Rutgers Football Hires South Dakota Head Coach Travis Johansen as Defensive Coordinator

After a 64-day-long search, Rutgers football has finally landed its defensive coordinator for the 2026 season, as it is set to hire South Dakota head coach Travis Johansen to be the team's new defensive coordinator.

With this hire, Rutgers is getting someone who brings with him 14 seasons of defensive coordinator experience. He spent 6 seasons as the defensive coordinator for South Dakota before becoming the team's head coach for the 2025 season. He has also held defensive coordinator roles at Grand View University in the NAIA and at DII Concordia-St. Paul, where he played linebacker before he began his coaching career.

During his time at South Dakota, he was the architect for a top 5 FCS defense. On top of that, two of his players were named Missouri Valley Football Conference Defensive Players of the Year during his tenure as DC, Brock Mogensen in 2023 and Mi'Quise Grace in 2024. In addition, during his tenure as head coach, Defensive back Mikey Munn was named a Second-Team All-American.

Johansen will be tasked with fixing a Rutgers defense that set records for how poor it was last season. The Knights surrendered an average of 7.6 yards per play last season, the worst in the FBS by far. After only four games had passed in the 2025 season, the Knights' defense had surrendered a total of 1374 yards. Two of those games were against MAC opponents, and one of those games was against FCS Norfolk State. The defense had gotten so bad for the Knights last season that head coach Greg Schiano took over the playsheet following the team's game against Oregon and fired both Co-defensive coordinators, Robb Smith and Zach Sparber, after the season had ended.

This hire brings an end to Rutgers' second lengthy defensive coordinator search in two years. There was serious concern among the scarlet faithful that Schiano would have to be the de-facto defensive coordinator next season.

🎥 𝐂𝐈𝐍𝐄𝐌𝐀𝐓𝐈𝐂 𝐑𝐄𝐂𝐀𝐏: FCS Playoffs - Second Round

On to Round 3!

South Dakota 47, Mercer 0#GoYotes pic.twitter.com/TauauzfVQ1
— South Dakota Football (@SDCoyotesFB) December 7, 2025

One Interesting note about this hire is that it is seemingly an out-of-the-box coordinator hire for Schiano, who typically likes to find coordinators linked to his coaching tree.

Now it appears that Johansen will be heavily relied upon to fill other assistant positions around the defense, as well as bringing in some transfers from his previous school. Rutgers still needs help on defense, both in coaches and in players. The cornerbacks coach and safeties coach are just two of the assistant coaching vacancies that Johansen will be expected to help fill. In addition, Rutgers might be looking to bring some of South Dakota's defensive stars, such as Munn, up to the FBS level.

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