Paul Johnson
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 5-8
Navy’03L’04W’05W’06LGeorgia Tech’08L’09L’10L’11L’12W’13L’14W’16W’18L
Show all 13 games
2003Houston BowlL 14-38
2004Emerald BowlW 34-19
2005Poinsettia BowlW 51-30
2006Meineke Car Care BowlL 24-25
Georgia Tech
2008Chick-fil-A BowlL 3-38
2009Orange BowlL 14-24
2010Independence BowlL 7-14
2011Sun BowlL 27-30
2012Sun BowlW 21-7
2013Music City BowlL 17-25
2014Orange BowlW 49-34
2016TaxSlayer BowlW 33-18
2018Quick Lane BowlL 10-34
Report card
Offense carries it: 77th percentile offense, below the median defense at 43rd.
Georgia Tech, 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.
9-1 against his rivals at Navy. Winless in 3 tries against Tyrone Willingham.
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.
3-8 against his rivals at Georgia Tech. Just 1-4 against Al Golden.
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.
12-9 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Tyrone Willingham.
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.
8,724 run and pass snaps at Georgia Tech, 2008–2018, 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 one ranked Georgia Tech class of his own finished #44 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
Navy→
Georgia Tech2008Players 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 2018 roster arrived on his watch — 105 of 105 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2008-2018) 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 Georgia Tech rosters have averaged 10 lb lighter than the FBS average (2010–2018 rosters on record) — lighter than 95% of FBS coaching runs since 2010.
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: 92 of 164 signees (56%) across his 2008–2018 tenure, drawn from 19 states in all. Next: FL (22).
86% of his signees come from GA and its 5 border states (FL 22, AL 11, TN 9, SC 6, NC 1).
Off this map: 11 signees to the west (LA 4, TX 3, others), 10 to the north (MD 4, OH 2, others) and 3 to the south (FL 3).
- median hometown distance
- 75 mi
- within 100 mi
- 55%
- within 500 mi
- 93%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 4%
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 7 of them himself. 12 more can’t be traced to who brought them in (no roster record). 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | R7.15 | Harrison Butker | Place Kicker |  Carolina Panthers | |
| 2016 | R2.32 | Adam Gotsis | Defensive End |  Denver Broncos | |
| 2016 | R6.03 | D.J. White | Cornerback |  Kansas City Chiefs | |
| 2015 | R4.32 | Shaq Mason | Center |  New England Patriots | |
| 2015 | R4.33 | DeAndre Smelter | Wide Receiver |  San Francisco 49ers | |
| 2015 | R6.28 | Darren Waller | Wide Receiver |  Baltimore Ravens | |
| 2014 | R2.18 | Jeremiah Attaochu | Outside Linebacker |  San Diego Chargers | |
| 2014 | R6.30 | Jemea Thomas | Safety | New England Patriots | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2014 | R7.08 | Brandon Watts | Outside Linebacker |  Minnesota Vikings | Estimated |
| 2012 | R2.11 | Stephen Hill | Wide Receiver |  New York Jets | Estimated |
| 2011 | R7.22 | Anthony Allen | Running Back | Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2010 | R1.16 | Derrick Morgan | Defensive End |  Tennessee Titans | Estimated |
| 2010 | R1.22 | Demaryius Thomas | Wide Receiver | Denver Broncos | Estimated |
| 2010 | R3.07 | Morgan Burnett | Safety |  Green Bay Packers | Estimated |
| 2010 | R6.19 | Jonathan Dwyer | Running Back |  Pittsburgh Steelers | Estimated |
| 2009 | R3.06 | Michael Johnson | Defensive End |  Cincinnati Bengals | Estimated |
| 2009 | R6.08 | Andrew Gardner | Offensive Tackle |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 2009 | R7.01 | Vance Walker | Defensive Tackle |  Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| 2009 | R7.25 | Darryl Richard | Defensive Tackle | New England Patriots | 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.
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
4th-best Georgia Tech tenure of 14 by the numbers.
Followed Chan Gailey (2002–2007) · succeeded by Geoff Collins (2019–2022).
| Season | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||||||
| Record | 9-4 | 11-3 | 6-7 | 8-5 | 7-7 | 7-6 | 11-3 | 3-9 | 9-4 | 5-6 | 7-6 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | — | W bowl | — | L bowl | |
| Coordinators | ||||||||||||
| OC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | |
| DC | — | — | — | — | — | — | Ted Roof | Ted Roof | Ted Roof | Ted Roof | Nate Woody | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||||||
| Offense | 39 | 88 | 67 | 95 | 92 | 88 | 98 | 50 | 81 | 41 | 67 | |
| Defense | 54 | 27 | 54 | 35 | 56 | 20 | 36 | 53 | 20 | 50 | 12 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 16.9 | 17.3 | 16.5 | 19.1 | 21.9 | 20.8 | 19.1 | 22.4 | 18.3 | 10.7 | 12.7 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 9.2 | 4.5 | 9.2 | 5.6 | 10.4 | 10.7 | 14.2 | 17.5 | 7.3 | 9.2 | 3.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 39.0 | 43.2 | 52.6 | 42.9 | 48.0 | 37.9 | 34.4 | 43.8 | 34.3 | 44.0 | 50.0 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
15th-best Navy tenure of 18 by the numbers.
Followed Charlie Weatherbie (1995–2001) · succeeded by Ken Niumatalolo (2007–2022).
| Season | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||
| Record | 2-10 | 8-5 | 10-2 | 8-4 | 9-4 | 8-4 | |
| Postseason | — | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||
| Offense | — | — | 93 | 94 | 89 | 95 | |
| Defense | — | — | 32 | 5 | 34 | 10 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | 13.9 | 18.3 | 15.4 | 10.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | 6.8 | 15.8 | 6.2 | 8.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | 69.2 | 48.1 | 39.3 | 43.6 | |
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 Georgia Tech
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 Navy · #271 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.