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“Numbers never lie, after all: they simply tell different stories depending on the math of the tellers.” - Luis Alberto Urrea
The coaching bio of D.J Eliot on GoPack.com tells a story of a defensive coordinator with a wealth of experience. Coaches and fans at Kentucky, Colorado, and Kansas have a...different perspective.
What is true about Eliot's performance as a Defensive Coordinator?
We're going to try and answer that, first with some numbers. I pulled six key measures to look at how Eliot’s defenses performed:
FEI - Overall defensive quality of play
EPA/Dropback - defensive effectiveness on passing plays
EPA/Run - defensive effectiveness on rushing plays
Havoc Rate - percentage of plays that resulted in a turnover, tackle for loss, or pass deflection (playmaking)
Success Rate - down to down defensive effectiveness
Points per drive - drive to drive defensive effectiveness
I picked these measures because traditional stats (yards per game allowed, etc.) don’t account for variables like quality of opponent, how fast or slow they’re playing, etc. Expected points added and drive/play based metrics help normalize some of these numbers.
I've also presented these in a rankings style format vs. the raw numbers themselves. I think that helps with the overall storytelling element given how much data is included.
We're looking at how these defenses performed the year before Eliot arrived, alongside his tenure at the school to get a feel for his impact. Here we go:
For reference, here's how State stacked up in these areas over the last two years:
Harkening back to the quote at the top of this article, these numbers can be twisted to tell whatever story we'd like without context.
I spent several hours digging into what was going on of these programs when Eliot jumped aboard. My hope here is to overlay these numbers with some qualitative context below to get a feel for the situations Eliot was working with, and how well or poorly he did.
Kentucky
8 games into the 2012 season, then Kentucky Head Coach - and current Pack WR coach - Joker Phillips was fired. UK moved quickly to hire FSU’s defensive coordinator Mark Stoops.
Stoops worked closely with DJ Eliot, who handled the Defensive End room in Tallahassee, and decided to give Eliot his first DC opportunity in Lexington.
The problem for Stoops - and Eliot - was that Kentucky was in a terrible spot as a program. Coming off of a 2-10 year, the Wildcats hadn't finished above .500 in its conference since 1977. UK had long occupied the bottom of the SEC standings.
One of the first tasks from Eliot and Stoops was to transition the UK defense from a 4-3 base to a multiple 3-4 look. That transition served as the start of what Eliot would continue to deploy at other stops around the country.
It’s hard enough getting a defense right amidst a scheme change. Then you factor in that, for most of its modern history, UK has had a massive talent problem relative to its competition. In what will be a theme of Eliot's career so far, the talent problem didn’t get much better while he was around.
Per 247, here’s where Kentucky’s recruiting classes ranked in the SEC during Eliot’s tenure:
2013: 13/14
2014: 10/14
2015: 13/14
2016: 12/14
Perhaps more important in the SEC than any other conference is the idea that Jimmies and Joes outweigh x’s and o’s. Kentucky played the vast majority of their conference games at a talent disadvantage, but they did manage to flip their 0-8 conference record in 2013 to a 4-4 mark in 2016, Eliot’s final year.
With Eliot, we see some improvement into the 2014 and 2015 seasons, before a backslide in 2016. In fact, about halfway through the 2016 season, Mark Stoops stripped him of his playcalling duties and took over the headset for the final portion of the year.
UK fans were so unhappy with Eliot's start to '16 campaign - where they gave up 89 points in two games to Southern Miss and Florida - that some of them, um, decided to send him some NSFW candy to express their displeasure.
How much of the improvement - and regression - do you assign to Eliot, and how much do you prescribe to Kentucky being a doormat of a program? If you know of a math formula we can use to calculate the exact answer, hit me up.
We do know that Stoops and Eliot have a lot of respect for each other. In Spring workouts leading up to the 2016 season, Stoops had high praise for his defensive coordinator:
“How our D-line played and outside backers and defensive ends played (at Florida State) had a lot to do with this guy,” Stoops said. “I know first-hand how he develops those guys and how he communicates. So as I looked around a couple years at outside linebackers, quite frankly there was nobody I could have in the country that had more experience and could do what we needed to do in our system than him.” Coach speak is coach speak, though.
Was his time in Lexington a success? Probably not. A failure given where the program has always been? Probably not.
Colorado
Coming off of a "meh" four seasons at Kentucky, Colorado must’ve looked like an attractive stop for Eliot after the 2016 season:
His wife grew up 20 minutes from Boulder
Colorado was coming off of a 10 win, Pac-12 championship appearance season
Head coach Mike MacIntyre signed a long term contract extension that showed stability in the program
What Eliot and the rest of the crew did not realize: 2016 turned out to be Colorado Head Coach Mike MacIntyre’s high water mark. Not just in Boulder, but across his entire career (he was fired this offseason after going 12-24 at FAU over the last three years.)
From what I could find, the Pac-12 championship appearance kick started an interesting series of events that led to the downfall of Colorado:
41-10 blowout loss to Washington in the Pac-12 Championship
Defensive Coordinator Jim Leavitt leaves for Oregon
A blowout 38-8 loss to Oklahoma State in the Alamo Bowl
4 defensive players drafted in the 2017 NFL Draft, a total of 8 starters leaving the roster - a rebuild kicks off on defense
It seems like things began to unravel from there - cultural issues, a lack of player leadership, and scandal: MacIntyre at one point failed to report an assistant coach's domestic abuse.
Ironically enough, Colorado did worse when MacIntyre got his full complement of recruiting classes into Boulder.
Looking at the numbers, the dip in production in 2017 makes sense to me, but how significant the dip looks is cause for concern. You do see significant gains across the board in 2018, particularly against the run, and on down to down effectiveness with success rate.
