Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 2-0
2010Pinstripe BowlW 36-34
2012Pinstripe BowlW 38-14
Report card
Above the median offense — 63rd percentile.
Syracuse, 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
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.
Just 1-2 against Butch Jones.
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.
2,260 run and pass snaps at Syracuse, 2009–2012, 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 2012 roster arrived on his watch — 101 of 102 players. The other 1 is a holdover from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2009-2012) 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 Syracuse rosters have averaged 4 lb heavier than the FBS average (2010–2012 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 91 signees (33%) across his 2009–2012 tenure, drawn from 15 states in all. Next: FL (14).
49% of his signees come from NY and its 5 border states (PA 9, NJ 5, MA 1).
Off this map: 8 signees to the west (CA 6, CO, others).
- median hometown distance
- 256 mi
- within 100 mi
- 10%
- within 500 mi
- 73%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 20%
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 2 of them himself. 7 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 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2013 | R1.19 | Justin Pugh | Offensive Tackle |  New York Giants | |
| 2013 | R4.13 | Ryan Nassib | Quarterback | New York Giants | Estimated |
| 2013 | R4.14 | Shamarko Thomas | Safety |  Pittsburgh Steelers | |
| 2012 | R1.21 | Chandler Jones | Defensive End |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2012 | R6.09 | Andrew Tiller | Offensive Guard |  New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 2011 | R4.22 | Delone Carter | Running Back |  Indianapolis Colts | Estimated |
| 2011 | R5.26 | Douglas Hogue | Outside Linebacker |  Detroit Lions | Estimated |
| 2010 | R4.03 | Mike Williams | Wide Receiver |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | R5.26 | Arthur Jones | Defensive Tackle |  Baltimore Ravens | 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
6th-best Syracuse tenure of 14 by the numbers.
Followed Greg Robinson (2005–2008) · succeeded by Scott Shafer (2013–2015).
| Season | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | 2012 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 4-8 | 8-5 | 5-7 | 8-5 | |
| Postseason | — | W bowl | — | W bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 32 | 43 | 45 | 84 | |
| Defense | 84 | 90 | 42 | 66 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 31.9 | 39.1 | 47.0 | 41.5 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 46.6 | 41.5 | 45.6 | 41.2 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 15.0 | 22.6 | 26.5 | 25.5 | |
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+5.4 pts at Syracuse · #372 of 1290 · middle half