{"id":765388,"date":"2026-02-20T21:42:19","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:42:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/765388\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T21:42:19","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T21:42:19","slug":"wisconsin-targeting-ex-kansas-city-chiefs-jacksonville-assistant-ari-confessor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/765388\/","title":{"rendered":"Wisconsin targeting ex-Kansas City Chiefs, Jacksonville assistant Ari Confessor"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Ari Confessor has coached for a pair of NFL franchises and had an extended run as an assistant coach in the Atlantic Coast Conference as well.<\/p>\n<p>If Wisconsin closes the deal, Confessor will add Big Ten Conference experience to his track record as well.<\/p>\n<p>Multiple sources tell FootballScoop that Luke Fickell&#8217;s Wisconsin Badgers program is targeting Confessor as its next wide receivers coach.<\/p>\n<p>No deal is complete but sources told FootballScoop President Scott Roussel that the goal is to have a deal completed by Monday with Confessor and have him report to begin work on campus in Madison, Wisconsin.<\/p>\n<p>Confessor would replace Jordan Reid, who left the Badgers within the past week to join the first-year coaching staff of new Atlanta Falcons head coach Kevin Stefanski, whom the Falcons hired after Stefanski, a two-time NFL Coach of the Year, was dismissed by the Cleveland Browns.<\/p>\n<p>In addition to his work with the NFL&#8217;s Kansas City Chiefs and Jacksonville Jaguars, Confessor has coached at Wake Forest under two different head coaches and for Troy Calhoun at the Air Force Academy.<\/p>\n<p>A former star player at Football Championship Subdivision program Holy Cross, where he twice earned All-America honors, is the school&#8217;s career receiving yards record-holder and has been enshrined into the Crusaders Hall of Fame, Confessor also coached at his alma mater under then-head coach Bob Chesney. After guiding James Madison to the Sun Belt Conference Championship and a spot in the 12-team College Football Playoff, Chesney was hired after the 2025 season to take over the UCLA Bruins.<\/p>\n<p>Confessor hasn&#8217;t just coached wideouts, the position at which he starred; he&#8217;s also logged collegiate work as co-special teams coordinator during a stint with the Rhode Island Rams. Confessor is a Providence, Rhode Island, native.<\/p>\n<p>At Wisconsin, Confessor would coach wideouts in the offensive system of coordinator Jeff Grimes.<\/p>\n<p>The Badgers are coming off an 4-8 campaign and have lost 13 of their last 15 games in Big Ten Conference play.<\/p>\n<p>Wisconsin is scheduled to open its 2026 campaign, a pivotal year as Fickell enters his fourth season at the helm, on Sunday, Sept. 6 against Marcus Freeman&#8217;s Notre Dame Fighting Irish inside Lambeau Field, home of the NFL&#8217;s Green Bay Packers.<\/p>\n<p>The Badgers then face a pair of directional schools &#8212; FCS Western Illinois and Eastern Michigan &#8212; in back-to-back home games that conclude their non-conference schedule. Wisconsin then will seek to reverse its Big Ten fortunes when league play opens Sept. 26 at Penn State, with the Nittany Lions guided by first-year head coach Matt Campell.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ari Confessor has coached for a pair of NFL franchises and had an extended run as an assistant&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":765389,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2063],"tags":[109013,346,198,7,118,110,2438,2437,6105,88,6,991,2785,2787],"class_list":{"0":"post-765388","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-kansas-city-chiefs","8":"tag-ari-confessor","9":"tag-chiefs","10":"tag-featured","11":"tag-football","12":"tag-kansas-city","13":"tag-kansas-city-chiefs","14":"tag-kansascity","15":"tag-kansascitychiefs","16":"tag-luke-fickell","17":"tag-news","18":"tag-nfl","19":"tag-wisconsin","20":"tag-wisconsin-badgers","21":"tag-wisconsin-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116105140447621190","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765388","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=765388"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/765388\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/765389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=765388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=765388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=765388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}