Inspired by a piece Andy Bitter wrote for the Athletic, I thought it would be interesting to see other teams who have drastically improved between a coach's first year and second year, and see if there were any common trends across (a) staff changes, (b) QB changes, or (c) used the portal. Here's a quick and dirty list:
| Team | First Season | Year 1 Record | Year 2 Record | Staff Changes? | Starting QB Change? | Transfers In |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| South Carolina | 1999 | 0-11 | 8-4 | DL | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Auburn | 1999 | 5-6 | 9-4 | None | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Oklahoma State | 2005 | 4-7 | 7-6 | None | Y* | N/A (pre-portal) |
| UNC | 2007 | 4-8 | 8-5 | DC | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Mississippi State | 2009 | 5-7 | 9-4 | DC, DL, LB | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Washington State | 2012 | 3-9 | 6-7 | LB, IWR | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| NC State | 2013 | 3-9 | 8-5 | CB | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Iowa State | 2016 | 3-9 | 8-5 | None | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Baylor | 2017 | 1-11 | 6-7 | None | N | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Cincinatti | 2018 | 4-8 | 11-2 | DL, WR | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| SMU | 2018 | 5-7 | 10-3 | OL | Y | N/A (pre-portal) |
| Baylor | 2020 | 2-7 | 12-2 | OC, WR, OL | Y | 5 |
| Michigan State | 2020 | 2-5 | 11-2 | LB, Staff Shuffle | Y | 14 |
| Arkansas | 2020 | 3-7 | 9-4 | WR, LB, OL, DL | Y* | 7 |
| Ole Miss | 2020 | 5-5 | 10-3 | DL, OL, TE, STC | N | 2 |
| Mississippi State | 2020 | 4-7 | 7-6 | None | N* | 7 |
| Kansas | 2021 | 2-10 | 6-6 | WR, Staff Shuffle | N* | 1 |
| Illinios | 2021 | 5-7 | 8-4 | OC | Y | 1 |
| Virginia Tech | 2022 | 3-8 | 6-6 | OL, RB, QB | Yes | 6 |
At a high level, it appears that - with the exception of Matt Rhule and Mike Leach - at least one thing has to change around your staff, QB, or roster.
Callouts and Caveats:
- I tried to limit this to P5 teams - I didn't think it was that useful to include Scott Frost at UCF, for example, given how poorly he performed at Nebraska. I chose to include Fickel's Cincy team and Dyke's SMU team, just because both of those coaches have made a CFB playoff
- Be warned that there is A LOT of missing context here. For example:
- With staff changes, it's not clear if someone was fired or hired away.
- It's not clear how good the transfer portal players were
- It's not clear if the schedule was easier from year 1 to year 2
- An asterisk in the 'QB Change?' column means that significant time was split between QBs in one of the years - could be due to injury, could be a 2 QB system
- 5 of these coaches had their first season during COVID... I'm sure that made their first season worst than it could have been.
I'm probably going to expand/iterate on this. I'd like to use some metric for strength of scheduel (an improved record could be due to a weaker schedule in year 2) and change in team talent composite rather than just transfers in/out (this would account for recruiting wins as well).
Anyways, I think it's an interesting high level view of year over year change within a program. Makes me a little concerned that we aren't making enough change, but we'll see...
Enjoy.
Comments
Interestingly, of all the 2020 teams that had greater success in 2021, only one had greater success in 2022. Mich. St. and Baylor regressed by a great amount too.
I don't know much about Baylor, but I do know that Bill Connelly/SP+ pointed out that Michigan State was very 'lucky' in 2021. Between that and players like Kenneth Walker III, a lot people were expecting a down year for MSU in 2022. But I think people were expecting 7ish wins, not missing a bowl.
I'll try to update later with some more realistic stats instead of just saying they were 'lucky'
FWIW bar is definitely right on MSU I followed them pretty close both years. The turn-around was absolutely overachieving based on portal entries balling out have sense regressed.