Would that progress have continued in 2019? Who knows: MacIntyre was fired just two years after winning Walter Camp Coach of the Year and a 5 year contract extension. With his departure, so went Eliot.
Kansas
With MacIntyre’s late 2018 firing, Eliot was looking for work. He quickly jumped aboard Les Miles’ new staff at Kansas, which…was quite a decision.
The situation wasn’t great. Prior to Miles’ hiring ahead of the 2019 season, Kansas had gone 21-90 in the 2010’s. That is a winning percentage of 19 percent. Remarkable.
Then you add in the fact that this was *Les Miles.* Miles had not shown a willingness to modernize his offenses, and the hire was consistently regarded as one of the worst of 2018’s carousel.
To make matters worse, a bevy of scandals hit Miles dating back to his time at LSU, including inappropriate relations with female students, and an embezzlement of funding from a hospital to all conference lineman Vadal Alexander.
Personal adversity hit Eliot and his family hard in Lawrence, too. Eliot's oldest daughter, Drue, was diagnosed with pediatric cancer right in the heat of the COVID pandemic in the Spring of 2020. I cannot imagine what that must have been like as a parent. It was awesome to see Kansas rally around Drue and her family:
I didn't find a ton more detail on Drue's fight, but I did confirm that she won (awesome.)
So, there's all these current circumstances that make this an uphill battle. That's before we factor in that Kansas has been one of the most consistent have-nots of college football. Back to the Jimmie’s and Joe’s idea: according to 247’s talent composite, Kansas was dead last in the Big 12 - 10th out of 10 teams - both years Eliot was coordinating.
Essentially, we're taking one of the worst programs in college football, adding in a coach who refuses to modernize his approach to scoring points, and sprinkling a continue talent disadvantage on top.
Yeah, this one was probably doomed from the start.
Temple
After the Kansas disaster, right or wrong, Eliot’s resume showed 3 subpar stints. The timing of Miles’ firing - March of 2021 - made it difficult to find another program in need of a job.
After taking a break for a year, Eliot jumped onto Stan Drayton’s new staff in Temple.
Admittedly, there’s not a ton of context to dig up around Eliot’s time coordinating the Owls. Temple is not exactly a media darling, and he was only around for a single season.
This is the first stop in Eliot’s tenure where you can see a clear jump across the defense. Every major defensive category listed above improved.
Temple was 9th out of 10 teams in 247’s talent composite. They went 3-9 and won just one conference game, but they were able to hold Rutgers to 16 points, and ranked Cincinnati to 23. Temple was second in total sacks in the AAC (38) and were second in passing yards allowed.
The Philadelphia Eagles saw enough from Eliot’s season - or career - to hire him away from Temple after just one season.
Drayton was fired this year, and interestingly enough, Eliot’s name popped up as a potential replacement for him as Head Coach amongst some Temple fan sites. They think highly of him.
So, with all of that being said - what do we make of Eliot? I'd love to hear your thoughts; my head comes up with four main points:
Eliot has spent the majority of his time coaching at have-not schools.
Kentucky, Kansas, and Temple have been some of the least successful programs in FBS history. To Colorado’s credit, they’ve won a national title in the last 35 years, but spent a ton of time in the wilderness in the early 2000’s.
To me, it's difficult to assign total blame or accountability to Eliot with these programs' histories in full view, though him losing playcalling duties in his last year at Kentucky is certainly a red flag.
Eliot has primarily produced in line with talent available to him.
What a crazy disappointing pay off of a take, right? I know this isn't a novel insight - coaches will coach better with good players.
Eliot’s not had many years where he has tremendously pushed a defensive output outside of a program's norms. 2018 Colorado and 2022 Temple look good on paper, but those defense experienced similar, recent success under other coaches.
I'm not seeing a dramatic swing, up or down, that's out of line with what we'd expect year in and year out from these programs.
If we think about Eliot coming to N.C. State: we’re certainly not Kansas, but we’re not a cash-strapped power player, either. I don’t believe in forever giving passes to coordinators because they play at schools that haven’t won in the past - that’s why they’re hired! - but it’s a trend to note with Eliot's career.
The arms race for talent has intensified with the transfer portal and extra eligibility. Can Eliot turn the corner here, or will it be more of the same?
There have been year one struggles.
I wanted to see at least one major year 1 resurgence of a defense. Outside of maybe Temple, we're not seeing that, at least statistically.
In his first season as coordinator, most of his defenses performed similarly to the year prior, which makes sense - good things take time.
The argument against this is the advent of the transfer portal, which should allow Eliot to get his guys in earlier. Let's hope State can close the winter window strong, and really ramp it up in the Spring. That's easier said than done with State's current NIL situation, though.
I have no idea if this will work.
I'm not sure if I feel more or less confident in what Eliot's performance in Raleigh will look like after putting this together.
His time at Kentucky looked okay for a second, and then he was so bad he was sent phallic candy. His first year at Colorado was rough, and he engineered a pretty nice improvement in year 2 before his head coach was fired. Don't work for Les Miles. Temple is Temple.
We’re going to spend plenty of time this offseason looking at Eliot’s scheme and principles - tite front, simulated pressures, multiple looks.
I am personally not preparing for a massive jump in production next year from this defense. State is losing 6 starting caliber players from this defense, including its only true playmaker in Davin Vann, and transitioning to a new scheme. You'll be adding in new pieces after the Spring, and if I've learned anything from the transfer portal era, it's that things take a minute to click.
I'm not over the moon sold on Eliot as a coordinator at State, but I think it'd be prudent to at least give him a shot before writing him off completely.
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