7-1, won 7 straight, on track for 11-1 in the regular season.
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-3
2020Cure BowlL 34-37
2021Cure BowlW 47-41
Liberty
2023Fiesta BowlL 6-45
2024Bahamas BowlL 7-26
This week Wed Nov 4
- Last gameW 49-10 vs. Florida International Sat Oct 31
- This season7-1 won 7 straight
- On track for11-1 regular season
- Nextat New Mexico State Sat Nov 7
- Stature81st of 138 FBS programs
Saturday: at New Mexico State
Sat Nov 7, 8 pm ET ESPNU · New Mexico State is 3-5 · Chadwell vs. Tony Sanchez: 2-0 · Liberty’s chance to win: 96% (the site’s model)
No headlines named him in the last 7 days
Offense: 24th of 138 per play. Defense: 15th.
4 games left
- Sat Nov 7at New Mexico State (3-5)ESPNU96%
- Sat Nov 14vs. Middle Tennessee (4-4)CBS Sports Network97%
- Sat Nov 21vs. Western Kentucky (3-5)92%
- Sat Nov 28at Missouri State (3-5)94%
Percent: Liberty’s chance to win, from the site’s model. Records are through today. Networks as announced; the rest are set closer to kickoff.
How the season got here
Where Liberty stood among 138 FBS programs by stature after each game (1st is the highest; the CFB Zeitgeist ledger).
- Oct 26–Nov 1W 49-10 vs. Florida International1 headline · 87th of 138
- Oct 19–25W 34-6 at Kennesaw State4 headlines · 65th of 138
- Oct 12–18No game0 headlines
- Oct 5–11W 35-3 vs. Sam Houston1 headline · 83rd of 138
- Sep 28–Oct 4W 30-14 at Delaware1 headline · 82nd of 138
- Sep 21–27 · rebuiltW 34-17 at Coastal Carolina3 headlines · 68th of 138ICYMI: Dominating second half leads Liberty to a 34-17 win over Coastal Carolina in Jamey Chadwell’s return to the beach (AUDIO)
SportsTalkSC
Each week as this page showed it at the time. Weeks marked rebuilt came before this page existed: they were built afterward from only what was known by the end of that week.
Watch the biggest plays from Liberty’s games, ranked by how much each moved the chance to win.
Report card
Offense carries it: 86th percentile offense, below the median defense at 41st.
Liberty, 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.
Poach watch
This winter
Our poach model, on his record so far, the win chances for every game he has left, his program, his pay and his background. Ranked against the 132 FBS head coaches this season. The zone words describe the market’s interest; none of them says he is leaving.
What drives his number
The biggest factors in his profile, each against the typical FBS head coach today. The games he has left are priced into the number, not listed here.
- ▲ HigherHis team is 7-1, outscoring opponents by 20.2 points a game
- ▲ HigherHis 4th season at Liberty
- ▲ HigherAge 49 · neither at his alma mater nor in the state he was born in
How good is this number? It ranks a head coach who leaves for another head-coaching job ahead of one who stays 78 to 82% of the time, and its average came within a point of the share who actually left. What it can’t do
Tested on every FBS head coach from 2012 through 2025, each season scored by a model fit only on the seasons before it. From three games on, given one coach who left for a head-coaching job elsewhere or an NFL coordinator job and one who stayed, it ranked the one who left ahead 79 to 82% of the time; in a season’s first two games, 78%. Its average chance came within a point of the share who actually left. It counts a move a coach makes while he still holds the job; when his school ends it, that doesn’t count, even if another school then hires him.
- The live number prices the games he has left with the power model’s ratings from this season. The test priced them with each team’s rating from the season before, because ratings made during past seasons were not kept, so this live version could not be replayed.
- Programs new to FBS have no FBS record before this season in the data it reads, so their coaches are scored without one.
- It is frozen: it learns nothing from 2026 until a deliberate refit.
- A coach hired in December needs his background (age, alma mater, the state he was born in) added before his first game, or he shows as not rated.
Fans
Fan chatter
- Oct 22W 34-6 at Kennesaw State
Turns out the only way for Chadwell to reduce the penalties is bringing in the benchwarmers.