I will not be doing the research like bar might - I also only work half a day but I got other shit to do..../s
I think the takeaway is that the portal can be a huge boon (I think the numbers show MSU had the highest #) but it's not necessarily sustainable.
This is really interesting. Thank you ... and how do find the time to do all of the analysis that you do and share with us?
Know I'm biased as my dad went there, but loved that turn around at Iowa State. Had forgotten how much of a turn around Lou Holtz did at South Carolina. That is truly amazing. Same with Ruhl and Arranda.
Well, I typically do about 3-4 hours of actual work in a given work day. I also have a bad habit of multitasking when I'm on conference calls. The rest of that time I'm running errands, doing stuff around the house, or on TKP.
Even then, most of these posts aren't that time consuming - Making charts/tables and writing is easy. Finding the data/information is time intensive part. But after consuming my little niche of college football internet (EDSBS, Banner Society, r/CFB, The Athletic, TKP, Split Zone Duo) for a while now, I kinda know where to start poking around when I want to learn something or validate a hypothesis.
I also have a running list of interesting questions that I would like to investigate if/when I have more substantial time.
PRobably a longer answer than you were looking for, but I enjoy engaging in these conversations.
I'm impressed.
247 does some things to make data scrapping hard too. I've worked on it but still struggle to get basic data of the site from python scripts.
Collegefootballdata.com scrapes the 247 composite daily now. If you can figure out how to download in their format, it should save you lots of time.
They even have an API that might make that much easier.
https://api.collegefootballdata.com/api/docs/?url=/api-docs.json
Cincinnati, two N's, one T. Mike Leech's (intentional) turnaround barely qualifies, but for sure there are hopeful examples. I will stand by my thoughts that it all depends on the OL on offense. Defense needs some help here and there, but it doesn't feel like one level is completely behind the rest.
Hey, 3 win improvement in year 2? I'd be real happy with that. Guessing that getting to 6 wins will be a real tall order, but who knows. I'm just hoping for the best and to not get bent out of shape over things.
I would gladly take bowl eligible on year two! I was more thinking that the three wins could fall within the luck category and may not be a true improvement in performance, but just an improvement in lucky bounces.
Yea, Leach is interesting. Allegedly, his system is insanely simple (literally 6-10 plays in the playbook) and just takes a shit ton of reps for players to getting the timing right. Assuming that's true, it makes sense why his teams just take a season or two before they start humming.
A leach offense is what I think tech should gravitate to, simple and effective. Add a couple wrinkles each week based on opponents weaknesses. Get good with repetition, and then install wrinkles.
I spoke to a former VT OL years ago who was there for the regime change from Lefty to FuCorn and he said the offense was indeed this, really simplified down to just a few plays with minor adjustments to each play. I guess it worked initially with Fu's first year of success.
My understanding is that Fuente's offense - when schemed and executed correctly - should force the opponent to cover the entire field because it 'looks like' the ball could go anywhere. But in reality, there are a limited number of decisions that the QB needs to make. Hence why in the Fuente offense, every player needs to 'sell' or pretend that they are part of the play.
From my understanding of the Air Raid, timing is super important (more important than 'disguising' the play). The QB and the receivers need to be on the same page.
But I'm far from an expert in these things - just regurgitating things I've heard/read over the years.
The air raid is a 1-read passing offense, meaning the OC calls THE play pre snap and you throw it. Art Briles modified Hal Mumme's run and shoot and simplified it. The reason why it goes up and down the field uncontested for 50 points a game is that the WRs and QBs are expertly coached on where to be and where to throw the ball every single play. The air raid offenses that don't work are the ones where the OC can't read the defense pre-snap. You need the coach, and accurate QB, and hours on hours with the WRs to execute exactly where they need to be. Jay Gruden could not believe how bad RG3 was at reading a basic defense. Duh, he never had to- he had a hot read, and if the WR trips and falls, a bail out zone pass. If VT wanted to go with that its 1. Hire a legit- not just anyone- OC from the Leach/Briles tree, and sign an entire new WR room that can handle the prep and execution- meaning they were in passing offenses in HS. Recruiting "athletes" to play WR in the air raid doesn't work.
