(Editor’s note: In case you’re not familiar with their work, the good people behind Coaches By The Numbers do outstanding quantitative analysis of college football coaches, using a propriety rating system that “objectively rates head coaches and coordinators on the core statistics critical for success.” In our quest here at Crystal Ball Run to bring you fresh perspectives on our favorite sport, the CBTN guys have graciously agreed to write a weekly column this season dissecting some of the hot topics in the coaching ranks. In their CBR debut, they take on the man Michigan hopes will restore its moribund program to glory.)
Make no mistake, Brady Hoke’s resume is not the most impressive at first glance. But he certainly is a “Michigan Man,” a classification that has seemingly become a requirement out of the fan base in Ann Arbor. Surely there is more to the numbers than meets the eye.
If you’re an honest Michigan fan, you have to be a bit disappointed that the Wolverines didn’t hire either Jim Harbaugh or Les Miles. Not only have they both bled blue and maize in their lives, but as you can seem from their numbers below, these guys can also flat out coach and rank very highly in our system:
Now, let’s consider the coach Michigan did hire:
Let’s take into account another set of numbers on Hoke:
So, was this an awful hire or what? The numbers don’t appear to be on Hoke’s side. However, before we write him off and start looking for his replacement, let’s consider the following:
So, in Coach Hoke’s two head coaching stops, he increased the winning percentage by an average of 19.49 percent. In a 12-game season, that’s more than 2 additional wins per year.
One of the things we like to do at CBTN is consider whether a coach is an overachiever or an underachiever. Our overall CBTN Rating is more a measure of pure success, and we believe it’s important to have other means of measuring a coach’s performance. One of the ways in which we do this is by ranking all of the active coaches from 1 to 120 via our rating system, then looking at their rank in regards to their average recruiting class. Let’s take a look a the results:
From the table above, we can see that Brady Hoke ranks as the 75th best coach in our system, and he is doing it with the 95th ranked talent (per Scout.com). While no rating/ranking system or recruiting service is perfect, indicators such as these are most certainly a positive sign.
So, it appears that Brady Hoke has both a history of overachieving and a history of making a very positive impact on a program’s winning percentage.
Next, let’s look at the two most important hires Brady Hoke has made as Michigan’s head coach:
1.) Defensive Coordinator – Greg Mattison (ranking based on active defensive coordinators with minimum of two years experience)
2.) Offensive Coordinator – Al Borges (ranking based on active offensive coordinators with minimum of two years experience)
Both of these coordinators have a history of success, with varying levels of consistency. Mattison, statistically, is a tremendous defensive coordinator and will most definitely be a welcome sight in Ann Arbor. As for Borges, he has had past successes and stumbles at Auburn, but as a carryover from Hoke’s San Diego State staff, there is a level comfort and familiarity with his ability to coach the offensive side of the ball.
To this point, we have identified how Hoke has shown a past ability to improve a program. We’ve also determined that he has had some level of success given the talent that he has had. But we need to delve a little deeper into the individual games and see what Hoke has done with the talent with which he has been working.
The way we do this at CBTN is to average out a four-year period of recruiting rankings and assign it to that year. This gives us a good idea of the average talent of that particular team – though not an exact science, we believe it’s better to be somewhat right than precisely wrong. From there, we then evaluate each team according to talent level and determine whether or not the games were against superior talent, equivalent talent (having an average within 10 ranking spots), or inferior talent. Let’s see how Hoke’s teams performed:
So, of the 53 games Brady Hoke coached with superior or equivalent talent, he won 33 (62.26 percent). He has only coached 14 games (17.72 percent of 79 games coached) with superior talent and 39 games (48.75 percent of total games coached) with equivalent talent.
To put this in perspective, of the 84 games Lloyd Carr and Rich Rodriguez coached at Michigan from 2004 to 2010, 79.76 percent were with superior talent and 20.24 percent were with equivalent talent. Neither Carr or Rodriguez coached a single, solitary game at Michigan with inferior talent. Of the 17 games Carr and Rodriguez coached with equivalent talent, they only won 4 (23.53 percent). This, in addition to a serious deficiency against arch rival Ohio State, is the most likely reason they are both out of the job.
If you apply Hoke’s talent numbers to Michigan, Michigan would have been 63-21 (75.00 percent) since 2004, as opposed to 49-35 (58.33 percent). That’s a remarkable improvement any way you examine it. This approach is obviously not an exact science, but it is a fun thought experiment (especially if you root for Michigan).
Only time will tell if Hoke turns out to be a good, bad, or indifferent hire, but the more we have dug into the numbers, the more we have started to like this hire.
Follow Crystal Ball Run on Twitter @CrystalBallRun.
Follow Coaches By The Numbers on Twitter @CoachesBTN.