Liberty fan - Sep 5L 13-20 at James Madison
I really don’t think Chadwell trusts this QB and is just trying to keep JMU from getting the ball back because that was terrible.
Liberty fan
Several stories about him in the last 30 days
Sat Nov 7: New Mexico State
from a few outlets and r/CFB
Liberty Football Show with Head Coach Jamey Chadwell Set for Wednesday, October 29
Liberty Athletics Oct 28 · one outlet
What they’re talking about
The headlines for each topic are on the News tab.
Many stories about him this season
from several outlets and r/CFB
Liberty Football Show with Head Coach Jamey Chadwell Set for Wednesday, October 29
Liberty Athletics Oct 28 · one outlet
What they’re talking about
The headlines for each topic are on the News tab.
What was said at each stop
Stories we tracked, by school.
LibertyMany stories2023 to now
Most about: press conference and quotes, injuries, in-game decisions.
- AP News +3Liberty's Chadwell eyes a Conference USA rebound after surgery and a 4-8 stumbleAug 19
All 4 articles
Marietta Daily JournalLiberty's Chadwell eyes a Conference USA rebound after surgery and a 4-8 stumbleNewsdayLiberty's Chadwell eyes a Conference USA rebound after surgery and a 4-8 stumbleAP NewsLiberty’s Chadwell eyes a Conference USA rebound after surgery and a 4-8 stumbleFOX SportsLiberty's Chadwell eyes a Conference USA rebound after surgery and a 4-8 stumble - Liberty Football Coach Jamey Chadwell Claims LSU Paid $300K+ To Land Commitment From Star WR C.J. DanielsFeb 19
WDBJ7Liberty’s Jamey Chadwell back leading Flames football after “serious” surgeryMar 24- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Q&A: Opening Day of Liberty Training Camp - A Sea of Red |Aug 5
Lynchburg News and AdvanceLiberty fall camp report: Chadwell seeks more consistency from quarterbacks, and moreAug 11
Coastal CarolinaA few stories2017 to 2022
Most about: contract and pay, linked to another job.
- Coach Chadwell signs extension at Coastal CarolinaDec 16
- Bear Bryant Coach of the Year Finalists: Tom Allen, Matt Campbell, Jamey Chadwell, Mario Cristobal, Jimbo Fisher, Brian Kelly, Nick Saban, Dabo SwinneyDec 22
Could another school hire him? What has he said?
Across his career
17 stories about him across 10 seasons
Stories are headlines grouped by what they are about, counted through Nov 4.
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.
0-1 against his rivals at Coastal Carolina.
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.
2-2 against his rivals at Coastal Carolina. Nobody he faced three or more times there has a winning record against him.
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.
1-1 against his rivals at Liberty.
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.
3-4 against his rivals. Just 1-2 against Billy Napier.
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.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Ran more than the situation called for under Isaac/Korn.
2,516 run and pass snaps at Liberty, 2023–2025, 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
Five numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
His recruiting, really
His 4 ranked Liberty classes of his own have averaged #102 nationally — best #86, worst #110.
Coastal CarolinaLibertyAcross every program: 7 ranked classes of his own, averaging #97 nationally.
His class — he had the full signing cycleTransition — he was hired mid-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; inherited and mid-transition classes still show here, faded, but stay out of the average.
Followed him here
Coastal Carolina→Liberty2023Players 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 2026 roster arrived on his watch — 105 of 107 players. The other 2 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 31% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
29% of his 208 new players since 2023 came through the portal (FBS programs, same seasons: 26%). His share was 16% in 2023 and 27% in 2026.
Graded on the players who arrived and the players who left together, his portal seasons came out better than most FBS programs’ in 3 of the 4 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 Liberty rosters have averaged 5 lb lighter than the FBS average (2023–2026) — lighter than 83% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Liberty’s line averaged within a few pounds of 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: 21 of 75 signees (28%) across his 2023–2026 tenure, drawn from 16 states in all. Next: VA (11).
68% of his signees come from GA and its 5 border states (FL 9, NC 6, SC 6, TN 6, AL 3).
Off this map: 4 signees to the west (CA 3, NV) and 2 to the north (MA, PA).
