A Look Back on the Hatcher Era
On the one year anniversary of my article on The Hatch Attack, I wanted to look at the program from a slightly different angle over Hatcher’s tenure. I wanted to see from an overall picture, compared just to our conference foes and then the country, the ups and downs of our football program. I did not know he would be relieved of his head coaching duties just one day ago so that adds even more context to the numbers and data discussed below.
The primary takeaway was that Hatcher had opportunities to build real momentum but failed to reach a level of sustained success compared to the top of the conference. We were close… but not quite there and really began slipping in 2019.
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Methodology
The three metrics I used to gain an overall understanding of our team compared to the conference were first, simply conference wins each year, second, point differential in conference play, and third, the Sagarin Rankings.
With each metric, I compared Samford’s data point to two others - the average of the top three schools in that particular season and the average of the top 5 programs since 2015 using conference wins.
For years where Samford either led the conference or was in the top 3 in any of the below metrics, I excluded them and selected the next best school. To select the top 5 since 2015, I looked at average conference wins over that time. Those programs were, in no particular order, Mercer, Wofford, Furman, Chattanooga, and Western Carolina and each of them averaged over 3.5 wins per season since 2015. Given the volatility of programs like ETSU and The Citadel, these were the most consistent teams with which we should compare our results with.
Last, I excluded the spring season in 2021.
Sources for data - SoCon Offical Archive, USA Today Sagarin Rankings, and Massey Rankings for 2024 (explained below)
Fun Facts Before Diving In
Hatcher’s 2018 and 2022 offenses averaged about 40 and 39 points respectively, which was the highest mark achieved by any offense until this year which has seen WCU and Mercer both eclipse the 40 point mark.
Since 2015, UTC is the only program to finish with a positive average scoring differential each season.
VMI. WCU, and ETSU are the only programs since 2015 to NOT have a team garner a 60 or above Sagarin ranking.
Wofford has the highest scored Sagarin team with the 2016 squad coming in at 65.6… UTC’s 2016 squad was a 63. It remains the only season to have two teams finish above 60. For perspective, each team was ranked inside the top 90 which includes FBS.
The 2025 Mercer team is on pace, with an average point differential of 22, to be the most dominant team in conference play since the 2017 Furman team which averaged a 17 point differential.
Conference Wins
When Hatcher took over, we had a loaded roster with which he was able to win almost from the jump. The 2017 team included Amhad Gooden, Duck Hodges, Montrell Washington and Kelvin McKnight. But then we started to slip…and starting in 2018 we began underperforming the average of the top five programs until our miracle season in 2022. Interestingly, we made the playoffs twice in those first three years despite only winning 5 conference games in 2016.
The decline is made more dramatic because of how well 2022 went. If you removed that data point, we are winning at about the same level from 2019-2024 with 3-4 wins per year. And in that, lies the primary reason Hatcher was let go. Our “normal” was 3-4 wins - 2015, 2019, 2021, 2023, and 2024.
The fact this is simply not good enough could not be more evident then by looking at the navy blue dotted line. This line shows the average of how well Furman, Mercer, Wofford, UTC and WCU played. The next coach needs to understand that this program is capable, and therefore should, win at least 4 games per year. This line fluctuates between 4-5 which needs to be our floor. In addition, and possibly more importantly, this conference has a propensity to provide two free wins a year. VMI has been a doormat for the majority of this time span but there usually at least one other winless or one program right there with them any given year. It is Samford this season. 2021 was the only season over this stretch that did not have two teams win 0-2 games (Wofford went winless and Samford and The Citadel won 3).
And last, the top 3 of the conference in any given year, shown in white, reinforces the quality of the top teams in the SoCon. With a 6-2 record, a team should be at or near the top of the conference with an at large bid in hand. Now, as we will see a little later on, that reality may be changing a bit as the entire conference is slightly regressing.
Point Differential
Point differential tends to show how well a team plays complementary football and how much control they exhibit over the course of a season. In other words, a high differential is a dominant football team and the inverse is a terrible team or 2022 Samford versus 2025 Samford.