Just to add to this, while it is 1 read, that read could change every execution of the same play. So every reciever has to run their route and be ready. It isn't designed to force feed a reciever.
Yeah, Fu's offense really was just smoke and mirrors. Looks like the play/ball could go anywhere, lots of motion and deception, but in reality a very limited offense and extremely limited passing game. It was kind of a one-trick pony, and I think after DCs started to figure them out midway into 2017, they couldn't make any adjustments. Jerod Evans also bailed them out a ton in 2016. Hooker did the same but they couldn't stand a QB going off script, hence why Evans bolted after one year and they never gave Hooker a fair shake. I don't have any issues with a zone read/RPO offense (in fact I'm hopeful that's predominantly what we see next season), but Fu's version of it simply didn't work and didn't develop players.
Fu's offense was all predicated on being able to run inside zone. The entire premise. When we couldn't execute that, the offense fell apart. Fu also was horrible at scouting - Jerry Kill was clear on this- so most games were square peg/round hole affairs. The most effective Fu offenses were when we could run inside zone, get in manageable 3rd downs and move the sticks. His offense was never really good without good individual players either. The scheme was not "player proof" like mist modern, effective offenses are. Without a Cam Phillips or Healthy Tre Turner or a Khalil Herbert - you lose a lot of games and can't move the ball. I contrast this with a Mike Leach - who had a different QB every year, never recruited 5 star players, yet moved the ball on everyone. Fu not being able to figure out what to do when his bread and butter didn't work tells you he is not an elite OC
Evans always planned to play one season and go pro, and he didn't bother with pesky details like grades that would have given him the option of returning. Fu/Corn offense had nothing to do with that choice.
Cincinnati has 3 N's......🤪
yes, but everyone manages to get the first one right, it's the end that gets them.
and is it cinci or cincy?
This is a tricky one as both are pretty common, but to make things more confusing, I like Cincy better.
cincynaty
Nasti Nati
Cin City
🪙👀🪰E
This is like one of the puzzles underneath a Mickey's cap.
What's your name again sir?
Babar.
Is that with one B or two?
One.... B-A-B-A-R
That's two B's...
Yeah...but not in a row....
I'd be interested just in seeing records in Years 3 and 4 as well for the coaches who lasted that long at the job. The idea being that VT isn't just looking to have a lot of wins in Year 2 as much as it is looking to reboot the program to achieve sustained success.
I'd rather not have a coinflip of whether we win 9/10 or be fighting for bowl eligibility every season. I'd much rather gut the program and rebuild to make the absolute floor 7 reg szn wins and a bowl appearance, with realistic goal of competing for the ACC every year -- even if it takes a couple years to see real reaction on progress towards that end
Granted that would be good to look at - it would obviously point out premier coaches, but at the same time I would expect that introduces a whole lot of unique situations that will dilute the raw data. That is a long time and if the Fuente project taught us anything it should be things aren't always what they seem.
A variable that's unaccounted for could be causing those numbers that come out in such a limited study (case in point the Michigan state scenario)
You're right... the takeaway can always be "the situation is unique" with extenuating circumstances -- but that's part of the reason why you zoom out. How many "but elko is doing it at duke" comments did we see?? I'm more interested what Duke and VT look like in 2025-2027 ish than 2022, bc that's basically what the administration broadcasted with the messaging surrounding the Pry hire, and what Pry himself broadcasted on the media circuit.
Lots here were willing to pull the plug on Fuente after 2019 and signing the awful 2020 recruiting class, 4 years in. I think you get a good idea if these "turnarounds" are sustainable or not, and i think you can get a good sense whether or not you know a coach is The Guy after year 3 and def after year 4
It would definitely be more interesting, informative, and (possibly) relevant to look at programs that did the long haul improvement. I thought about this a little bit, but 2 things keep me from doing it:
But I'll see if I can think of anything. Off the top of my head: Chip Kelly (UCLA), PJ Fleck, Dave Clawson, and Matt Rhule stand out. Matt Rhule is also interesting - he's taken 3-4 years to get to 10 wins at both Temple and Baylor, but he's always gotten to .500 by year 2.
