Texas Football: Horns get underrated DC hire with Pete Kwiatkowski

An unexpected hire to say the last arrived for the Texas football program and recently hired head coach Steve Sarkisian, when the news dropped on Jan. 19. that the next defensive coordinator would be Pete Kwiatkowski. The report first emerged from Horns247 just after the holiday weekend that Texas would likely be looking to hire the Washington Huskies longtime co-defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski to assume the same/similar role on their coaching staff.

The former Alabama Crimson Tide offensive coordinator and the reigning Broyles Award winner Sark is looking to reshape this Longhorns coaching staff to the model of his liking. So far, he has made a few significant positional coach hires, including the former Notre Dame Fighting Irish defensive backs coach Terry Joseph and Alabama special teams coordinator Jeff Banks.

His staff is not going to have much of the same look that the now former Texas fourth-year head coach Tom Herman did for last season. And now with Kwiatkowski looking like he will be on the staff for Texas as their defensive coordinator, the most significant hire made thus far looks to now be in process.

There’s a lot of stability that Kwiatkowski brings to the table in his college football coaching career thus far. He was the co-defensive coordinator under multiple coaching regimes in Seattle since the 2014 season. That role was assumed by Kwiatkowski under both the direction of former Washington head coach Chris Petersen and current head coach Jimmy Lake.

Moreover, Kwiatkowski goes a long way back with the now retired former Washington and Boise State Broncos head coach Petersen. Prior to taking the co-defensive coordinator role with the Huskies back in 2014, Kwiatkowski was Boise State’s defensive coordinator from 2010-2013. And prior to that, he was their defensive line coach from 2006-2009.

That was about all of the FBS experience that Kwiatkowski held as a coordinator/positional coach in college. He was a defensive coordinator/defensive line coach at a few stops at the FCS ranks in the 2000’s, including with the Eastern Washington Eagles and Montana Grizzlies, prior to taking the defensive line coach role with Boise State in 2006.

It’s well known how good Washington’s defense was in the PAC-12 over the course of the last six or eight seasons. Washington’s defense ranked in the top 15 in the FBS in five of the last six years in points allowed per game, when Kwiatkowski was on staff as the co-defensive coordinator.

Another aspect to the Kwiatkowski hire could be a new recruiting pipeline that opens up for the Longhorns more so on the west coast. Texas has recruited pretty well out in the state of California of late, but getting more of a foothold on the recruiting trail out in PAC-12 territory could help the program in the near future.

The Texas coaching staff, under Sark’s direction, is starting to get more of a complete picture. After the Kwiatkowski hire, the attention will now turn to what Sark does with his offensive coordinator role and a few other positional coach spots.