The Zeitgeist List · Coordinators · Never a head coach

Jordan Peterson.

Defensive coordinator · 4 seasons · 3 stints · 3 programs0 seasons ranked in the national top 10%
Own effect on the unit
Defense−0.18not distinguishable from zero
model fit as of 2026-09-04

Poach watch

Every coordinator →

Kansas State defensive coordinator, 2026

This winter

5%chance he leaves this winter for a head-coaching job or a bigger coordinator job — including going with his head coach if he’s hired awaySettled198th-highest of 329 FBS coordinators
0%50%+

Our poach model, on his team’s results so far, how his unit compares with the FBS average this season and last, his program’s standing and his role. Ranked against the 329 FBS coordinators with 3+ games this season. The zone words describe the market’s interest; none of them says he is leaving.

What drives his number

The biggest factors, each against the typical FBS coordinator today.

How good is this number? It ranks a coordinator who moves up ahead of one who stays 71 to 73% of the time, and its average matches the share who actually move. What it can’t do

Tested on every FBS coordinator from 2018 through 2025, each season scored by a model fit only on the seasons before it: from three games on, given one coordinator who moved up and one who didn’t, it ranked the one who moved ahead 71 to 73% of the time, and its average chance came within a tenth of a point of the share who actually moved.

  • Counting a coordinator who follows his hired-away head coach as moving up was decided after the model’s first results were seen.
  • Much of the signal comes through his head coach: coordinators often move because their boss is hired away. This site’s number for head coaches is now live, on each head coach’s page, but this number doesn’t use it.
  • Moves to NFL coordinator jobs are undercounted in the history it learned from; they were found mainly for coordinators with Wikipedia pages.
  • On its own it is weak at picking which coordinator lands a head-coaching job (about 60% on the same test). The number is about moving up by any route.
  • It is frozen: it learns nothing from 2026 until a deliberate refit.

The tenure clock

Every stop re-aligned to its own first year, so the stops stack instead of scrolling past each other. The gray dashed line is a reference, not a path: each point is the median of whoever was still in the job that year, across every real OC/DC stint since 2014 at that role, and the pool shrinks year over year because surviving to a later year means not having been fired.

100th — best in the country90th — elite — top 10%75th — top quarter50th — national median25th — bottom quarter0 — worst in the countryHis defense’s national rank, by year of tenureYear 1Year 2Year of that tenure, not calendar yearn=730n=430New Mexico, year 1: 8th percentileNew MexicoTexas A&M, year 1: 64th percentileTexas A&M, year 2: 72nd percentileTexas A&MKansas State, year 1: 24th percentileKansas Statemedian still in the job
New Mexico 2019–2019
Texas A&M 2024–2025
Kansas State 2026–2026
Median of those still in the job, that year of a tenure. A shrinking pool, not a path.
Texas A&M, 2 years
▲ 7.9
63.8 to 71.7 percentile.
Median defensive coordinator
+0.5
first season to last, across 235 stints of 3+ years. 50.6% improve at all.

Every stop on the calendar

YearsProgramWalked intoYear 1BestVs. talent
2019–2019New Mexico18.88.18.1▼ 33.7
2024–2025Texas A&M77.163.871.7▲ 1.7
2026–2026Kansas State67.324.324.3—

New Mexico 2019–2019: ranked 19th the year before he arrived, 8th at its best — went backwards.

Texas A&M 2024–2025: ranked 77th the year before he arrived, 72nd at its best — went backwards.

Kansas State 2026–2026: ranked 67th the year before he arrived, 24th at its best — went backwards.

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