Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 8-9
Texas Tech’00L’01L’02W’03W’04W’05L’06W’07W’08LWashington State’13L’15W’16L’17L’18W’19LMississippi State’20W’21L
Show all 17 games
2000Galleryfurniture.com BowlL 27-40
2001Alamo BowlL 16-19
2002Tangerine BowlW 55-15
2003Houston BowlW 38-14
2004Holiday BowlW 45-31
2005Cotton BowlL 10-13
2006Insight BowlW 44-41
2007Gator BowlW 31-28
2008Cotton Bowl ClassicL 34-47
Washington State
2013New Mexico BowlL 45-48
2015Sun BowlW 20-14
2016Holiday BowlL 12-17
2017Holiday BowlL 17-42
2018Alamo BowlW 28-26
2019Cheez-It BowlL 21-31
Mississippi State
2020Armed Forces BowlW 28-26
2021Liberty BowlL 7-34
Report card
Offense carries it: 75th percentile offense, above the median defense at 69th.
Mississippi 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.
18-12 against his rivals at Texas Tech. Just 2-8 against Mack Brown.
Signature games
These losses tie at the model's current max -- an editorial pick among a real tie, not a clean ranking.
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 at Washington State. Winless in 6 tries against Chris Petersen.
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.
1-2 against his rivals at Mississippi State. Winless in 3 tries against Nick Saban.
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.
20-21 against his rivals. Winless in 6 tries against Chris Petersen.
Signature games
These losses tie at the model's current max -- an editorial pick among a real tie, not a clean ranking.
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.
2,573 run and pass snaps at Mississippi State, 2020–2022, 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 Mississippi State classes of his own have averaged #26 nationally — best #25, worst #27.
Washington State
Mississippi StateAcross every program: 4 ranked classes of his own, averaging #41 nationally.
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
Washington State→Mississippi State2020Players 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 2022 roster arrived on his watch — 95 of 114 players. The other 19 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 15% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2020–2022Counting players who have since left: 17% of the 84 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 Mississippi State rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2020–2022). In the three seasons before he arrived, Mississippi State’s line averaged 17 lb heavier 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: 31 of 62 signees (50%) across his 2020–2022 tenure, drawn from 9 states in all. Next: TX (8).
68% of his signees come from MS and its 4 border states (AL 4, LA 4, TN 3).
Off this map: 2 signees to the west (AZ, TX) and 1 to the east (FL).
- median hometown distance
- 161 mi
- within 100 mi
- 19%
- within 500 mi
- 85%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 5%
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. Most were someone else’s recruits: 5 arrived under Joe Moorhead (3), Dan Mullen (2); 1 he brought in himself. 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2023 | R1.16 | Emmanuel Forbes | Cornerback |  Washington Commanders | |
| 2023 | R4.21 | Cameron Young | Defensive Tackle |  Seattle Seahawks | recruited under Joe Moorhead |
| 2022 | R1.09 | Charles Cross | Offensive Tackle | Seattle Seahawks | recruited under Joe Moorhead |
| 2022 | R3.04 | Martin Emerson | Cornerback |  Cleveland Browns | recruited under Joe Moorhead |
| 2021 | R7.26 | Marquiss Spencer | Defensive End |  Denver Broncos | recruited under Dan Mullen |
| 2021 | R7.29 | Kylin Hill | Running Back |  Green Bay Packers | recruited under Dan Mullen |
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
2nd-best Mississippi State tenure of 20 by the numbers.
Followed Joe Moorhead (2018–2019) · succeeded by Zach Arnett (2022–2023).
| Season | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 4-7 | 7-6 | 8-4 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||
| OC | — | — | — | |
| DC | Zach Arnett | Zach Arnett | Zach Arnett | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 15 | 77 | 50 | |
| Defense | 72 | 44 | 90 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 75.9 | 73.2 | 65.2 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 65.8 | 73.4 | 69.4 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 41.9 | 27.8 | 45.2 | |
Performs about as expected for 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.
2 player-seasons honored (All-America / national award): Charles Cross (2021), Emmanuel Forbes (2022)
5th-best Washington State tenure of 21 by the numbers.
Followed Paul Wulff (2008–2011) · succeeded by Nick Rolovich (2020–2021).
| Season | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||
| Record | 3-9 | 6-7 | 3-9 | 9-4 | 8-5 | 9-4 | 11-2 | 6-7 | |
| Postseason | — | L bowl | — | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||
| OC | — | — | — | Mike Leach | Mike Leach | Mike Leach | Mike Leach | Mike Leach | |
| DC | — | — | Mike Breske | Alex Grinch | Alex Grinch | Alex Grinch | Tracy Claeys | Tracy Claeys / Darcel McBath / Roc Bellantoni (interim; games 6–13) | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||
| Offense | 21 | 46 | 61 | 50 | 68 | 51 | 87 | 74 | |
| Defense | 67 | 60 | 14 | 62 | 46 | 67 | 24 | 15 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 68.8 | 75.5 | 73.0 | 68.3 | 62.9 | 67.0 | 65.0 | 77.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 74.3 | 75.0 | 77.3 | 70.7 | 59.5 | 67.5 | 62.0 | 78.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 46.2 | 40.0 | 48.8 | 45.9 | 52.4 | 22.2 | 54.8 | 41.9 | |
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
11 NFL Draft picks: Marquess Wilson (2013), Deone Bucannon (2014), Xavier Cooper (2015), Vince Mayle (2015), Joe Dahl (2016), Shalom Luani (2017), Cole Madison (2018), Luke Falk (2018) + 3 more
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Gardner Minshew (2018)
1st-best Texas Tech tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Spike Dykes (1986–1999) · succeeded by Tommy Tuberville (2010–2012).
| Season | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||
| Record | 7-6 | 7-5 | 9-5 | 8-5 | 8-4 | 9-3 | 8-5 | 9-4 | 11-2 | 8-4 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | 97 | 99 | 95 | 95 | 100 | 85 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | 52 | 51 | 32 | 78 | 3 | 63 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | 65.1 | 68.0 | 74.7 | 79.3 | 71.5 | 68.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | 62.2 | 66.1 | 67.8 | 74.8 | 60.9 | 57.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | 55.9 | 35.1 | 43.8 | 55.6 | 50.0 | 54.5 | |
18 NFL Draft picks: Kris Kocurek (2001), Kevin Curtis (2002), Aaron Hunt (2003), Kliff Kingsbury (2003), Carlos Francis (2004), B.J. Symons (2004), Dylan Gandy (2005), Daniel Loper (2005) + 10 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 Texas Tech
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+12.5 pts at Texas Tech · #159 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.