{"id":764204,"date":"2026-02-20T08:58:23","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T08:58:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/764204\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T08:58:23","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T08:58:23","slug":"stanford-football-news-cardinal-hires-ex-nfl-dc","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/764204\/","title":{"rendered":"Stanford football news: Cardinal hires ex-NFL DC"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/ncaa-football\/stanford-football\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Stanford football<\/a> clearly envisions tapping back into its NFL identity <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/ncaa-football\/stanford-football-news-hires-new-coach-tavita-pritchard-commanders\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">under Tavita Pritchard<\/a>. The former Washington Commanders quarterbacks coach pulled a stunning move Thursday: Tabbing a Super Bowl winning assistant from the 2013 Seattle Seahawks as the \u201cdirector of defense.\u201d Ex-Seahawks and former Dallas Cowboys assistant Kris Richard is now coming to The Farm.<\/p>\n<p>The university officially announced Richard as the Willie Shaw Director of Defense and defensive backs coach Thursday evening.<\/p>\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Welcome to The Farm \ud83c\udf32 <\/p>\n<p>Kris Richard has been named Willie Shaw Director of Defense and Defensive Backs Coach.<\/p>\n<p>\ud83d\udcf0 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/hjQQlB8uZG\" rel=\"nofollow\">https:\/\/t.co\/hjQQlB8uZG<\/a> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/iZLmLb2JhM\" rel=\"nofollow\">pic.twitter.com\/iZLmLb2JhM<\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u2014 Stanford Football (@StanfordFball) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/StanfordFball\/status\/2024643719656599741?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">February 20, 2026<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Richard was among four coaching announcements the school made. Stanford also revealed Brian Bratton (wide receivers), Keli&#8217;i Kekuewa (offensive line) and James Mosely (defensive line) as the newest coaching hires under Pritchard.<\/p>\n<p>Ex-Seahawks, Cowboys assistant a massive hire for Stanford<img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-3708730\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Kris-Richard-with-Dallas.jpg\" alt=\"Dallas Cowboys defensive backs coach Kris Richard prior to the game against the Minnesota Vikings at AT&amp;T Stadium. \" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\"  \/>Matthew Emmons-Imagn Images<\/p>\n<p>Richard&#8217;s appointment brings a mix of perplexing thoughts and excitement.<\/p>\n<p>The former is regarding how a longtime NFL assistant would consider dipping back into the college football game. Richard hasn&#8217;t coached collegiately since 2009 with USC as a graduate assistant. He&#8217;s also been a defensive coordinator twice in the league \u2014 2015-2017 with Seattle, then handling co-DC duties with the New Orleans Saints in 2022.<\/p>\n<p>Of course Seahawk fans remember Richard for overseeing the Legion of Boom \u2014 featuring Cardinal legend Richard Sherman. That famed secondary won Seattle&#8217;s first Super Bowl together by trouncing the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl XLVIII.<\/p>\n<p>Richard was last seen with the Jacksonville Jaguars in 2024, serving as defensive backs coach before the arrival of Liam Coen.<\/p>\n<p>But now the Cardinal are dipping back to a past vision popularized by Pritchard&#8217;s former head coach <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/tag\/jim-harbaugh\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jim Harbaugh<\/a>. Stanford is putting together some NFL representation <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/ncaa-football\/stanford-footballs-andrew-luck-fires-head-coach-troy-taylor\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">post Troy Taylor<\/a>. Of course the man making the decisions is past NFL Pro Bowler and Stanford great <a href=\"https:\/\/clutchpoints.com\/tag\/andrew-luck\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Andrew Luck<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Stanford football clearly envisions tapping back into its NFL identity under Tavita Pritchard. The former Washington Commanders quarterbacks&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":764205,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[6502,7,1012,49,48,7047],"class_list":["post-764204","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-ncaa-football","tag-andrew-luck","tag-football","tag-jim-harbaugh","tag-ncaa","tag-ncaa-football","tag-stanford-football"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116102137312347624","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764204","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=764204"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/764204\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/764205"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=764204"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=764204"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=764204"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}