Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 7-2
Pittsburgh’12L’13WWisconsin’15W’16W’17W’18W’19L’20W’21W
Show all 9 games
2012BBVA Compass BowlL 17-38
2013Little Caesars Pizza BowlW 30-27
Wisconsin
2015Holiday BowlW 23-21
2016Cotton Bowl ClassicW 24-16
2017Orange BowlW 34-24
2018Pinstripe BowlW 35-3
2019Rose BowlL 27-28
2020Duke's Mayo BowlW 42-28
2021Las Vegas BowlW 20-13
Report card
Defense carries it: 92nd percentile defense, top-quarter offense at 76th.
Wisconsin, 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.
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.
16-4 against his rivals at Wisconsin. Winless in 3 tries against James Franklin.
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.
16-4 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against James Franklin.
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 Rudolph.
5,963 run and pass snaps at Wisconsin, 2015–2021, 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 Wisconsin classes of his own have averaged #28 nationally — best #15, worst #45.
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
Pittsburgh→
Wisconsin2015Players 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 2022 roster arrived on his watch — 43 of 120 players. The other 77 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 12% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2015–2022Counting players who have since left: 10% of the 20 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 Wisconsin rosters have averaged 10 lb heavier than the FBS average (2015–2021) — heavier than 95% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Wisconsin’s line averaged 14 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: 61 of 156 signees (39%) across his 2015–2022 tenure, drawn from 26 states in all. Next: FL (10).
53% of his signees come from WI and its 4 border states (MI 10, IL 6, MN 4, IA 2).
Off this map: 14 signees to the west (CA 7, AZ 4, others) and 3 to the south (FL 3).
- median hometown distance
- 232 mi
- within 100 mi
- 34%
- within 500 mi
- 71%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 14%
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 16 of them himself; 10 arrived under Gary Andersen (7), Bret Bielema (3). 2 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | R3.39 | Leo Chenal | Inside Linebacker |  Kansas City Chiefs | |
| 2022 | R3.40 | Logan Bruss | Offensive Guard |  Los Angeles Rams | |
| 2022 | R4.24 | Jake Ferguson | Tight End |  Dallas Cowboys | |
| 2022 | R6.28 | Matt Henningsen | Defensive Tackle |  Denver Broncos | |
| 2022 | R7.11 | Faion Hicks | Cornerback | Denver Broncos | |
| 2021 | R5.12 | Isaiahh Loudermilk | Defensive Tackle |  Pittsburgh Steelers | |
| 2021 | R6.29 | Rachad Wildgoose | Cornerback |  Buffalo Bills | |
| 2021 | R6.30 | Cole Van Lanen | Offensive Tackle |  Green Bay Packers |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | R2.09 | Jonathan Taylor | Running Back |  Indianapolis Colts | |
| 2020 | R3.10 | Zack Baun | Outside Linebacker |  New Orleans Saints | |
| 2020 | R4.40 | Tyler Biadasz | Center | Dallas Cowboys | |
| 2020 | R5.21 | Quintez Cephus | Wide Receiver |  Detroit Lions | |
| 2019 | R3.14 | Michael Deiter | Offensive Guard |  Miami Dolphins | recruited under Gary Andersen |
| 2019 | R5.05 | Ryan Connelly | Inside Linebacker |  New York Giants | recruited under Gary Andersen |
| 2019 | R5.13 | Andrew Van Ginkel | Outside Linebacker | Miami Dolphins | |
| 2019 | R5.31 | David Edwards | Offensive Tackle |  Los Angeles Rams | |
| 2018 | R4.10 | Nick Nelson | Cornerback |  Oakland Raiders | |
| 2018 | R5.19 | Troy Fumagalli | Tight End | Denver Broncos | recruited under Gary Andersen |
| 2018 | R5.27 | Natrell Jamerson | Safety | New Orleans Saints | recruited under Gary Andersen |
| 2018 | R6.28 | Jack Cichy | Inside Linebacker |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | recruited under Gary Andersen |
| 2018 | R7.12 | Leon Jacobs | Outside Linebacker |  Jacksonville Jaguars | recruited under Gary Andersen |
| 2017 | R1.30 | T.J. Watt | Outside Linebacker | Pittsburgh Steelers | recruited under Gary Andersen |
| 2017 | R1.32 | Ryan Ramczyk | Offensive Tackle | New Orleans Saints | |
| 2017 | R4.01 | Vince Biegel | Outside Linebacker | Green Bay Packers | recruited under Bret Bielema |
| 2016 | R4.01 | Joe Schobert | Outside Linebacker |  Cleveland Browns | recruited under Bret Bielema |
| 2016 | R6.23 | Derek Watt | Fullback |  San Diego Chargers | recruited under Bret Bielema |
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.
Inheritor inherited a power and neither built it higher nor let it collapse · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
3rd-best Wisconsin tenure of 14 by the numbers.
Followed Gary Andersen (2013–2014) · succeeded by Jim Leonhard (2022).
| Season | 2015 | 2016 | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | 2021 | 2022 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||
| Record | 10-3 | 11-3 | 13-1 | 8-5 | 10-4 | 4-3 | 9-4 | 2-3 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | |
| Coordinators | |||||||||
| OC | Joe Rudolph | Joe Rudolph | Joe Rudolph | Joe Rudolph | Joe Rudolph | Joe Rudolph | Joe Rudolph | Bobby Engram | |
| DC | Dave Aranda | Justin Wilcox | Jim Leonhard | Jim Leonhard | Jim Leonhard | Jim Leonhard | Jim Leonhard | Jim Leonhard | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||
| Offense | 29 | 75 | 81 | 85 | 89 | 22 | 44 | 51 | |
| Defense | 93 | 84 | 98 | 81 | 90 | 96 | 99 | 79 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 37.1 | 22.7 | 24.5 | 25.3 | 30.9 | 30.7 | 29.0 | 27.7 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 44.6 | 23.7 | 28.5 | 41.0 | 26.1 | 40.0 | 24.6 | 30.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 13.3 | 13.7 | 12.9 | 20.5 | 44.2 | 40.9 | 33.3 | 28.6 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and outperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
Brings in bigger-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Leo Chenal (2021)
15th-best Pittsburgh tenure of 23 by the numbers.
Followed Todd Graham (2011) · succeeded by Pat Narduzzi (2015–now).
| Season | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 6-7 | 7-6 | 6-6 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||
| OC | — | — | Joe Rudolph | |
| DC | — | — | Matt House | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 82 | 80 | 82 | |
| Defense | 89 | 75 | 1 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 32.9 | 37.6 | 28.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 40.8 | 42.5 | 29.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 17.0 | 11.5 | 28.2 | |
4 NFL Draft picks: Aaron Donald (2014), Tom Savage (2014), Devin Street (2014), T.J. Clemmings (2015)
All-time wins
Wins at programs this site tracks, 1936–present — one consistent count for every coach, not each program’s own historically reported total.
3rd all-time at Wisconsin
Was he good?
The data leans positive, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
-2.1 pts at Wisconsin · #824 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.