I have been developing the concept of the “scheduled down year” for a while now. The idea is that a head coach will see a dip in team performance in either his third or fourth season, depending on the initial conditions, for reasons that are largely out of his control.
It’s not hard to find examples of this phenomenon happening. It was noticing a lot of guys having worse records in their third, or less often fourth, seasons. Urban Meyer’s third team went 9-4 in a four-year run when his squads otherwise went 13-1. Will Muschamp’s 4-8 campaign was his third.