Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-1
2001Peach BowlW 16-10
2004Continental Tire BowlL 24-37
Report card
Above the median offense — 53rd percentile.
North Carolina, 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.
9-3 against his rivals. Just 1-4 against Chan Gailey.
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.
1,443 run and pass snaps at North Carolina, 2004–2006, 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. Play-by-play starts in 2004, so his earlier seasons there aren’t in it.
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
Three numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2006 roster arrived on his watch — 25 of 25 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2001-2006) 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: 17 of 46 signees (37%) across his 2001–2006 tenure, drawn from 11 states in all. Next: FL (6).
70% of his signees come from NC and its 4 border states (VA 6, GA 5, SC 4).
Off this map: 4 signees to the west (TX 3, CA) and 1 to the north (MA).
- median hometown distance
- 166 mi
- within 100 mi
- 0%
- within 500 mi
- 100%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 0%
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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | R7.17 | Chase Page | Defensive Tackle |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2005 | R4.23 | Jason Brown | Center |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2005 | R5.21 | Gerald Sensabaugh | Defensive Back |  Jacksonville Jaguars | Estimated |
| 2005 | R7.37 | Madison Hedgecock | Running Back |  St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| 2004 | R4.17 | Dexter Reid | Defensive Back |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2004 | R4.28 | Michael Waddell | Defensive Back |  Tennessee Titans | Estimated |
| 2004 | R5.14 | Jeb Terry | Offensive Guard |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| 2003 | R4.30 | Sam Aiken | Wide Receiver |  Buffalo Bills | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | R1.02 | Julius Peppers | Defensive End |  Carolina Panthers | Estimated |
| 2002 | R1.06 | Ryan Sims | Defensive Tackle |  Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2002 | R4.08 | David Thornton | Linebacker |  Indianapolis Colts | Estimated |
| 2002 | R7.08 | Joey Evans | Defensive End |  Cincinnati Bengals | Estimated |
| 2002 | R7.24 | Ronald Curry | Quarterback |  Oakland Raiders | Estimated |
| 2002 | R7.34 | Quincy Monk | Linebacker |  New York Giants | 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
6th-best North Carolina tenure of 17 by the numbers.
Followed Carl Torbush (1998–2000) · succeeded by Butch Davis (2007–2010).
| Season | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||
| Record | 8-5 | 3-9 | 2-10 | 6-6 | 5-6 | 3-9 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | — | — | L bowl | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | 82 | 27 | 42 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | 0 | 59 | 4 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | 26.4 | 33.8 | 28.8 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | 36.4 | 32.9 | 33.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | 42.9 | 25.0 | 26.9 | |
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
-9.2 pts at North Carolina · #1189 of 1290 · bottom quarter