The Horns have two new assistants, other support staff additions, and a number of promotions.
With two assistant coaches departing the Forty Acres following the 2024 season and the Texas Longhorns investing in head coach Steve Sarkisian’s support staff and personnel department, the school announced the new additions and a number of promotions on Thursday.
Coach Sark has announced the following new hires and promotions within our staff pic.twitter.com/TPAx161YZy
— Texas Football (@TexasFootball) February 20, 2025
With safeties coach Blake Gideon leaving to become the defensive coordinator at Georgia Tech, Sarkisian hired Lone Star State native Mark Orphay from Rutgers as the team’s new cornerbacks coach.
That means that Terry Joseph is now coaching the safeties in addition to his roles as the defensive passing game coordinator and secondary coach.
Supporting Orphay and Joseph is new nickels coach Keynodo Hudson in a promotion from his role last year as a football analyst. Hudson is entering his second season on the Forty Acres after joining Texas from Ole Miss, where he served as the cornerbacks coach following previous stints at Western Kentucky, Illinois, Florida Atlantic, and USC.
Along the defensive line, coordinator Pete Kwiatkowski is now working with a dedicated EDGE coach, LaAllan Clark. The Baton Rouge native played defensive end at Grambling State and Northwestern State before beginning his coaching career at Prairie View A&M. For the last two seasons, Clark was a defensive graduate assistant at Ohio State and has also trained NFL standouts like Ed Oliver, Jeffrey Simmons, and Danielle Hunter as CEO of LC Performance.
The departure of running backs coach Tashard Choice to take over the same role for the Detroit Lions resulted in Sarkisian hiring Chad Scott from West Virginia. Scott comes to Austin with two years of experience as the offensive coordinator for Neal Brown and a strong track record of development and recruiting at the position for the Mountaineers.
A longtime staffer on offense has also received a promotion as Mike Bimonte steps into a new role as co-passing game coordinator and assistant quarterbacks coach. Bimonte played quarterback at Rutgers under offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Kyle Flood, joining Texas as an offensive analyst after Sarkisian and Flood arrived in Austin, and now taking on a larger role supporting Sarkisian, Flood, and co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach AJ Milwee.
The promotions of Hudson and Bimonte come after the NCAA removed countable limits on on-field assistant coaches who can provide coaching on gameday last June.
Sarkisian also made several additions to the personnel department while adding a new role for Director of High School Relations Jahmal Fenner, who is now Director of Player Development as well.
Needing to maintain a recruiting footprint in Georgia following Choice’s departure, Sarkisian hired Georgia Tech General Manager Errin Joe, a Yellow Jackets alum, to serve as the program’s Director of Scouting. Joe helped Georgia Tech land the No. 22 recruiting class in 2025, considered the program’s best in the modern recruiting era.
Texas also added former Memphis Director of Recruiting Josh Dunson as a Senior Player Personnel Coordinator. The Tigers signed the AAC’s top recruiting class in 2025.
Tanner Martin received a promotion to Scouting Coordinator eight years after Martin began serving as a student coaching assistant for running backs. Since 2019, he’d served as a senior assistant for personnel.
Recruiting Coordinator Jordan Mitchell received a promotion, too — the former recruiting operations intern is now the Recruiting & Roster Retention Strategy Coordinator.