The best coaching staffs in the Big Ten in 2025

If you had to put a number on it, where would you put Nebraska?

Courtesy Nebraska Athletics

There are many numbers to look at in the offseason, but perhaps my favorite summer drop is the annual update to McIllece Sports’ coaching staff ratings. They’re always intriguing, occasionally surprising and a great starting point for thinking or talking about college football during a time of year when all there is to do with college football is think or talk about it.

The McIllece measure for this is Standard Wins (StdWin), defined as such:

By comparing performance expectations based on talent level to the actual product on the field, every coach in the FBS can be graded for their [coaching and development]: that is, how much does a particular coach boost or hinder his unit’s output in the games? And how important is that particular unit’s output to the team’s chances of winning a game? For example, an Air Raid offense doesn’t have much reliance on a QB run game, whereas for academy option teams, the QB run game is critical. These rankings account for all these pieces: talent-based expectation, unit performance, coaching system, and historical coaching performance.

Think of that number this way: If State Tech Ag. & Mech.¹ played 12 games against equal opponents its expected winning percentage would be .500, or 6-6. But the sum of the AgMechies coaches’ career standard wins ratings is 1.0. Against that same schedule, Ag. & Mech. is expected to go 7-5 based on the track record of its coaches.

It’s a pretty fun way to think about things, so now let’s think about the Big Ten. Which teams have the best coaching entering 2025 based on this model?

Tables are good for this sort of thing:

Just a reminder, the idea with this number is to remove talent, recruiting and schedule from the equation to just focus on coaching.

The Nebraska angle

That’s quite the rise within the Big Ten for Nebraska. Why?

The Huskers made eight coaching changes for the upcoming season when you count the coordinator moves. If you were reading Counter Read in January—before the Huskers had added Mike Ekeler, but after the other hires were official, you might recall that I ballparked Nebraska’s Standard Win total at about 1.3. The addition of Ekeler (0.4) would’ve put that number at 1.7. A couple of upgrades to existing staff members gets us to 2.0.

That upgrade takes Nebraska from the 16th-best staff in the Big Ten last year to the fifth-best for 2025. Not bad for one offseason. I wouldn’t take it to the bank in any “well, NU should be the fifth-best team” way, but interesting even with that context.

Dana Holgorsen (1.1 StdWin) is the source of most of the movement here. His rating puts him in a tie for 12th among FBS offensive coordinators in 2025. The additions of Ekeler and wide receivers coach Daikiel Shorts (0.2) also had a positive impact on Nebraska’s rating. Moving Marcus Satterfield from OC, where he had a -2.6 rating to start last season, to tight ends coach (0.0 this year) also moved the needle.

Again, it’s all just numbers on paper in June, but if you can accept that while still entertaining what some objective measures say, this is maybe an even bigger indication of optimism than the initial FPI ranking.

The Huskers were the biggest riser in the Big Ten by a lot.

Some thoughts on the rest of the Big Ten

• Any objections with the top three—Indiana, Iowa and Oregon? Iowa’s spot has been earned over two decades, so that one seems almost untouchable. Indiana and Oregon have smaller sample sizes with these staffs, at least in the Big Ten, but Dan Lanning might be the No. 1 candidate for any job that came open in the country right now and Curt Cignetti, like him or not, essentially said at Big Ten Media Days last year, “we ain’t finishing second-to-last” (as was projected) and then took the Hoosiers to the Playoff. I have no problem with these ratings in 2025.

• Penn State made a nice rise from eighth in the league (1.3) to fourth (2.3), which is well timed given this is expected to be James Franklin’s best team in State College. The Nittany Lions added Ohio State defensive coordinator Jim Knowles this offseason.

• What to make of Ohio State not being closer to the top of the Big Ten (last year or particularly this year)? I don’t make much of it. The Buckeyes have such a talent advantage over most of the teams in the conference, that simply good coaching makes them nearly unbeatable most years.

• Purdue is going to be better than most people think—and a new coaching staff is maybe the only reason to think so—but will still probably struggle.

• This model likes Wisconsin’s staff more than many Badger fans probably do after two below-expectation years, but that was the case last year, too. Luke Fickell (0.5) and DC Mike Tressel (0.7) strong career ratings are a big reason why.

• Northwestern experienced the biggest fall in the conference from last year. After a surprisingly strong first season in 2023, David Braun’s staff ranked a respectable 11th. After going 4-8 in 2024, the current staff ranks 17th.

• I’ve written this before, but I’m concerned about Maryland. The Terp staff ranked last in the Big Ten a year ago, swapped out its OC, and still ranks . . . last.

• On that note, there are only three Big Ten staffs with a negative rating (i.e. below average) this season. There were five last year. Michigan, Michigan State and Nebraska were the three teams going from negative to positive, and the Huskers will face the Wolverines and Spartans back-to-back, in Lincoln, in Weeks 4 and 5.

1. My fictional, literary-device school where I am, at times, the head coach, athletic director or heavyweight NIL donor, among other things.