Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 7-3
Oregon State’03W’04W’06W’07W’08W’09L’12L’13WNebraska’15W’16L
Show all 10 games
2003Las Vegas BowlW 55-14
2004Insight BowlW 38-21
2006Sun BowlW 39-38
2007Emerald BowlW 21-14
2008Sun BowlW 3-0
2009Maaco Bowl Las VegasL 20-44
2012Alamo BowlL 27-31
2013Hawaii BowlW 38-23
Nebraska
2015Foster Farms BowlW 37-29
2016Music City BowlL 24-38
Report card
Above the median on both sides of the ball — 59th percentile offense, 60th percentile defense.
Nebraska, 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.
1-1 against his rivals at Oregon State.
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.
3-9 against his rivals at Oregon State. Winless in 4 tries against Chip Kelly.
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.
0-6 against his rivals at Nebraska. Winless in 3 tries against Kirk Ferentz.
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.
4-16 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Chip Kelly.
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
Passed more than the situation called for under Langsdorf.
2,670 run and pass snaps at Nebraska, 2015–2017, 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
Oregon State→
Nebraska2015Players 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 2017 roster arrived on his watch — 89 of 125 players. The other 36 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2015-2017) 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 Nebraska rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2015–2017). In the three seasons before he arrived, Nebraska’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: 8 of 55 signees (15%) across his 2015–2017 tenure, drawn from 21 states in all. Next: FL (6).
20% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (NV 3).
- median hometown distance
- 439 mi
- within 100 mi
- 29%
- within 500 mi
- 55%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 25%
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 Bo Pelini; 1 he brought in himself.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | R6.29 | Tanner Lee | Quarterback |  Jacksonville Jaguars | |
| 2017 | R5.41 | Nathan Gerry | Safety |  Philadelphia Eagles | recruited under Bo Pelini |
| 2016 | R3.04 | Maliek Collins | Defensive Tackle |  Dallas Cowboys | recruited under Bo Pelini |
| 2016 | R3.33 | Vincent Valentine | Defensive Tackle |  New England Patriots | recruited under Bo Pelini |
| 2016 | R4.32 | Alex Lewis | Offensive Tackle |  Baltimore Ravens | recruited under Bo Pelini |
| 2016 | R6.01 | Andy Janovich | Fullback |  Denver Broncos | recruited under Bo Pelini |
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.
Inheritor inherited a power and neither built it higher nor let it collapse · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
7th-best Nebraska tenure of 18 by the numbers.
Followed Bo Pelini (2008–2014) · succeeded by Scott Frost (2018–2022).
| Season | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 6-7 | 9-4 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||
| OC | Danny Langsdorf | Danny Langsdorf | Danny Langsdorf | |
| DC | Mark Banker | Mark Banker | Bob Diaco | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 68 | 20 | 37 | |
| Defense | 40 | 49 | 4 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 35.5 | 24.9 | 42.8 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 42.7 | 32.7 | 51.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 17.9 | 27.3 | 38.5 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
1st-best Oregon State tenure of 17 by the numbers.
Followed Jerry Pettibone (1991–1996) · succeeded by Dennis Erickson (1999–2002) · returned in 2003 · succeeded by Gary Andersen (2015–2017).
| Season | 1997 | 1998 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||||||
| Record | 3-8 | 5-6 | 8-5 | 7-5 | 5-6 | 10-4 | 9-4 | 9-4 | 8-5 | 5-7 | 3-9 | 9-4 | 7-6 | 5-7 | |
| Postseason | — | — | W bowl | W bowl | — | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | — | — | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||||||||
| OC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | John Garrett | |
| DC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Mark Banker | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | 36 | 51 | 84 | 20 | 70 | 82 | 30 | 59 | 63 | 73 | 36 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | 96 | 57 | 43 | 100 | 80 | 40 | 27 | 25 | 67 | 12 | 15 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | 49.7 | 44.3 | 47.1 | 35.8 | 37.6 | 35.6 | 35.4 | 48.0 | 47.8 | 61.1 | 50.9 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | 57.4 | 32.9 | 37.2 | 34.3 | 46.3 | 41.2 | 38.6 | 42.5 | 52.7 | 68.8 | 52.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | 44.4 | 14.7 | 25.0 | 15.6 | 16.3 | 27.1 | 20.0 | 26.5 | 34.0 | 35.7 | 26.3 | |
37 NFL Draft picks: Bryan Jones (1999), Armon Hatcher (1999), Tim Alexander (1999), Steven Jackson (2004), Dwan Edwards (2004), Tim Euhus (2004), Richard Seigler (2004), Bill Swancutt (2005) + 29 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 Oregon State
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.
+8.0 pts at Oregon State · #271 of 1290 · top quarter