Gus Malzahn
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 3-7 · won 0 of 1 national title game
Auburn’13L’14L’15W’16L’17L’18W’19LUCF’21W’22L’23L
Show all 10 games
2013BCS title gameL 31-34
2014Outback BowlL 31-34
2015Birmingham BowlW 31-10
2016Sugar BowlL 19-35
2017Peach BowlL 27-34
2018Music City BowlW 63-14
2019Outback BowlL 24-31
UCF
2021Gasparilla BowlW 29-17
2022Military BowlL 13-30
2023Gasparilla BowlL 17-30
Report card
Offense carries it: 83rd percentile offense, above the median defense at 65th.
UCF, 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
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.
1-0 against his rivals at Arkansas State.
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.
5-12 against his rivals at Auburn. Just 1-5 against Kirby Smart.
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.
2-0 against his rivals at UCF. Just 1-3 against Scott Satterfield.
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.
8-12 against his rivals. Just 1-5 against Kirby Smart.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
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.
Defining games during this era
From our list of the 50 most defining games of the Playoff era, ranked by how much each game mattered, not by date.
3 more from the list
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Ran more than the situation called for under Hinshaw and Jr..
3,590 run and pass snaps at UCF, 2021–2024, 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
Six numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 3 ranked UCF classes of his own have averaged #46 nationally — best #35, worst #53.
AuburnUCFAcross every program: 6 ranked classes of his own, averaging #28 nationally.
His class — he had the full signing cycleInherited — signed before he arrived
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; inherited and mid-transition classes still show here, faded, but stay out of the average.
Followed him here
Auburn→UCF2021- Marco Domio DB
- Mark-Antony Richards RB
Arkansas State→Auburn2013Players 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 2024 roster arrived on his watch — 111 of 119 players. The other 8 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 26% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
28% of his 161 new players since 2022 came through the portal (FBS programs, same seasons: 18%) — the 9th-highest share of the 68 Power 4 programs. His share was 20% in 2022 and 35% in 2024.
Graded on the players who arrived and the players who left together, his portal seasons came out better than most FBS programs’ in 1 of the 3 seasons graded. our read
Each player counts once, in the season he arrived. 2021, the first season of portal tracking here, is left off because its arrival records look incomplete (about 31 new players per FBS team, against 52 in 2022). Portal grade: the site’s position-value-weighted scoring (the same engine as the Portal Heat feed and the “Who won the portal” grade): the value of the players who came in minus the value of the ones who left, ranked against every FBS program’s grade that same season. A season with fewer than 4 transfers in and out is not graded.
“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 UCF rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2021–2024). In the three seasons before he arrived, UCF’s line averaged 3 lb heavier 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: 38 of 68 signees (56%) across his 2021–2024 tenure, drawn from 15 states in all. Next: GA (13).
76% of his signees come from FL and its 2 border states (GA 13, AL 1).
Off this map: 6 signees to the west (TX 2, AR, others) and 2 to the north (MD, OH).
- median hometown distance
- 154 mi
- within 100 mi
- 39%
- within 500 mi
- 84%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 3%
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 3 of them himself; 2 arrived under Josh Heupel.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 | R2.28 | RJ Harvey | Running Back |  Denver Broncos | recruited under Josh Heupel |
| 2025 | R5.07 | Mac McWilliams | Cornerback |  Philadelphia Eagles | |
| 2024 | R4.10 | Javon Baker | Wide Receiver |  New England Patriots | |
| 2024 | R6.28 | Tylan Grable | Offensive Tackle |  Buffalo Bills | |
| 2022 | R6.42 | Kalia Davis | Defensive Tackle |  San Francisco 49ers | recruited under Josh Heupel |
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
In his own words
Every quote, back to August 2014
In his own words
It is very critical that we were in very pressure situations
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
2nd-best UCF tenure of 7 by the numbers.
Followed Josh Heupel (2018–2020) · succeeded by Scott Frost (2025–now).
| Season | 2021 | 2022 | 2023 | 2024 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 9-4 | 9-5 | 6-7 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||
| OC | GJ Kinne / Tim Harris Jr. | Chip Lindsey | Darin Hinshaw | Tim Harris Jr. / Darin Hinshaw | |
| DC | David Gibbs / Travis Williams | David Gibbs / Travis Williams | David Gibbs / Addison Williams | Ted Roof / Addison Williams | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 53 | 71 | 88 | 54 | |
| Defense | 63 | 27 | 75 | 71 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 39.4 | 35.8 | 40.4 | 32.7 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 44.7 | 32.7 | 38.7 | 22.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 35.3 | 48.8 | 41.2 | 44.1 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
Brings in bigger-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
3rd-best Auburn tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Gene Chizik (2009–2012) · succeeded by Bryan Harsin (2021–2022).
| Season | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||
| Record | 12-2 | 8-5 | 7-6 | 8-5 | 10-4 | 8-5 | 9-4 | 6-4 | |
| Postseason | Title game L | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||
| OC | — | Dameyune Craig / Rhett Lashlee | Dameyune Craig / Rhett Lashlee | Rhett Lashlee / Kodi Burns | Chip Lindsey / Kodi Burns | Chip Lindsey / Kodi Burns | Kenny Dillingham | Chad Morris | |
| DC | — | Ellis Johnson | Will Muschamp | Kevin Steele | Kevin Steele | Kevin Steele | Kevin Steele | Kevin Steele | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||
| Offense | 91 | 92 | 58 | 61 | 67 | 71 | 61 | 67 | |
| Defense | 18 | 32 | 79 | 75 | 93 | 83 | 93 | 18 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 21.2 | 22.8 | 25.5 | 24.9 | 30.9 | 43.5 | 39.5 | 41.9 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 13.9 | 27.1 | 21.4 | 22.1 | 25.2 | 36.4 | 35.2 | 40.8 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 17.9 | 12.5 | 19.5 | 31.0 | 15.0 | 30.2 | 19.5 | 21.4 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
36 NFL Draft picks: Greg Robinson (2014), Dee Ford (2014), Tre Mason (2014), Jay Prosch (2014), Sammie Coates (2015), Angelo Blackson (2015), Gabe Wright (2015), C.J. Uzomah (2015) + 28 more
Followed Hugh Freeze (2011) · succeeded by Bryan Harsin (2013).
1 NFL Draft pick: Don Jones (2013)
Was he good?
Every angle here comes back inconclusive — not enough separation from zero to call it either way.
+5.0 pts at Auburn · #384 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.