Texas Longhorns' Steve Sarkisian Credits Pete Kwiatkowski's Adaptability

While the Texas Longhorns' offensive weapons, their defense and coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski deserve a lot of credit for the job they are doing.

As part of the changing of the guard within the Texas Longhorns' program in 2021, along came new head coach Steve Sarkisian and defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski.

Kwiatkowski played at Boise State prior to the Broncos' move up to Division I-A. He coached at his alma mater starting in 2006, and since then, the game of college football has changed dramatically in what separates winning and losing.

With that, Kwiatkowski has had to change his defensive philosophy along the way.

"That's one thing that I admire about P.K," Sarkisian said Thursday. "He's not one of these guys that's just stuck in, 'This is how I've always done it and this is the way we're going to do it moving forward.' He's evolved as a coach. When he was at Boise, it was a lot of quarters coverage, and that was their style with some different fronts involved. There was a stretch there when he was at Washington, they were a big three-deep, Seattle Seahawk, cover-three-deep team."

Texas Longhorns defensive lineman T'Vondre Sweat (93) and defensive back Jahdae Barron (23) celebrate in a circle / © Ricardo B. Brazziell, Austin American-Statesman

That evolution hasn't stopped in the now three seasons he's been at Texas, either.

"Since we've gotten here, we've evolved some," Sarkisian said. "We're playing a little bit more man. We're playing a little bit more tighter coverage. I think that's a credit to P.K."

Texas' defense has taken continual strides under Kwiatkowski, ranking top 25 in both scoring and total defense this season. His best mark by a Kwiatkowski-led Longhorns defense in each respective category was 28th and 25th, respectively, last season.

Sarkisian credited Kwiatkowski's ability to form his defense based on the players that will be playing in it.

"That's the thing that I've probably noticed most is that his willingness to evolve schematically and then call it accordingly with the strengths of the players that he has," Sarkisian said.