Mike Norvell at FSU comes to mind as well. Covid year, tread water, make the leap this year. Curious to see how they continue on moving forward but i think they will push Clemson for the ACC moving forward.
I appreciate all the effort and thought that goes into your posting and commenting.
Norvell has a QB. That helps.
The portal is a great pathway to rapid improvement, unquestionably. That's what we are aiming for this cycle. However, I think Pry understands via his time at Penn State, and has communicated as much, that he understands that HS recruiting is the long-term key to the future. The portal can help us rapidly improve the roster between years 1 and 2, but after that, it should be primarily being built with HS players who you can develop over time (and have for longer), while plugging holes with the portal where possible.
For example, I'm potentially okay with a big rise in year 2, followed by a 1-2 loss step back in year 3, as long as we are on a trajectory forward that reflects long-term growth.
Great stuff here Bar, thank you for compiling this and sharing your thoughts.
Speaking of Pry, I went over to Harper's yesterday to see what it would take to get the same sportcoat with the Hokie lining that he wore during his introductory press conference but Brian said that getting through the licensing conversation, even with a trademark that wasn't active, was a nightmare and he wouldn't do it again. Oh well.
Updated the VT/Brent Pry row to reflect our new roster additions
Up to 5 transfers in now. Same as Aranda at Baylor...so we're going 12-2 next year!!
If the OL can block like it did in the last 2-3 games of the season, Drones and the new WR corps are the real deal, KK and Thomas can stay healthy, and the defense can continue to make steady improvements, then sure, I can see it. (don't worry, my expectations are still .500ish)
Pretty wild that VT has never won 12 games in a single season before.
Most notable screw ups in this category:
2005 - FSU conference championship game was unforgivable. We had absolutely no business losing that game.
2007 - I understand that the cathartic revenge game over BC probably felt like the meaningful conclusion of our season, especially after finishing one spot outside the BCS title game, but we should have beaten Kansas. We slept walked through the first quarter or so IIRC.
2010 - Our 11 game winning streak should have been a 12 game winning streak, and reasonably could have been a 13 game winning streak. I'll leave it at that.
Honorable mentions that weren't "screw ups":
2000 & 1999 - These were more "could have" than "should have"
Man that Kansas Orange Bowl was triggering. Didn't Vince Hall injure himself on a jet ski before that game? Unfortunately I don't know that bowl games were taken super seriously in the Beamer era. It was more a vacation/reward than anything else.
I'm glad they took it seriously in the 2008 season. Even though that was probably the weakest team in terms of production, talent, and quality of the 10 win streak, I will always remember that season fondly because they finished strong to keep the streak alive.
I believe that is correct on the injury front. Also Kansas couldn't come close to stopping Ore, but we mysteriously decided to stop running the ball.
Bud Foster told me to my face that that bowl was the best most focused "prep" the team had had prior to a bowl game. So the lets just have fun narrative doesn't fly. Beamer did further tweak bowl prep after that game though. That loss was about not blowing them out in the fist half when we could have. They had a scrappy QB who fed on being in the mix and shouldering the load. Hard to do down 2 scores.
I don't remember much from that Kansas-VT game other than a general feeling of despair watching as Kansas lined up what felt like 17 wide receivers on every play (but was really more like 5 I guess). Our defense looked powerless to stop them. Looking back at the box score I was surprised to see the final score was that low.
What I would really like to know is the number of returning upperclassmen and if they got significant snaps the previous year. I would guess that also has a high correlation to success.
I would actually guess the opposite... Not all returning experience is good experience. I imagine teams that make a big jump in 1 offseason either (a) drastically upgrade at one or more position groups (via recruiting, portal, etc) or (b) make somewhat significant schematic changes. Growth and experience takes time to manifest.
Anyways, it would be interesting to add a column for 'roster turn over %'. High roster turnover = upgrades via portal/recruiting, low roster turnover = growth and improvement. I don't have the time to collect that data right now, but I'd love to see it.
