Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 1-2
2003Humanitarian BowlL 10-52
2005Liberty BowlW 31-24
2006Armed Forces BowlL 13-25
Report card
Above the median offense — 67th percentile.
Louisville, 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.
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.
1-5 against his rivals at Louisville. Winless in 3 tries against Randy Edsall.
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.
1-5 against his rivals. Winless in 3 tries against Kyle Whittingham.
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.
1,756 run and pass snaps at Louisville, 2007–2009, 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
Tulsa→
Louisville2007Players 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 2009 roster arrived on his watch — 104 of 106 players. The other 2 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (2007-2009) 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: 11 of 46 signees (24%) across his 2007–2009 tenure, drawn from 15 states in all. Next: FL (10).
24% of his signees come from CA and its 3 border states.
- median hometown distance
- 333 mi
- within 100 mi
- 37%
- within 500 mi
- 56%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 12%
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. 1 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2009 | R1.28 | Eric Wood | Center |  Buffalo Bills | Estimated |
| 2009 | R5.34 | George Bussey | Offensive Tackle |  New England Patriots | Estimated |
| 2008 | R2.25 | Brian Brohm | Quarterback |  Green Bay Packers | Estimated |
| 2008 | R3.21 | Harry Douglas | Wide Receiver |  Atlanta Falcons | Estimated |
| 2008 | R5.06 | Gary Barnidge | Tight End |  Carolina Panthers | Estimated |
| 2008 | R5.15 | Breno Giacomini | Offensive Tackle | Green Bay Packers | Estimated |
| 2008 | R7.39 | Mario Urrutia | Wide Receiver |  Cincinnati Bengals | 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.
Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
2nd-best Louisville tenure of 15 by the numbers.
Followed Bobby Petrino (2003–2006) · succeeded by Charlie Strong (2010–2013).
| Season | 2007 | 2008 | 2009 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | ||||
| Record | 6-6 | 5-7 | 4-8 | |
| Postseason | — | — | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | ||||
| Offense | 94 | 55 | 40 | |
| Defense | 18 | 29 | 14 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | ||||
| 1st-down pass% | 46.8 | 35.1 | 41.3 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 44.8 | 26.0 | 41.6 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 25.8 | 39.5 | 38.9 | |
19th-best Tulsa tenure of 22 by the numbers.
Followed Keith Burns (2000–2002) · succeeded by Todd Graham (2007–2010).
| Season | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 8-5 | 4-8 | 9-4 | 8-5 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | — | W bowl | L bowl | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | — | 32 | 71 | 89 | |
| Defense | — | 38 | 76 | 61 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | 27.6 | 37.7 | 36.8 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | 25.0 | 35.2 | 27.6 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | 10.3 | 44.1 | |
2 NFL Draft picks: James Kilian (2005), Garrett Mills (2006)
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+8.4 pts at Tulsa · #258 of 1290 · top quarter