Chad Lunsford
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 2-1
2018Camellia BowlW 23-21
2019Cure BowlL 16-23
2020New Orleans BowlW 38-3
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.
4-4 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Billy Napier.
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
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 Frye.
137 run and pass snaps at Florida Atlantic, 2024–2024, 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.
His recruiting, really
His 3 ranked Georgia Southern classes of his own have averaged #103 nationally — best #90, worst #120.
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.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2024 roster arrived on his watch — 88 of 117 players. The other 29 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 17% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
“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 Southern rosters have averaged 11 lb lighter than the FBS average (2017–2020) — lighter than 96% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Georgia Southern’s line averaged 11 lb lighter than the FBS average.
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: 15 of 20 signees (75%) across his 2024–2024 tenure, drawn from 4 states in all. Next: GA (3).
- median hometown distance
- 164 mi
- within 100 mi
- 44%
- within 500 mi
- 73%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 5%
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.
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
Followed Tom Herman (2023–2024) · succeeded by Zach Kittley (2025–now).
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
3rd-best Georgia Southern tenure of 5 by the numbers.
Followed Tyson Summers (2016–2017) · succeeded by Kevin Whitley (2021).
| Season | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 2-4 | 10-3 | 7-6 | 8-5 | 1-3 | |
| Postseason | — | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||||
| OC | Bryan Cook | Bob DeBesse | Bob DeBesse | Bob DeBesse | Doug Ruse | |
| DC | Lorenzo Costantini | Scot Sloan | Scot Sloan | Scot Sloan | Scot Sloan | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | 29 | 73 | 33 | 74 | 13 | |
| Defense | 38 | 46 | 54 | 93 | 27 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 13.7 | 14.0 | 18.4 | 19.8 | 30.5 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 14.1 | 9.0 | 12.4 | 15.6 | 23.7 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 32.5 | 25.7 | 25.5 | 34.9 | 50.0 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
Barely touches the portal — recruits and develops his own.
Brings in smaller-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
2 NFL Draft picks: Kindle Vildor (2020), Tyler Bass (2020)
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
-7.0 pts at Georgia Southern · #1095 of 1290 · bottom quarter