Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 0-3
2000Alamo BowlL 17-66
2003Motor City BowlL 24-28
2005Sun BowlL 38-50
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.
13-4 against his rivals at Miami (OH). Just 1-4 against Al Molde.
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.
4-3 against his rivals at Northwestern. Just 1-4 against Jim Tressel.
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.
17-7 against his rivals. Just 1-4 against Al Molde.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
1,081 run and pass snaps at Northwestern, 2004–2005, 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. Play-by-play starts in 2004, so his earlier seasons there aren’t in it.
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.
Building the roster
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Followed him here
Miami (OH)→
Northwestern1999Players 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 2005 roster arrived on his watch — 36 of 36 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1999-2005) 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.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 9 of 51 signees (18%) across his 2001–2005 classes on record (his tenure ran 1999–2005), drawn from 15 states in all. Next: FL (6).
29% of his signees come from IL and its 5 border states (WI 3, IN 2, KY 1).
Off this map: 4 signees to the west (CA 4) and 1 to the east (MA).
- median hometown distance
- 845 mi
- within 100 mi
- 0%
- within 500 mi
- 0%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 0%
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. None can be traced to who brought them in — there’s no roster record for these players here. 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | R4.27 | Barry Cofield | Defensive Tackle |  New York Giants | Estimated |
| 2006 | R7.02 | Zach Strief | Offensive Tackle |  New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 2006 | R7.13 | Tim McGarigle | Linebacker |  St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| 2005 | R1.28 | Luis Castillo | Defensive Tackle |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2005 | R3.29 | Trai Essex | Offensive Tackle |  Pittsburgh Steelers | Estimated |
| 2005 | R7.30 | Noah Herron | Running Back | Pittsburgh Steelers | Estimated |
| 2003 | R4.36 | Austin King | Center |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| 2002 | R1.23 | Napoleon Harris | Linebacker |  Oakland Raiders | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2002 | R4.03 | Kevin Bentley | Linebacker |  Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| 2002 | R5.35 | Sam Simmons | Wide Receiver |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 2001 | R7.10 | Harold Blackmon | Defensive Back |  Seattle Seahawks | Estimated |
| 2001 | R7.31 | Dwayne Missouri | Defensive End |  Baltimore Ravens | Estimated |
| 2000 | R5.35 | Jay Tant | Tight End |  Arizona Cardinals | 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.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
7th-best Northwestern tenure of 13 by the numbers.
Followed Gary Barnett (1992–1998) · succeeded by Pat Fitzgerald (2006–2022).
| Season | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||
| Record | 3-8 | 8-4 | 4-7 | 3-9 | 6-7 | 6-6 | 7-5 | |
| Postseason | — | L bowl | — | — | L bowl | — | L bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | 62 | 90 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | 68 | 4 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | 41.0 | 55.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | 39.8 | 43.4 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | 45.7 | 30.8 | |
8th-best Miami (OH) tenure of 14 by the numbers.
Followed Tim Rose (1983–1989) · succeeded by Terry Hoeppner (1999–2004).
3 NFL Draft picks: Damian Vaughn (1998), Paris Johnson (1999), Jojuan Armour (1999)
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 Miami (OH)
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+8.5 pts at Miami (OH) · #255 of 1290 · top quarter