Interestingly, Samford and WCU, who share similar philosophies, were within a point of each other since Kerwin Bell took over in 2021 (not including the disaster that is 2025 for us). So, if you are one of those people that does not believe a good offense is a good defense… the numbers back you up. Especially when you layer on that UTC has by far the best average differential and also averages the best scoring defense in the league since 2015. Defense, does in fact, matter. For fairness, Hatcher had the number one scoring defense in 2017.
It illustrates our games, in aggregate, have been tight for most years since 2019. 2025 is on pace to be top 3 worst since 2015 out of any team not named VMI. On the other hand, it does show that 2022 was less of a fluke on the field then it may have seemed but blowouts against the bottom of the conference tend to happen when you have a good team.
Again, the trend is an overall decline since 2018 while the top 5 programs we should compare ourselves to have remained steady.
Last, we only met the top 3 threshold 3 times in the last 11 seasons. If we want to be competing on a regular basis then the red line and white line need to start coming together.
Sagarin Rankings
Important note here, a high rank is bad and correlates with a low “score”. In other words, the highest ranked team since 2015 was the Wofford team mentioned above at 85. The team score that season was 65. Again, as you read through this, if a “score” is mentioned then low is bad, high is good and vice versa with regard to “rank”. Also, Sagarin does not keep an archive of his old numbers. I was not able to confidently find 2024. Those figures were pulled from the Massey Rating site which shows old Sagarin rankings and the other years the USA Today kept.
We use the Sagarin Rankings pretty regularly to judge the quality of our conference and the teams in it for our podcast discussions. If you have not listened to an episode before, you should, but click here for a link to the Sagarin Ranking Site. It is a highly regarded, proprietary, statistical model that compares every team in the country. The FCS regularly has teams in the top 75 and the SoCon used to have a few teams in the 90-120 range each season but that has been slipping.
For us, it is a fantastic metric that accounts for all sorts of statistics and results to give a holisitic picture of how good or bad a team is. If looking at point differential was one step further than conference wins, this is akin to three or four steps because it takes you out of the SoCon bubble and tosses Samford and the rest of the conference into a pool with every division one football team.
The Samford line further illustrates the downward trajectory of the program since 2019. The 2022 team again flashes but only ranked as low as the 2018 team. It also was not notably better than the other top teams in the conference which is telling given how much our point differential stood out that year. Each of these charts show just how well the Hatcher era began, every graph trending in a good direction for the first 3-4 years and then…it all just gets worse little by little.
Another interesting point stood out and that is the overall decline of the conference compared to the rest of the country. Both the top three teams in any given year and the top five programs since 2015, were creeping upward and have settled in the 150’s. To give some perspective, in 2016, The Citadel, Wofford, and UTC were ranked inside the top 100. On the other hand though, the average score of the top teams each season has remained steady in the 50 to 55 range. I do not think we are seeing the top or top two teams be as elite as years past while simultaneously, other conferences are increasing in quality teams. We have been fortunate to be a multi bid conference almost every year in this stretch but that is in peril. It takes programs like Samford to pick up the slack.
Final Note on the Hatcher Era
We have seen an unprecedented number of firings in the FBS ranks. Surprisingly, this is only the second amongst the FCS schools. Fortunately, our coach was fired because of on the field results. The simplest, cleanest, way to go. He represented our school’s values well, we have yet to run into a player that did not love him, and off the field issues in Hatchers tenure were slim to none. We also had an identity. It might have been flawed and poorly executed the past two seasons, but as any football fan can attest, it is awesome knowing what your team wants to do week in and week out.
His teams gave us some fun memories in the early years, the magical run in 2022, and even some rise from the dead performances last season against quality competition. We appreciate Coach Hatcher for what he contributed to the program and his most notable achievement was further solidifying Samford Football back into the soul of our beloved university. Onto the next era and Go Bulldogs!