Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 4-3
2003Alamo BowlW 17-3
2008Gator BowlW 26-21
2009Holiday BowlW 33-0
2010Holiday BowlL 7-19
2011Capital One BowlL 13-30
2012Capital One BowlL 31-45
2013Gator BowlW 24-19Report card
Defense carries it: 78th percentile defense, above the median offense at 71st.
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
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.
7-4 against his rivals. Just 1-2 against Bob Stoops.
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.
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.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Ran more than the situation called for under Beck.
4,896 run and pass snaps at Nebraska, 2008–2014, 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
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2014 roster arrived on his watch — 141 of 141 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2003-2014) 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 (2010–2014 rosters on record).
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: 30 of 178 signees (17%) across his 2003–2014 tenure, drawn from 30 states in all. Next: TX (30).
22% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states (AZ 7, NV 2, OR 1).
- median hometown distance
- 384 mi
- within 100 mi
- 39%
- within 500 mi
- 59%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 16%
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. 18 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | R2.22 | Ameer Abdullah | Running Back |  Detroit Lions | |
| 2015 | R2.28 | Randy Gregory | Outside Linebacker |  Dallas Cowboys | |
| 2015 | R5.26 | Kenny Bell | Wide Receiver |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | |
| 2014 | R2.26 | Stan Jean-Baptiste | Cornerback |  New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 2014 | R3.14 | Spencer Long | Offensive Guard |  Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2014 | R6.33 | Quincy Enunwa | Wide Receiver |  New York Jets | |
| 2013 | R6.22 | Rex Burkhead | Running Back |  Cincinnati Bengals | |
| 2013 | R7.42 | Daimion Stafford | Safety |  Tennessee Titans |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | R2.26 | Lavonte David | Outside Linebacker |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | |
| 2012 | R4.31 | Jared Crick | Defensive End |  Houston Texans | Estimated |
| 2012 | R7.17 | Alfonzo Dennard | Cornerback |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2012 | R7.27 | Marcel Jones | Offensive Tackle | New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 2011 | R1.19 | Prince Amukamara | Cornerback |  New York Giants | Estimated |
| 2011 | R4.08 | Roy Helu | Running Back | Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2011 | R4.23 | Alex Henery | Place Kicker |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2011 | R5.15 | Dejon Gomes | Safety | Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2011 | R5.24 | Niles Paul | Wide Receiver | Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2011 | R6.31 | Keith Williams | Offensive Guard |  Pittsburgh Steelers | Estimated |
| 2011 | R7.45 | Eric Hagg | Safety |  Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| 2010 | R1.02 | Ndamukong Suh | Defensive Tackle | Detroit Lions | Estimated |
| 2010 | R4.17 | Phillip Dillard | Inside Linebacker | New York Giants | Estimated |
| 2010 | R5.29 | Larry Asante | Safety | Cleveland Browns | Estimated |
| 2009 | R5.22 | Cody Glenn | Outside Linebacker | Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2009 | R6.20 | Matt Slauson | Offensive Guard | New York Jets | Estimated |
| 2009 | R7.19 | Lydon Murtha | Offensive Tackle | Detroit Lions | 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.
Inheritor inherited a power and neither built it higher nor let it collapse
5th-best Nebraska tenure of 18 by the numbers.
Followed Bill Callahan (2004–2007) · succeeded by Mike Riley (2015–2017).
| Season | 2003 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||
| Record | 1-0 | 9-4 | 10-4 | 10-4 | 9-4 | 10-4 | 9-4 | 9-3 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||
| OC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | Tim Beck | |
| DC | — | — | — | — | — | — | — | John Papuchis | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||
| Offense | — | 81 | 16 | 54 | 41 | 88 | 40 | 46 | |
| Defense | — | 82 | 95 | 98 | 38 | 83 | 89 | 50 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | 42.2 | 30.8 | 21.5 | 28.0 | 33.3 | 30.5 | 33.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | 37.8 | 33.0 | 25.6 | 23.8 | 36.2 | 32.6 | 32.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | 30.0 | 4.8 | 18.9 | 30.3 | 11.4 | 20.0 | 20.9 | |
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.
3rd all-time at Nebraska
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
-4.3 pts at Nebraska · #966 of 1290 · middle half