Will Muschamp’s first game in this stint as Texas defensive coordinator gave an immediate sign of what the Texas Longhorns want to look like on defense. Texas held the Texas State Bobcats to seven points on Saturday, and Muschamp also began using one of the team’s most impactful athletes in new ways.
The shape of the defense still largely resembled Pete Kwiatkoski’s approach, but there were clear additions. Muschamp did not simply inherit a system and leave it untouched. He added wrinkles, and the most notable one involved Colin Simmons.
How Muschamp used Colin Simmons
Across Colin Simmons’s first two seasons at Texas, he played off-ball linebacker on five percent of his snaps. On Saturday, that role became part of the conversation again, with Muschamp using him in new ways against Texas State.
The article’s key point is not just that Simmons lined up differently, but that Texas was willing to shift responsibility to him in a more flexible front. The Mint front is the setup Muschamp uses when the off-ball money linebacker rushes, which changes who is carrying which burden on the play.
That matters because Simmons is one of Texas’s most impactful athletes. If Muschamp can move him around as an off-ball linebacker, a quarterback spy, and a looping blitzer, then Texas can ask more questions of opposing offenses without changing the overall identity of the defense.
A familiar defense, with new details
The bigger takeaway from Saturday is that Muschamp’s first game did not look like a full reset. It looked more like a defense that kept the core ideas already in place while adding enough variation to create stress for Texas State.
Holding the Bobcats to seven points is a strong early marker for that approach. It also suggests Muschamp is comfortable making subtle but important changes quickly, especially when he has a versatile player like Simmons to work with.
For Texas, the next step is whether those new wrinkles hold up when the opposition is better prepared. The first game offered a positive sign. Now the question is how far Muschamp can push it from here.