- median hometown distance
- 400 mi
- within 100 mi
- 9%
- within 500 mi
- 68%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 10%
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
Stories about him
Headlines, grouped by what they are about. Each is the outlet’s own.
This week
Press conference and quotes
- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Press Conference: Week 6 vs Sam Houston - A Sea of Red |Oct 6
- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Press Conference: Week 8 at Kennesaw State - A Sea of Red |Oct 19
- Lynchburg News and AdvanceLiberty football coach Jamey Chadwell breaks down his team's self-scout on the bye weekOct 19
- Lynchburg News and AdvanceA Group of 6 college football playoff? Liberty's Jamey Chadwell says 'I'm for it'Oct 20
This season
Press conference and quotes
- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Q&A: Opening Day of Liberty Training Camp - A Sea of Red |Aug 5
- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Press Conference: Week 3 vs Ball State - A Sea of Red |Sep 15
- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Press Conference: Week 4 at Coastal Carolina - A Sea of Red |Sep 22
- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Press Conference: Week 6 vs Sam Houston - A Sea of Red |Oct 6
- A Sea of RedJamey Chadwell Press Conference: Week 8 at Kennesaw State - A Sea of Red |Oct 19
In his own words
Every quote, back to July 2026
In his own words
If you watch their games, they’re really a play here or there from being easily 5-2, maybe 6-1
We’ve got to do a good job of getting them in third and long
I lost my cool tonight on the fourth and short
Jaylon’s been great
Those are obviously challenging, (Hopkins) was trying to make a good hit … but of course you can’t do that and he understands that
Zero of three on fourth down conversions which were big
When the play doesn’t go exactly the way you want it, you trust him to make a good decision there in the running game
It means a lot, not necessarily personally
Now there's still some body, physical limitations I’m going through that I’m still working through, but as far as my mind and the way I was feeling compared to the last couple years, night and day.
Career
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
1st-best Liberty tenure of 4 by the numbers.
Followed Hugh Freeze (2019–2022).
| Season | 2023 | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 13-1 | 8-4 | 4-8 | 7-1 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | L bowl | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||
| OC | Willy Korn / Newland Isaac | Willy Korn / Newland Isaac | Willy Korn / Newland Isaac | Newland Isaac | |
| DC | Kyle Krantz / Skylor Magee | Kyle Krantz / Skylor Magee | Kyle Krantz / Skylor Magee | Shawn Quinn | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 96 | 39 | 56 | 92 | |
| Defense | 21 | 65 | 24 | 91 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 30.6 | 33.0 | 29.0 | 29.9 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 21.7 | 28.5 | 28.3 | 30.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 32.0 | 42.4 | 38.3 | 18.5 | |
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits younger transfers than most — more of a development bet.
Coach of the Year: Conference USA Coach of the Year (2023)
AI Narratives — “Liberty — stat check”.
1st-best Coastal Carolina tenure of 6 by the numbers.
Succeeded by Joe Moglia (2018) · returned in 2019 · succeeded by Tim Beck (2023–2025).
| Season | 2017 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 3-9 | 5-7 | 11-1 | 11-2 | 9-3 | |
| Postseason | — | — | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||||
| OC | Jamey Chadwell | Willy Korn / Newland Isaac | Willy Korn / Newland Isaac | Willy Korn / Newland Isaac | Willy Korn / Newland Isaac | |
| DC | Mickey Matthews | Chad Staggs | Chad Staggs | Chad Staggs | Chad Staggs | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | 40 | 45 | 97 | 99 | 69 | |
| Defense | 10 | 14 | 64 | 52 | 4 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 35.6 | 38.4 | 33.2 | 39.3 | 38.1 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 37.8 | 34.9 | 29.0 | 31.4 | 19.4 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 27.3 | 41.9 | 41.4 | 22.7 | 43.8 | |
Outperforms his recruiting talent on offense and performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on defense.
Barely touches the portal — recruits and develops his own.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
3 NFL Draft picks: Tarron Jackson (2021), Isaiah Likely (2022), Jeffrey Gunter (2022)
Coach of the Year: Sun Belt Coach of the Year (2020)
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Tarron Jackson (2020)
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+2.9 pts at Liberty · #496 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.