Both are possible avenues to success. It's just that "retain players and develop them" is the old-school pre-portal approach. Roster turnover is an interesting stat, but I feel like it needs additional contextualization to be useful. Getting new starters because all your best players bolted for greener pastures, either that's another P5 or the NFL, doesn't help. Getting new starters because you brought in fresh blood that are starting over your old starters probably does help.
No team is improving from 3 wins to 6+ wins IN ONE OFFSEASON by just retaining and developing players. You need either a schematic overhaul or better players to make that much movement that quickly.
I'm only saying this in the scope of this conversation, which is limited to P5 teams who have improved from sub-.500 to >.500 in a single offseason. I listed 12 of these teams in the original post (and 2 G5 teams). All of these teams
If we want to look at a 2, 3, 4 year horizon, then yes, retaining and developing players is absolutely essential. But if we're asking 'how can VT make a bowl in year 2 of the Pry era' and looking at past examples of similar teams, it becomes clear that everyone has upgraded at either the QB position, multiple coaching positions, and/or upgraded the rest of the roster.
What!? No way man. Am I misunderstanding you? It happens all the time. It's hard to do, but it's not "no one".
I encourage you to go to https://www.sports-reference.com/cfb/ and look at the school history for a couple different schools. Every school has a different trajectory, but especially at mid-tier schools like UNC or Baylor, you can see multiple examples where teams have wild improvements in W/L in back to back seasons, both recently and going back a decade or more when having a high impact transfer was not the norm. Hell in our own history: 1992-1993 we went from 2 wins to 9 wins.
I'm sure each of these teams have a different story, like a star QB that finally got his start is probably a common story, but my point is teams found a way to get to massive improvement without hitting the transfer portal before that was a thing.
Find me a new coach in the modern era who finished under .500 in year 1, the finished above .500 in year 2 without (a) a staff change or (b) significant roster change.
Again - this is not what I'm talking about. '92 was Beamer's 5th(?) year, not his first year. Also, he made significant staff changes after that season.
Edit: If you look at the data points above, Matt Rhule was the only first year head coach who made the leap to .500 in year 2 without staff changes, QB changes, or transfer portal changes.
Oddly specific. Not sure how to measure specifically "significant staff and roster change" without doing serious digging. In any case I found a few where the starting QB didn't change (or it was a multi QB system) and a coach went from losing to winning record from their first to second year. Also I didn't do a robust data analysis, just poked around the sports reference website, so I'm probably missing some. Surely one of these counts in your book?
2007-2008 UNC with Butch Davis.
A little known coach named Nick Saban 2007-2008; edit: sorry this was from 7-6 to 12-2
2009-2010 Miss St with Dan Mullen
2016-2017 Iowa State with Matt Cambell
2016-2017 South Carolina with Will Muschamp
1999-2000 Auburn with Tommy Tuberville
2005-2006 Oklahoma State with Mike Gundy
2014-2015 Mike Houston at Citadel
Willie Fritz at multiple locations
2013-2014 Scott Satterfield at App st.
Richrod had a QB change at WVU but that was basically I'm going to take Brad Lewis and make him run the option ... he couldn't
2009-2010 Brwdy Hoke at San Diego State
PJ Fleck twice, Minnesota and WMU
Citadel, App St, SDSU, and WMU are all G5/FCS programs - these programs are different from FBS programs in a variety of ways, which was I didn't include (except for coaches that made a playoff later in their career).
PJ Fleck at Minnesota replaced both QB, OC, and DC after his first season (not to mention that going from 5-7 to 6-6 in the regular season isn't that noteworthy - I say that as someone who thinks highly of PJ's coaching abilities)
Rich Rod went from splitting snaps across 5+ QBs to having one primary QB. He also replaced his first DC after one year.
It's not oddly specific, it's exact the situation VT is in right now. From my original post (the reason I started the thread):
To address this part:
I did the digging - again, if you look the original post, you'll see that I created a table where listed Staff Changes, QB turnover, and Transfer Portal acquisitions.
