Two months after the Texas Longhorns fired fifth-year defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski to hire Will Muschamp, the longtime college assistant is moving to the NFL for the first time as the Arizona Cardinals hired him on Wednesday to coach the defensive line.<\/p>\n
Head coach Steve Sarkisian\u2019s decision to fire Kwiatkowski was an unexpected decision after the Longhorns finished in SP+ rankings and Texas missed the College Football Playoff for the first time in three years largely due to offensive struggles that included a tepid running game and a revolving door at left guard.<\/p>\n
In 2024, Kwiatowski was a finalist for the Broyles Award as the nation\u2019s top assistant after the Texas defense ranked third nationally in scoring defense (15.3 ppg) and total defense (283.4 yards per game) while forcing the second-most turnovers (31), including an FBS-best 22 interceptions, and close to three sacks (2.88\/15th FBS) per game. Four defenders earned All-America honors.<\/p>\n
It was a continuation of a positive trajectory for the Longhorns defensively after defensive tackle T\u2019Vondre Sweat won the Outland Trophy and Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year honors and fellow defensive tackle Byron Murphy II was named Big 12 Defensive Lineman of the Year.<\/p>\n
Kwiatkowski was a late hire by Sarkisian after spending his coaching career in the northwest, most notably at Washington and his alma mater, Boise State, under head coach Chris Petersen.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two months after the Texas Longhorns fired fifth-year defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski to hire Will Muschamp, the longtime…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":762650,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,1079],"class_list":{"0":"post-762649","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-texas-longhorns-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116097991716767206","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/762650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}