Justin Fuente
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 2-3
2014Miami Beach BowlW 55-48
Virginia Tech
2016Belk BowlW 35-24
2017Camping World BowlL 21-30
2018Military BowlL 31-35
2019Belk BowlL 30-37
Report card
Above the median on both sides of the ball — 72nd percentile offense, 69th percentile defense.
Virginia Tech, 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.
1-1 against his rivals at Memphis. Just 1-2 against June Jones.
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.
6-4 against his rivals at Virginia Tech. Winless in 3 tries against Dabo Swinney.
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.
7-5 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Dabo Swinney.
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 Cornelsen.
5,195 run and pass snaps at Virginia Tech, 2016–2021, 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 4 ranked Virginia Tech classes of his own have averaged #42 nationally — best #24, worst #72.
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.
Followed him here
Memphis→
Virginia Tech2016Players 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 2021 roster arrived on his watch — 127 of 127 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 6% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2016–2021Counting players who have since left: 6% of the 36 arrivals we can classify came through the portal.
This tenure spans the 2021 transfer-portal tracking floor: seasons before 2021 structurally cannot be classified portal-vs-not (they land in 'unknown' below), so the portal-share figure understates how many pre-2021 arrivals might have been transfers under the pre-portal-tracking transfer rules.
“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 Virginia Tech rosters have averaged 6 lb heavier than the FBS average (2016–2021) — heavier than 80% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Virginia Tech’s line averaged 5 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: 40 of 131 signees (31%) across his 2016–2021 tenure, drawn from 23 states in all. Next: NC (15).
56% of his signees come from VA and its 6 border states (NC 15, MD 9, TN 5, DC 3, KY 1, WV 1).
Off this map: 7 signees to the west (TX 2, AR, others) and 6 to the south (FL 6).
- median hometown distance
- 219 mi
- within 100 mi
- 7%
- within 500 mi
- 91%
- 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.
The NFL pipeline
The NFL pipeline
players drafted into the NFL off his teams here. He brought in 9 of them himself; 9 arrived under Frank Beamer. 4 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | R5.34 | James Mitchell | Tight End |  Detroit Lions | |
| 2022 | R6.10 | Amare Barno | Outside Linebacker |  Carolina Panthers | |
| 2022 | R6.31 | Luke Tenuta | Offensive Tackle |  Buffalo Bills | |
| 2022 | R6.37 | Lecitus Smith | Offensive Guard |  Arizona Cardinals | |
| 2021 | R1.22 | Caleb Farley | Cornerback |  Tennessee Titans | |
| 2021 | R1.23 | Christian Darrisaw | Offensive Tackle |  Minnesota Vikings | |
| 2021 | R3.17 | Divine Deablo | Safety |  Las Vegas Raiders | |
| 2021 | R6.33 | Khalil Herbert | Running Back |  Chicago Bears |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | R3.37 | Dalton Keene | Tight End |  New England Patriots | |
| 2018 | R1.16 | Tremaine Edmunds | Outside Linebacker | Buffalo Bills | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2018 | R1.28 | Terrell Edmunds | Safety |  Pittsburgh Steelers | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2018 | R5.26 | Tim Settle | Defensive Tackle |  Washington Redskins | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2018 | R5.29 | Wyatt Teller | Offensive Guard | Buffalo Bills | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2018 | R7.23 | Greg Stroman | Cornerback | Washington Redskins | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2017 | R6.02 | Chuck Clark | Safety |  Baltimore Ravens | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2017 | R6.17 | Bucky Hodges | Tight End | Minnesota Vikings | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2017 | R6.22 | Sam Rogers | Fullback |  Los Angeles Rams | recruited under Frank Beamer |
| 2017 | R7.19 | Isaiah Ford | Wide Receiver |  Miami Dolphins | recruited under Frank Beamer |
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.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
2nd-best Virginia Tech tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Frank Beamer (1987–2015) · succeeded by J.C. Price (2021).
| Season | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||
| Record | 10-4 | 9-4 | 6-7 | 8-5 | 5-6 | 5-5 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | L bowl | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||||
| OC | Brad Cornelsen | Brad Cornelsen | Brad Cornelsen | Brad Cornelsen | Brad Cornelsen | Brad Cornelsen | |
| DC | Bud Foster | Bud Foster | Bud Foster | Bud Foster | Justin Hamilton | Justin Hamilton | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||
| Offense | 59 | 26 | 63 | 53 | 75 | 42 | |
| Defense | 75 | 87 | 7 | 73 | 12 | 15 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 44.6 | 38.7 | 44.6 | 36.7 | 33.0 | 36.1 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 40.0 | 28.9 | 38.3 | 36.7 | 28.9 | 37.2 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 20.8 | 38.8 | 32.6 | 26.2 | 19.5 | 33.3 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Christian Darrisaw (2020)
14th-best Memphis tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Larry Porter (2010–2011) · succeeded by Mike Norvell (2016–2019).
| Season | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 4-8 | 3-9 | 10-3 | 9-3 | |
| Postseason | — | — | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||||
| OC | — | — | Darrell Dickey | Brad Cornelsen / Darrell Dickey | |
| DC | — | — | Barry Odom | Galen Scott | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 40 | 17 | 44 | 55 | |
| Defense | 68 | 64 | 89 | 57 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 34.7 | 39.2 | 40.2 | 46.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 26.9 | 30.5 | 28.8 | 35.6 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 45.7 | 38.5 | 13.0 | 14.9 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and outperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
4 NFL Draft picks: Lonnie Ballentine (2014), Bobby McCain (2015), Martin Ifedi (2015), Paxton Lynch (2016)
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+10.6 pts at Memphis · #201 of 1290 · top quarterModel fit as of 2026-09-04.