Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-3
2002Outback BowlL 30-38
2003Outback BowlL 17-37
Illinois
2007Rose BowlL 17-49
2010Texas BowlW 38-14
Report card
Above the median offense — 72nd percentile.
Illinois, every completed season graded against the whole field, then averaged.
Offense
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.
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.
2-2 against his rivals at Florida.
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.
3-4 against his rivals at Illinois. Winless in 4 tries against Gary Pinkel.
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.
5-6 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Gary Pinkel.
Signature games
Tags describe each game; they aren’t scores. The weighting that picks these games is still being tested.
How he plays
Run/pass mix, by field position
Called about what the situation called for.
4,153 run and pass snaps at Illinois, 2005–2011, 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
Four numbers on how he actually stocks a roster, from signing day to draft day.
Followed him here
Florida→
Illinois2005Players 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 2011 roster arrived on his watch — 115 of 115 players. Nobody is left from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2005-2011) predates 2021, when transfer-portal tracking begins in this database. Portal usage cannot be measured for this tenure at all -- this is not the same as '0% portal'.
“His own” means the player arrived while he was head coach; “inherited” means a predecessor brought him in.
Where he recruits
is his biggest recruiting state: 30 of 112 signees (27%) across his 2005–2011 tenure, drawn from 24 states in all. Next: FL (16).
32% of his signees come from IL and its 5 border states (IN 3, KY 2, MO 1).
Off this map: 3 signees to the west (CA 3).
- median hometown distance
- 197 mi
- within 100 mi
- 5%
- within 500 mi
- 71%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 4%
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 can be traced to who brought them in — there’s no roster record for these players here. 5 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | R1.26 | Whitney Mercilus | Defensive End |  Houston Texans | Estimated |
| 2012 | R1.30 | A.J. Jenkins | Wide Receiver |  San Francisco 49ers | Estimated |
| 2012 | R2.12 | Jeff Allen | Offensive Guard |  Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2012 | R2.16 | Tavon Wilson | Safety |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2011 | R1.18 | Corey Liuget | Defensive Tackle |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2011 | R2.25 | Mikel Leshoure | Running Back |  Detroit Lions | Estimated |
| 2011 | R3.08 | Martez Wilson | Outside Linebacker |  New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| 2011 | R7.40 | Nathan Bussey | Outside Linebacker | New Orleans Saints | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2010 | R2.07 | Arrelious Benn | Wide Receiver |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| 2010 | R3.04 | Jon Asamoah | Offensive Guard | Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2010 | R5.01 | Mike Hoomanawanui | Tight End |  St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| 2009 | R1.25 | Vontae Davis | Cornerback |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 2009 | R5.19 | Xavier Fulton | Offensive Tackle | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| 2009 | R6.31 | Will Davis | Defensive End |  Arizona Cardinals | Estimated |
| 2008 | R1.23 | Rashard Mendenhall | Running Back |  Pittsburgh Steelers | Estimated |
| 2007 | R7.27 | Alan Ball | Defensive Back |  Dallas Cowboys | Estimated |
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.
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
10th-best Illinois tenure of 16 by the numbers.
Followed Ron Turner (1997–2004) · succeeded by Tim Beckman (2012–2014).
| Season | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | 2010 | 2011 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||||||
| Record | 2-9 | 2-10 | 9-4 | 5-7 | 3-9 | 7-6 | 6-6 | |
| Postseason | — | — | L bowl | — | — | W bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||||||
| Offense | 58 | 52 | 81 | 72 | 74 | 80 | 22 | |
| Defense | 11 | 87 | 26 | 68 | 12 | 74 | 91 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | 38.6 | 34.9 | 28.3 | 40.8 | 34.0 | 23.2 | 36.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 40.0 | 36.1 | 27.8 | 42.7 | 23.4 | 24.0 | 28.6 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 12.0 | 10.0 | 10.0 | 20.6 | 27.0 | 13.2 | 30.8 | |
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Whitney Mercilus (2011)
4th-best Florida tenure of 22 by the numbers.
Followed Steve Spurrier (1990–2001) · succeeded by Urban Meyer (2005–2010).
| Season | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 8-5 | 8-5 | 7-4 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | — | — | 92 | |
| Defense | — | — | 39 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | 45.6 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | 36.5 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | 11.8 | |
16 NFL Draft picks: Rex Grossman (2003), Taylor Jacobs (2003), Todd Johnson (2003), Ian Scott (2003), Aaron Walker (2003), Tron LaFavor (2003), Michael Nattiel (2003), Clint Mitchell (2003) + 8 more
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+3.0 pts at Illinois · #489 of 1290 · middle half