clawson (2014–2024).
| Season | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||||||||
| Record | 6-5 | 7-6 | 5-7 | 4-7 | 4-7 | 11-3 | 9-4 | 8-5 | 5-7 | 3-9 | 6-7 | 5-7 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | — | W bowl | — | — | — | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | — | — | L bowl | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | 42 | 17 | 70 | 27 | 26 | 66 | 12 | 28 | 5 | 13 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | 17 | 84 | 35 | 91 | 65 | 20 | 15 | 81 | 31 | 84 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | 27.8 | 32.8 | 35.7 | 37.8 | 36.9 | 44.5 | 38.3 | 49.3 | 53.0 | 54.8 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | 10.5 | 20.4 | 31.7 | 27.8 | 28.7 | 45.1 | 30.0 | 54.5 | 31.9 | 41.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | 40.7 | 26.7 | 11.6 | 28.6 | 22.2 | 21.6 | 40.0 | 27.9 | 42.9 | 22.9 | |
22 NFL Draft picks: Calvin Pace (2003), Ovie Mughelli (2003), Montique Sharpe (2003), Eric King (2005), Ryan Plackemeier (2006), Josh Gattis (2007), Steve Vallos (2007), Jeremy Thompson (2008) + 14 more
9th-best Ohio tenure of 11 by the numbers.
Followed Tom Lichtenberg (1990–1994) · succeeded by Brian Knorr (2001–2004).
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.
tied for 1st all-time at Wake Forest
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+15.4 pts at Wake Forest · #114 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.