Pete Lembo
Buffalo came back from 15 down, at one point just a 1% chance in the fourth quarter.
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-2
2012Beef 'O' Brady's BowlL 17-38
2013GoDaddy BowlL 20-23
Buffalo
2024Bahamas BowlW 26-7
This week Wed Nov 4
- This season6-3 won 4 straight
- On track for8-4 regular season
- Nextat Ball State Wed Nov 11
- Stature112th of 138 FBS programs
Buffalo came back from 15 down, at one point just a 1% chance in the fourth quarter.
Won as a 6.5-point underdog.
Buffalo · OTBuffalo 34-31 Miami (OH)
Buffalo wonMove across the chart, or tap a numbered swing, to see any play.The three plays that swung it
- 1Q4 1:35Wright 2-yd TD run, ties it 31-31Buffalo 13% → 33% (+20)
- 2Q4 0:32Shelton 4-yd runBuffalo 33% → 54% (+21)
- 3OTMcLaughlin 45-yd field goal no goodBuffalo 62% → 100% (+38)
How to read this chart
Starts from the pregame line (Miami (OH) -6.5), at 27% for Buffalo (the play-by-play feed's kickoff number, moved to match the line; our model's and the betting line's own numbers are in “The betting line, and the fans”). Dots are the biggest swings; ticks under the chart are scores. Outlined diamonds mark rare plays.Best Buffalo lines
- Jason Wright22 of 46, 358 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT; ran for 2 TD
- Messiah Burch14 carries, 56 yards
- Chance Morrow12 catches, 199 yards, 2 TD
- Dwayne Early Jr.4 catches, 80 yards
- Ronnell Davis9 tackles
- Will Clark4 tackles, 2 sacks
His fourth-down calls
7 of 8 matched what most FBS coaches do in that spot (FBS play-by-play, 2014–25: the same distance and quarter, within 5 yards; not the score or the clock).
Q4 11:06 · down 15
4th & 6, own 29
Went for it · converted
15% of FBS coaches go for it there
Q4 9:24 · down 15
4th & 1, opp 6
Went for it · converted
82% of FBS coaches go for it there
OT · tied
4th & 6, opp 9
Kicked a field goal
32% of FBS coaches go for it there
Also 4 punts and 1 field goal where nearly every FBS coach kicks.
What he said
Offense: 100th of 138 per play. Defense: 92nd.
3 games left
- Wed Nov 11at Ball State (3-5)58%
- Wed Nov 18vs. Central Michigan (3-5)62%
- Fri Nov 27at Akron (1-8)68%
Percent: Buffalo’s chance to win, from the site’s model. Records are through today.
How the season got here
Where Buffalo stood among 138 FBS programs by stature after each game (1st is the highest; the CFB Zeitgeist ledger).
- Oct 26–Nov 1No game0 headlines
- Oct 19–25W 31-24 vs. Bowling Green0 headlines
- Oct 12–18W 25-18 vs. Massachusetts0 headlines
- Oct 5–11W 23-8 at Toledo0 headlines
- Sep 28–Oct 4L 17-20 vs. Western Michigan0 headlines
- Sep 21–27 · rebuiltW 31-28 vs. Robert Morris0 headlines
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 Buffalo’s games, ranked by how much each moved the chance to win.
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 6-3, outscored by 2.1 points a game
- ▲ HigherHis 3rd season at Buffalo
- ▲ HigherPaid $790,500 in 2025, the 12th percentile of published FBS head-coach pay · up 8% on the season before
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
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.
0-5 against his rivals at Ball State. Winless in 3 tries against Rod Carey.
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 Buffalo.
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.
1-6 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Rod Carey.
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
Called about what the situation called for.
1,689 run and pass snaps at Buffalo, 2024–2025, 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 2 ranked Buffalo classes of his own have averaged #96 nationally — best #92, worst #101.
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.
Roster ownership
Roster ownership
of his 2026 roster arrived on his watch — 112 of 118 players. The other 6 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 10% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
17% of his 146 new players since 2024 came through the portal (FBS programs, same seasons: 29%) — well below the FBS rate. His share was 22% in 2024 and 7% 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 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 Buffalo rosters have averaged 4 lb lighter than the FBS average (2024–2026) — lighter than 81% of FBS coaching runs since 2010. In the three seasons before he arrived, Buffalo’s line averaged 6 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: 10 of 61 signees (16%) across his 2024–2026 tenure, drawn from 22 states in all. Next: OH (9).
57% of his signees come from PA and its 6 border states (OH 9, NJ 8, NY 6, DE 1, MD 1).
Off this map: 4 signees to the west (KS 2, AZ, others) and 2 to the south (FL 2).
- median hometown distance
- 282 mi
- within 100 mi
- 19%
- within 500 mi
- 82%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 8%
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. None were his own recruits yet: all 1 roster-verified picks arrived under Maurice Linguist.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026 | R7.41 | Red Murdock | Linebacker |  Denver Broncos | recruited under Maurice Linguist |
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 headlines named him in the last 7 days
In his own words
Awaiting signal — no quotes collected from this staff yet this cycle.
Career
Hires into jobs like this
Hired into programs rated 11 to 11 (Regional Program IV tier). Rough match, not calibrated yet — ranked on what the job inherited alone. Coaches hired into this same job aren’t used as comps.
- Maurice Linguist20214–8-4.7
- Lance Leipold20155–7-1.2
- Alex Wood20142–2+1.6
- Jeff Quinn20102–10-1.5
- Turner Gill20062–10-0.1
- Jim Hofher20013–8+0.5
- Bob Deming19696–3+0.7
- Doc Urich19665–5-0.7
Coaching career
The arc of his career is on Now.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
7th-best Buffalo tenure of 11 by the numbers.
Followed Maurice Linguist (2021–2024).
| Season | 2024 | 2025 | 2026 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 9-4 | 5-7 | 6-3 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | — | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||
| OC | Dave Patenaude | Dave Patenaude | Tony Tokarz | |
| DC | Joe Bowen | Joe Bowen | Brian Dougherty | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 38 | 12 | 28 | |
| Defense | 79 | 64 | 34 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 40.3 | 55.1 | 41.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 34.6 | 42.7 | 43.1 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 46.3 | 44.2 | 30.0 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and outperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
Typical size for position, once adjusted for position mix.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Shaun Dolac (2024)
AI Narratives — “Buffalo — stat check”.
7th-best Ball State tenure of 10 by the numbers.
Followed Stan Parrish (2008–2010) · succeeded by Mike Neu (2016–2024).
| Season | 2011 | 2012 | 2013 | 2014 | 2015 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||
| Record | 6-6 | 9-4 | 10-3 | 5-7 | 3-9 | |
| Postseason | — | L bowl | L bowl | — | — | |
| Coordinators | ||||||
| OC | — | — | — | Joey Lynch | Joey Lynch | |
| DC | — | — | — | Kevin Kelly | Kevin Kelly | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||
| Offense | 30 | 83 | 66 | 46 | 15 | |
| Defense | 5 | 7 | 39 | 24 | 3 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 47.3 | 47.6 | 54.3 | 38.2 | 48.9 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 51.8 | 48.6 | 51.1 | 42.6 | 39.0 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 25.0 | 21.2 | 25.8 | 25.0 | 33.3 | |
Underperforms his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
2 NFL Draft picks: Jonathan Newsome (2014), Keith Wenning (2014)
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.
tied for 2nd all-time at Buffalo
Was he good?
The data leans negative, where the data can separate from zero: every conclusive reading points the same way.
+2.4 pts at Buffalo · #530 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.