Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 4-3
2008Armed Forces BowlW 34-28
2009Armed Forces BowlL 20-47Texas A&M
2012Cotton Bowl ClassicW 41-13
2013Chick-fil-A BowlW 52-48
2014Liberty BowlW 45-37
2015Music City BowlL 21-27
2016Texas BowlL 28-33
Report card
Offense carries it: 51st percentile offense, bottom-quarter defense at 22nd.
Arizona, 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.
2-2 against his rivals at Houston. Just 1-2 against Larry Fedora.
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.
0-5 against his rivals at Texas A&M. Winless in 4 tries against Les Miles.
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 Arizona. Winless in 3 tries against Clay Helton.
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.
2-10 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Les Miles.
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.
2,095 run and pass snaps at Arizona, 2018–2020, 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 Arizona classes of his own have averaged #58 nationally — best #54, worst #62.
His class — he had the full signing cycleTransition — he was hired mid-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; inherited and mid-transition classes still show here, faded, but stay out of the average.
Followed him here
Houston→
Texas A&M2012Texas A&M→
Arizona2018Players 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 2020 roster arrived on his watch — 95 of 121 players. The other 26 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2018-2020) 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 Arizona rosters have averaged 3 lb heavier than the FBS average (2018–2020). In the three seasons before he arrived, Arizona’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: 17 of 47 signees (36%) across his 2018–2020 tenure, drawn from 16 states in all. Next: TX (10).
53% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (AZ 6, NV 1, OR 1).
1 signee without a plottable hometown location not shown.
- median hometown distance
- 440 mi
- within 100 mi
- 15%
- within 500 mi
- 55%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 21%
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 Rich Rodriguez.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | R6.11 | Roy Lopez | Defensive Tackle |  Houston Texans | |
| 2021 | R6.12 | Gary Brightwell | Running Back |  New York Giants | recruited under Rich Rodriguez |
| 2019 | R7.15 | PJ Johnson | Defensive Tackle |  Detroit Lions |
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
11th-best Arizona tenure of 20 by the numbers.
Followed Rich Rodriguez (2012–2017) · succeeded by Jedd Fisch (2021–2023).
| Season | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 5-7 | 4-8 | 0-5 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||
| OC | Noel Mazzone | Noel Mazzone | Noel Mazzone | |
| DC | Marcel Yates | Marcel Yates / Chuck Cecil | Paul Rhoads | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 62 | 43 | 14 | |
| Defense | 34 | 16 | 22 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 39.1 | 46.5 | 49.2 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 39.7 | 50.6 | 42.9 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 29.7 | 29.0 | 23.5 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
7th-best Texas A&M tenure of 19 by the numbers.
Followed Mike Sherman (2008–2011) · succeeded by Jimbo Fisher (2018–2023).
| Season | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||
| Record | 11-2 | 9-4 | 8-5 | 8-5 | 8-5 | 7-5 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | |
| Coordinators | |||||||
| OC | — | — | Jake Spavital | Jake Spavital | Noel Mazzone | Noel Mazzone | |
| DC | — | — | Mark Snyder | John Chavis | John Chavis | John Chavis | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||
| Offense | 100 | 95 | 58 | 29 | 76 | 54 | |
| Defense | 71 | 15 | 22 | 70 | 54 | 53 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 49.3 | 51.8 | 49.3 | 47.1 | 45.1 | 42.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 33.1 | 41.8 | 50.0 | 42.2 | 49.1 | 42.9 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 27.6 | 41.7 | 40.7 | 21.7 | 29.3 | 25.6 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
21 NFL Draft picks: Luke Joeckel (2013), Christine Michael (2013), Damontre Moore (2013), Sean Porter (2013), Ryan Swope (2013), Jake Matthews (2014), Mike Evans (2014), Johnny Manziel (2014) + 13 more
14th-best Houston tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Art Briles (2003–2007) · succeeded by Tony Levine (2012–2014).
| Season | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 8-5 | 10-4 | 5-7 | 12-1 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 98 | 99 | 79 | 97 | |
| Defense | 61 | 5 | 11 | 77 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 57.7 | 62.9 | 46.3 | 62.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 51.4 | 52.0 | 40.0 | 42.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 37.5 | 27.7 | 40.0 | 36.0 | |
2 NFL Draft picks: Sebastian Vollmer (2009), Fendi Onobun (2010)
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 Houston
Was he good?
A mixed record — ahead of expectations by some measures here, behind by others. The honest read is that it depends which lens you use.
+11.0 pts at Houston · #191 of 1290 · top quarter