Jonathan Smith
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-1
2021LA BowlL 13-24
2022Las Vegas BowlW 30-3
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.
2-4 against his rivals at Oregon State. Winless in 3 tries against Nick Rolovich.
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.
0-3 against his rivals at Michigan State.
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.
2-7 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Nick Rolovich.
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.
1,484 run and pass snaps at Michigan State, 2024–2025, 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
Six numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 2 ranked Michigan State classes of his own have averaged #50 nationally — best #42, worst #57.
Oregon State
Michigan StateAcross every program: 8 ranked classes of his own, averaging #62 nationally.
His class — he had the full signing cycle
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.
Followed him here
Oregon State→Michigan State2024- Aidan Chiles QB
- Jack Velling TE
Players 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 2025 roster arrived on his watch — 92 of 120 players. The other 28 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 35% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2024–2025Counting players who have since left: 33% of the 111 arrivals we can classify came through the 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 Oregon State rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2018–2023). In the three seasons before he arrived, Oregon State’s line averaged within a few pounds of 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: 16 of 46 signees (35%) across his 2024–2025 tenure, drawn from 14 states in all. Next: OH (5).
46% of his signees come from MI and its 3 border states (OH 5).
- median hometown distance
- 440 mi
- within 100 mi
- 36%
- within 500 mi
- 55%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 22%
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; 1 arrived under Mel Tucker.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | R6.28 | Matt Gulbin | Center |  Washington Commanders | |
| 2026 | R6.30 | Ryan Eckley | Punter |  Baltimore Ravens | recruited under Mel Tucker |
| 2025 | R6.19 | Luke Newman | Offensive Tackle |  Chicago Bears |
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.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
Followed Harlon Barnett (2023) · succeeded by Pat Fitzgerald (2026–now).
| Season | 2024 | 2025 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||
| Record | 5-7 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||
| OC | Brian Lindgren | Brian Lindgren | |
| DC | Joe Rossi | Joe Rossi | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||
| Offense | 24 | 32 | |
| Defense | 41 | 41 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||
| 1st-down pass% | 47.2 | 43.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 42.0 | 38.9 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 40.0 | 50.0 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
7th-best Oregon State tenure of 17 by the numbers.
Followed Cory Hall (2017) · succeeded by Trent Bray (2024–2025).
| Season | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||
| Record | 2-10 | 5-7 | 2-5 | 7-6 | 10-3 | 8-4 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||
| OC | Brian Lindgren | Brian Lindgren | Brian Lindgren | Brian Lindgren | Brian Lindgren | Brian Lindgren | |
| DC | Tim Tibesar | Tim Tibesar | Tim Tibesar | Tim Tibesar | Trent Bray | Trent Bray | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||
| Offense | 28 | 67 | 71 | 85 | 65 | 74 | |
| Defense | 1 | 31 | 5 | 34 | 90 | 61 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 44.1 | 50.7 | 51.7 | 38.9 | 37.8 | 42.1 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 39.3 | 37.2 | 28.8 | 25.2 | 26.8 | 35.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 51.1 | 50.0 | 52.4 | 41.4 | 43.6 | 48.5 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
Barely touches the portal — recruits and develops his own.
Brings in bigger-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
11 NFL Draft picks: Jake Luton (2020), Blake Brandel (2020), Isaiah Hodgins (2020), Nahshon Wright (2021), Jermar Jefferson (2021), Teagan Quitoriano (2022), Luke Musgrave (2023), Alex Austin (2023) + 3 more
2 player-seasons honored (All-America / national award): Anthony Gould (2022), Taliese Fuaga (2023)
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+4.0 pts at Oregon State · #437 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.