Nevada Football: Jeff Choate Named Head Coach
After underperforming the last two seasons, the Wolf Pack introduce a new leader with defensive chops on his resume.
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A new chapter begins in Reno.
Three days after firing Ken Wilson, the Nevada Wolf Pack introduced Jeff Choate as its new head football coach this afternoon. The news was first broken yesterday by Bruce Feldman of The Athletic.
Nevada Football: Introductory Press Conference https://t.co/VRAk847QPM
— Nevada Wolf Pack 🐺 (@NevadaWolfPack) December 4, 2023
Choate has spent the last three seasons as the co-defensive coordinator and inside linebackers coach for the Texas Longhorns, where he’s overseen a unit that, by Bill Connelly’s SP+ metric, has improved from 86th in 2021 to 15th in 2022 to 10th this season, following last Saturday’s Big 12 championship game against Oklahoma State. Under his recent tutelage, Jaylen Ford has been named a first-team all-Big 12 performer in each of the last two years.
He isn’t an unfamiliar name in the Mountain West, either. Choate spent 2002-04 at Utah State and 2006-11 at Boise State, serving as a position coach and special teams coordinator at both stops. He later spent four years as the head coach at FCS Montana State, from 2016 to 2019. In that stint, he guided the Bobcats from 4-7 in his first year to back-to-back playoff appearances, reaching the semifinals in his final year before electing to leave for Austin in January 2021. He posted an overall record of 28-22.
His defensive pedigree, which includes the development of stars like Troy Andersen, Danny Shelton, and Ford, and previous success as a head coach are almost certainly the calling cards that Nevada is hoping to draw upon after allowing 6.89 yards per play (last in FBS) and 2.64 points per drive (106th) this season.
