To the surprise of many, Will Muschamp is back as a defensive coordinator in the SEC.<\/p>\n
But perhaps even more surprising is that he will be working for the Texas Longhorns and not the Georgia Bulldogs. <\/p>\n
Muschamp released an official statement<\/a> after being hired by Steve Sarkisian to run the Texas defense. <\/p>\n \u201cThis is an exciting day for the Muschamp family,\u201d Muschamp said in a statement put out by Texas. \u201cWe loved our time in Austin and truly enjoyed everything about working with Texas Football. We\u2019re thrilled to be coming back to a program with one of the richest and proudest histories and traditions in college football. With what Coach Sark has done in rebuilding this program \u2013 knowing there are even better days ahead \u2013 I was fired up for the opportunity. I have tremendous respect and admiration for Sark, how he leads his program, develops his team and players, builds culture and goes about his business. I\u2019m excited to be a part of it and can\u2019t wait to get started, Hook \u2018em!\u201d<\/p>\n To bring in Muschamp, Sarkisian parted ways with defensive coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski and defensive passing game coordinator Duane Akina. <\/p>\n \u201cHaving the opportunity to hire Will Muschamp provides us the leadership to take our defense to another level,\u201d Sarkisian said. \u201cWill is a guy I\u2019ve known for a long time, always admired and is as good of a defensive mind and coach as I\u2019ve ever coached against. His defenses are relentless; he absolutely gets the best out of his staff and players and is such an extremely well-respected coach. I know Longhorn Nation knows him well, he led some incredible defenses here on the Forty, and I\u2019m so fired up to be bringing him back to Texas. He\u2019ll be an awesome addition to our staff.\u201d<\/p>\n Muschamp previously worked at Texas from 2008 through 2010, serving as the defensive coordinator and coach in waiting. He left Austin the first time to become the head coach at Florida. <\/p>\n Georgia first hired Muschamp as a defensive analyst for the 2021 season before being promoted to special teams coordinator. In 2022 and 2023 he served as the co-defensive coordinator for the Bulldogs. He would then move into an analyst role for the 2024 season, in part to spend more time with his family. Muschamp was frequently seen at Vanderbilt games in support of his son Whit, a quarterback. <\/p>\n Muschamp had an unspecified role with the Georgia program in 2025, though Kirby Smart declined to say what when asked at Georgia\u2019s SEC media days<\/a>. Smart replaced Muschamp on staff in 2024 by hiring Travaris Robinson to be the team\u2019s co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach. <\/a><\/p>\n Glenn Schumann has been Georgia\u2019s defensive coordinator since the 2022 season. <\/p>\n Muschamp and Smart are good friends. Smart has also spoken frequently about his friendship with Sarkisian over the years. <\/p>\n Since Texas joined the league, Georgia is 3-0 against the Longhorns. This season saw the Bulldogs come away with a 35-10 win over Texas. <\/p>\n Georgia and Texas are not set to play each other in 2026. The Bulldogs made the College Football Playoff this year, while Texas went 9-3. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"To the surprise of many, Will Muschamp is back as a defensive coordinator in the SEC. But perhaps…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":93422,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[43721,16616,29020,1015,27,29,28,43696],"class_list":{"0":"post-93421","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-texas","8":"tag-ajc-freelancer","9":"tag-georgia","10":"tag-kirby-smart","11":"tag-oregon","12":"tag-texas","13":"tag-texas-headlines","14":"tag-texas-news","15":"tag-will-muschamp"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=93421"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/93421\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/93422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=93421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=93421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=93421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}