Watson Brown
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 0-1
2004Hawaii BowlL 40-59
Report card
Above the median offense — 73rd percentile.
UAB, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
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.
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.
0-2 against his rivals at Cincinnati.
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.
0-4 against his rivals at Rice.
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 Vanderbilt. Winless in 5 tries against Billy Brewer.
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.
Winless in 7 tries against Jeff Bower.
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.
0-11 against his rivals. Winless in 7 tries against Jeff Bower.
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.
1,007 run and pass snaps at UAB, 2004–2006, 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.
Season-to-season pass-rate range for all 449 FBS coaching stints with at least three covered seasons, 2004–2025.
Building the roster
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Followed him here
Cincinnati→
Rice1984Rice→
Vanderbilt1986Players 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 2006 roster arrived on his watch — 32 of 32 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1996-2006) 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: 62 of 113 signees (55%) across his 2002–2006 classes on record (his tenure ran 1996–2006), drawn from 13 states in all. Next: GA (17).
87% of his signees come from AL and its 4 border states (GA 17, MS 12, FL 6, TN 1).
Off this map: 9 signees to the west (TX 4, KS 3, others), 2 to the north (IA, IL), 2 to the east (FL, SC) and 1 to the south (FL).
- median hometown distance
- 6 mi
- within 100 mi
- 75%
- within 500 mi
- 100%
- 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2005 | R1.27 | Roddy White | Wide Receiver |  Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| 2002 | R1.22 | Bryan Thomas | Defensive End |  New York Jets | Estimated |
| 2002 | R2.11 | Eddie Freeman | Defensive End |  Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2001 | R6.24 | Otis Leverette | Defensive End |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 2000 | R7.32 | Rodregis Brooks | Defensive Back |  Indianapolis Colts | Estimated |
| 1999 | R7.45 | Pernell Davis | Defensive Tackle |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 1998 | R3.16 | Dainon Sidney | Defensive Back |  Tennessee Oilers | Estimated |
| 1998 | R6.35 | Izell Reese | Defensive Back |  Dallas Cowboys | 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
1st-best UAB tenure of 7 by the numbers.
Succeeded by Neil Callaway (2007–2011).
| Season | 1996 | 1997 | 1998 | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||||||
| Record | 5-6 | 5-6 | 4-7 | 5-6 | 7-4 | 6-5 | 5-7 | 5-7 | 7-5 | 5-6 | 3-9 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | L bowl | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 75 | 79 | 39 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 35 | 50 | 19 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 42.3 | 53.8 | 42.5 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 37.5 | 41.7 | 37.9 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | 28.1 | 29.3 | |
18th-best Vanderbilt tenure of 20 by the numbers.
Followed George MacIntyre (1979–1985) · succeeded by Gerry DiNardo (1991–1994).
1 NFL Draft pick: DeMond Winston (1990)
Followed Ray Alborn (1978–1983) · succeeded by Jerry Berndt (1986–1988).
Followed Mike Gottfried (1981–1982) · succeeded by Dave Currey (1984–1988).
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
-3.0 pts at Vanderbilt · #887 of 1290 · middle half