I like the premise of Zach Ragan's article: compare Heupel's start to successful active head coaches, see if we can discern anything. Unfortunately, Zach didn't do much with it. I'll try to push a little further.
Since our goal at Tennessee is to get back to winning championships, let's compare Josh's record to date with the first 49 games of every active head coach with a national title. Five guys meet that criterion: Nick Saban, Dabo Swinney, Kirby Smart, Jimbo Fisher, and Mack Brown.
What I'd like to do is chart out their winning percentage over time. From game to game. See if there's anything in the curve of each coach that might tell us something.
But first, we need to acknowledge all these coaches didn't get the same kind of start. I'd group them into three categories, based on their first head coaching gigs:
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Given the keys to a finely tuned muscle car: Jimbo Fisher certainly inherited a sweet ride from Bobby Bowden at Florida State. And Kirby Smart was given an already-well-tuned machine at Georgia. These two fellas had every advantage...they started in the Power 5, and they started in a winning program with a mature, rich roster. One would expect them to start fast, and stay fast.
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Jumping behind the wheel of a well-tuned Pinto: listen, starting out in the Group of 5, as Nick Saban (Toledo) and Josh Heupel (UCF) did, isn't all bad. Gives a fellow a chance to get his footing before he has to face the big boys of the Power 5 conferences. On the other hand, one might expect a dip in success as the coach makes the step up to the big leagues. Funny enough, we see just that in the early career arc of both these coaches.
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Taking over under a yellow caution flag...and your car was involved in the wreck: Some folks just gotta follow the dude who got fired. And he got fired for a reason. The program wasn't doing so well. This implies rebuild...which implies a slow start. Dabo Swinney (Clemson) and Mack Brown (App State, Tulane, and UNC) both certainly started slow...but Dabo found a way to get things moving a lot earlier than Mack.
Okay, so does the data support these expectations? Here's the chart. It tracks each coach's winning percentage, game by game, over their first 49 games. For each of them, most or all of four seasons of football are included. For a few, the early games of their fifth season got in as well.
View attachment 428708
So what, if anything, does that tell us?
First thing it tells me is, it's amazing Mack Brown was allowed to keep a head coaching job long enough to get good. It truly took him a while to get back up to a 50% win rate, much less the 70%+ win rate most title-winning head coaches end up with.
The other thing I get from this is, the first 49 games aren't long enough to know much. Aside from Mack, after giving the first 10-15 games for things to settle in, there simply isn't much difference between any of these guys. Nick and Dabo end up at the 49th game with a win rate around 60%, Josh around 70%, while Kirby and Jimbo are near 80%. But I don't think any of us are concluding that Jimbo and Kirby are better coaches than Nick and Dabo.
Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this isn't an interesting hypothesis Zach came up with, after all. Maybe there's not much to learn from the first 49 games.
Screw that guy. Terrible article.
[lol just kidding at the end...but really, there's not a lot to learn here, it doesn't seem, except Mack Brown must've had compromising photos of his AD to keep his job beyond year 5]
Go Vols!
