Tom Herman
Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 5-0
2015Peach BowlW 38-24
Texas
2017Texas BowlW 33-16
2018Sugar BowlW 28-21
2019Alamo BowlW 38-10
2020Alamo BowlW 55-23
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.
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.
4-5 against his rivals at Texas. Just 1-4 against Lincoln Riley.
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.
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.
4-5 against his rivals. Just 1-4 against Lincoln Riley.
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.
1,415 run and pass snaps at Florida Atlantic, 2023–2024, 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 Florida Atlantic classes of his own have averaged #80 nationally — best #79, worst #82.
Texas
Florida AtlanticAcross every program: 5 ranked classes of his own, averaging #35 nationally.
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
Houston→Texas2017Players 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 2024 roster arrived on his watch — 88 of 117 players. The other 29 are holdovers from before he was hired.
Of his own players on this roster, 17% came through the transfer portal; the rest are non-portal arrivals (high-school signees, JUCO transfers, walk-ons).
Everyone he has brought in, 2023–2024Counting players who have since left: 17% of the 119 arrivals we can classify came through the portal.
“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 Texas rosters have averaged within a few pounds of the FBS average (2017–2020). In the three seasons before he arrived, Texas’s line averaged 5 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: 33 of 43 signees (77%) across his 2023–2024 tenure, drawn from 6 states in all. Next: GA (6).
91% of his signees come from FL and its 2 border states (GA 6).
Off this map: 3 signees to the west (AR, CA, others) and 1 to the north (MD).
- median hometown distance
- 164 mi
- within 100 mi
- 44%
- within 500 mi
- 73%
- 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.
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
Followed Willie Taggart (2020–2022) · succeeded by Zach Kittley (2025–now).
| Season | 2023 | 2024 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||
| Record | 4-8 | 2-8 | |
| Postseason | — | — | |
| Coordinators | |||
| OC | Charlie Frye | Charlie Frye | |
| DC | Brandon Harris / Roc Bellantoni | Brandon Harris / Roc Bellantoni | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||
| Offense | 41 | 45 | |
| Defense | 43 | 24 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||
| 1st-down pass% | 46.1 | 38.4 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 49.4 | 40.7 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 53.1 | 45.0 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and underperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
Brings in smaller-than-position-typical players than most.
Recruits older, more experienced transfers than most.
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): LaJohntay Wester (2023)
9th-best Texas tenure of 12 by the numbers.
Followed Charlie Strong (2014–2016) · succeeded by Steve Sarkisian (2021–now).
| Season | 2017 | 2018 | 2019 | 2020 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||
| Record | 7-6 | 10-4 | 8-5 | 7-3 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | W bowl | |
| Coordinators | |||||
| OC | Tim Beck | Herb Hand / Tim Beck | Herb Hand / Tim Beck | Herb Hand / Mike Yurcich | |
| DC | Todd Orlando | Todd Orlando | Todd Orlando / Craig Naivar | Chris Ash / Coleman Hutzler | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||
| Offense | 9 | 78 | 91 | 88 | |
| Defense | 94 | 50 | 53 | 63 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||
| 1st-down pass% | 49.7 | 47.2 | 50.0 | 45.8 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 43.4 | 38.5 | 50.0 | 50.4 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 40.7 | 30.4 | 37.5 | 29.0 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent, on both sides of the ball.
14 NFL Draft picks: Connor Williams (2018), Malik Jefferson (2018), Michael Dickson (2018), DeShon Elliott (2018), Charles Omenihu (2019), Kris Boyd (2019), Brandon Jones (2020), Devin Duvernay (2020) + 6 more
1 player-season honored (All-America / national award): Joseph Ossai (2020)
Followed Tony Levine (2012–2014) · succeeded by Major Applewhite (2016–2018).
| Season | 2015 | 2016 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||
| Record | 13-1 | 9-3 | |
| Postseason | W bowl | — | |
| Coordinators | |||
| OC | Major Applewhite | Major Applewhite | |
| DC | Todd Orlando | Todd Orlando | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||
| Offense | 82 | 31 | |
| Defense | 59 | 87 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||
| 1st-down pass% | 36.0 | 49.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | 29.4 | 33.3 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | 41.9 | 41.9 | |
Performs about as expected for his recruiting talent on offense and outperforms his recruiting talent on defense.
6 NFL Draft picks: William Jackson III (2016), Elandon Roberts (2016), Demarcus Ayers (2016), Tyus Bowser (2017), Howard Wilson (2017), Brandon Wilson (2017)
Was he good?
Every angle here comes back inconclusive — not enough separation from zero to call it either way.
+3.6 pts at Texas · #460 of 1290 · middle halfModel fit as of 2026-09-04.