The 2022 season brought new coaches to some of college football's highest-profile programs: USC, LSU, Notre Dame, Oklahoma, Florida, Oregon and Washington.
None of those new bosses made the national title game in Year 1, but TCU's Sonny Dykes did. Other coaching debut results varied, from the undeniably strong (LSU's Brian Kelly, USC's Lincoln Riley, Washington's Kalen DeBoer) to the undeniably shaky (Florida's Billy Napier, Oklahoma's Brent Venables) to somewhere in between (Notre Dame's Marcus Freeman, Oregon's Dan Lanning).
After grading every first-year coach in January, it's time to check in on the Year 2 progress of every Power 5 coach (except Virginia's Tony Elliott, whose off-field burden makes a letter grade premature and almost inconsequential) a month into the season. Not every coach has faced the same scheduling tests on the field, but all are now into conference play.
Grades are primarily based on a team's current trajectory, with those that struggled last year before turning it around (see Mario Cristobal) outperforming those who are backsliding after big debuts (see Kelly). So let's dive into these coaching encores with grades for 13 of the top second-year coaches.