I'll go back tomorrow and update the table in the OP to include these, as well 2022 TCU.
To my original point in this comment thread - Historically, there aren't many P5 coaches who won less than 5 games in their first year (which is the situation that VT is in), and then 'coached up' guys who were already on the team, and made a big turn around in a single year. I'd be interested to look more into Tuberville and Gundy to see what they did.
Typically, if you're a first year coach and lose more than 6 games in a season, either (a) you're bad at coaching (you remedy this with coordinator/scheme changes), (b) you have a dearth of talent (you remedy this with transfers), or (c) you're bad at the most important position on the team (you find a different QB).
The point is, if VT wants to get above .500 in year 2 under Pry, they can't do it with the same staff, QB, and roster they had in 2021. Based on historical data, at least one of these things must change, if not two of them.
Right, but what I mean is it feels like you've so narrowly defined your subset, you're throwing out a lot of seemingly relevant counterexamples just for not being near perfectly the same. Just for example, there's only so many P5 coaches in their second year specifically in a given season, and only so many of those are even going to be inheriting a losing team to begin with, before even considering how to define "significant roster/staff change" or "significant improvement". To my original point, I think it's bold to suggest roster turnover is always good for a team looking to improve. Bolder still to say no one sees big improvement just developing their players.
Can I meet you halfway and say that teams that make big roster/staffing changes are also more likely to see big changes in their play, but that roster/staffing change is not inherently good?
I would say that if a coach performs poorly in his first year (presumably, with a roster that was not 'his guys'), and there's no roster (or scheme) change before the second year, it's unlikely (based on historical evidence) that performance will improve drastically in this time period.
It's kinda like the old adage 'insanity is repeating the same thing over again but expecting different results'
I would agree that it is imprecise to say 'no one' sees big improvement in a single offseason just by developing players, but (for first year head coaches who performed poorly in year one, inheriting a roster they did not recruit), history suggest that if it doesn't work in year 1, more of the same probably won't work in year 2.
Now, you could suggest that it's unwise to look for drastic improvement in a single offseason, and I would agree.
Sure, I mean, change can fail and change does not guarentee improvement. The question is can you be successful without changing something that produced bad results. I recognize that results lag process, but typically if you're not seeing improvement over the course of the season, there's a process or personnel issue.
I think we'll have to agree to disagree then. I just don't agree you have strong enough data to support the conclusion you seem to want to make, and I don't agree that development means "trying the same thing" (think Caleb Farley going from liability to All-ACC in one offseason). It's somewhat moot in our case anyways, considering the consensus about the talent level of our current roster, and the portal moves we've already made so far.
I'll leave one more comment because you bring up an interesting point:
It's one thing to do this with one player, but it's another thing to do it with a whole roster. Kinda like the idea behind finding diamonds in the rough - can you find diamonds in the rough? Yes. Can you build a whole team around diamonds in the rough? Not reliably. Maybe you catch lightening in a bottle (avoid injuries where you have depth, have a talented QB, get some turnover luck, etc), but it's not a thing that reliably happens.
Agreed 🍻
IMHO- I have the opposite opinion on Farley. I thought he played better earlier than later.
His run support and tackling his freshman season were atrocious. His cover was quite good. He really worked o the run support for his sophomore season. But then no one was throwing his way.
When I see those ??? next to Brent Pry's name:
OP Updated
Curious to know how many teams will have improved by 3 or more wins over last year. Can't be many. Colorado has and I'm sure a few more. My Cyclones can do it with a win tonight or in their bowl game.
WVU if they win tonight or a bowl game
Thanks. SMU has done in. 10-2 already and 7-6 last year. I'll have to compare things after this week's games are over.
Arizona 5-7 going to 9-3 as well.
And Missouri too.
Maybe it is a lot more than I realized.
Edit: Boom, and Iowa State makes the cut also, going from 4-8 to 7-5 this year.
The more challenging question is find a team that 4-8 and flipped their record to 8-4. There's usually 1ish team to do it each year.