Here are the records of N.D. coaches back to Shorty Longman. Prior to Longman, most N.D. coaches didn't coach more than 13 games in their careers. Noted after the record is the change in the record from the last 13 games N.D. played before that coach arrived (so Willingham is +4 because N.D. was 6-7 for its last 13 games before his arrival). Ties are counted as a half win.

Willingham 10-3 (+4)
Davie 7-6 (-2)
Holtz 7-6 (+1)
Faust 7-6 (-3.5)
Devine 9-4 (-2)
Ara 11-2 (+6)
Kuharich 6-7 (-2)
Brennan 12-1 (+0.5)
Leahy 10-1-2 (+2)
Layden 10-3 (+3.5)
Anderson 9-3-1 (-3.5)
Rockne 10-1-2 (+0.5)
Harper 11-2 (-1)
Marks 11-0-2 (+1)
Longman 10-1-2 (-0.5)

Willingham has made the second largest improvement over this span among N.D.'s coaches. In general, being positive has been a good sign: Marks, Rockne, Layden, Leahy, Brennan, Ara, Holtz and now Willingham were all positive. The lone counter-example here is Brennan and though he is generally not regarded as having been successful (32-18,.640), he did keep some of the momentum going from Leahy and turned out to be better than Kuharich who followed him.

In the negative camp are Longman, Harper, Anderson, Kuharich, Devine, Faust and Davie. Longman, Harper and Devine were good coaches, the others were not. However, in an absolute sense their records through 13 games were at least decent and the downturns were not huge. Anderson literally didn't have any headroom as Rockne's teams were undefeated national champions in 1929 and 1930, but when Anderson went 6-3-1 his first year it was a tellingly bad sign.