Now
Career arc
Bowls and playoffs: 3-5
1999Peach BowlL 7-17
2000Gator BowlL 20-41
2001Humanitarian BowlW 49-24
2002Tangerine BowlL 15-55
2003Peach BowlW 27-14
2005Champs Sports BowlW 19-10
2006Music City BowlL 20-28
2007Chick-fil-A BowlL 20-23
Report card
Above the median offense — 58th percentile.
Clemson, 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.
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.
7-2 against his rivals at Clemson. Winless in 4 tries against Frank Beamer.
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.
7-2 against his rivals. Winless in 4 tries against Frank Beamer.
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.
2,277 run and pass snaps at Clemson, 2004–2008, 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. Play-by-play starts in 2004, so his earlier seasons there aren’t in it.
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
Tulane→
Clemson1999Players 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 2008 roster arrived on his watch — 9 of 32 players. The other 23 are holdovers from before he was hired.
This coach's entire tenure (1999-2008) 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: 25 of 70 signees (36%) across his 2000–2008 classes on record (his tenure ran 1999–2008), drawn from 11 states in all. Next: FL (14).
61% of his signees come from SC and its 2 border states (GA 12, NC 6).
Off this map: 4 signees to the north (VA 2, IL, others), 2 to the west (KS, MS) and 2 to the south (FL 2).
- median hometown distance
- 149 mi
- within 100 mi
- 40%
- within 500 mi
- 90%
- beyond 1,000 mi
- 0%
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. 3 went in the first round.
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2008 | R2.01 | Phillip Merling | Defensive End |  Miami Dolphins | Estimated |
| 2008 | R6.04 | Barry Richardson | Offensive Tackle |  Kansas City Chiefs | Estimated |
| 2007 | R1.04 | Gaines Adams | Defensive End |  Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| 2007 | R3.32 | Anthony Waters | Linebacker |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2007 | R5.02 | Dustin Fry | Center |  St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| 2007 | R5.22 | C.J. Gaddis | Defensive Back |  Philadelphia Eagles | Estimated |
| 2007 | R7.25 | Chansi Stuckey | Wide Receiver |  New York Jets | Estimated |
| 2006 | R1.15 | Tye Hill | Defensive Back | St. Louis Rams | Estimated |
| Year | Pick | Player | Pos | NFL team | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2006 | R3.17 | Charlie Whitehurst | Quarterback |  San Diego Chargers | Estimated |
| 2006 | R7.33 | Charles Bennett | Defensive End | Tampa Bay Buccaneers | Estimated |
| 2005 | R2.25 | Justin Miller | Defensive Back | New York Jets | Estimated |
| 2005 | R3.34 | LeRoy Hill | Linebacker |  Seattle Seahawks | Estimated |
| 2005 | R5.04 | Airese Currie | Wide Receiver |  Chicago Bears | Estimated |
| 2004 | R3.09 | Donnell Washington | Defensive Tackle |  Green Bay Packers | Estimated |
| 2004 | R3.14 | Derrick Hamilton | Wide Receiver |  San Francisco 49ers | Estimated |
| 2003 | R4.17 | Nick Eason | Defensive Tackle |  Denver Broncos | Estimated |
| 2003 | R4.31 | Bryant McNeal | Defensive End | Denver Broncos | Estimated |
| 2001 | R1.15 | Rod Gardner | Wide Receiver |  Washington Redskins | Estimated |
| 2001 | R7.32 | Keith Adams | Linebacker |  Tennessee Titans | Estimated |
| 2001 | R7.44 | Robert Carswell | Defensive Back |  San Diego Chargers | 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.
Builder meaningfully raised a program that wasn't one · Steady no large move in either direction on our stature ladder
5th-best Clemson tenure of 10 by the numbers.
Followed Tommy West (1993–1998) · succeeded by Dabo Swinney (2008–now).
| Season | 1999 | 2000 | 2001 | 2002 | 2003 | 2004 | 2005 | 2006 | 2007 | 2008 | Trend |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Record & result | |||||||||||
| Record | 6-6 | 9-3 | 7-5 | 7-6 | 9-4 | 6-5 | 8-4 | 8-5 | 9-4 | 3-3 | |
| Postseason | L bowl | L bowl | W bowl | L bowl | W bowl | — | W bowl | L bowl | L bowl | — | |
| Outcome — opponent-adjusted efficiency percentile | |||||||||||
| Offense | — | — | — | — | — | 14 | 73 | 68 | 66 | 16 | |
| Defense | — | — | — | — | — | 72 | 79 | 79 | 53 | 94 | |
| Tendencies — play-by-play, neutral script | |||||||||||
| 1st-down pass% | — | — | — | — | — | 48.8 | 37.7 | 30.6 | 37.5 | 42.0 | |
| Red-zone pass% | — | — | — | — | — | 35.8 | 39.8 | 28.1 | 53.4 | 40.9 | |
| 4th-down go%opp. territory | — | — | — | — | — | 33.3 | 18.2 | 21.2 | 16.7 | 33.3 | |
Followed Buddy Teevens (1992–1996) · succeeded by Chris Scelfo (1999–2006).
1 NFL Draft pick: Shaun King (1999)
Was he good?
Only one of the usual three angles is measurable for this era — raised the program.
+5.2 pts at Clemson · #376 of 1290 · middle half