Pete Kwiatkowski, whose friends describe him as a movie buff and history nerd, compares the Texas Longhorns season to “Saving Private Ryan.”

We all know how that movie starts, he says. From the opening scene - the landing at Omaha Beach - the U.S. Army ‘is in it.’ This Texas team has been in the trenches week in and week out of the longest college football season ever. And just like those soldiers who followed orders even when they didn’t always agree with the mission to save Private Ryan, Kwiatkowski’s troops have brought the same work ethic every day for the last five months.

“It’s been an awesome year, and it’s been awesome because of the mentality,” Kwiatkowski said. “Whether we win or lose, they’ve shown up with the same mentality. Get back to work. Get better.”

But Kwiatkowski doesn’t resemble Tom Hanks’s Captain John Miller at Wednesday’s Cotton Bowl Media Days. Instead, he looks like Yellowstone’s John Dutton, donning a felt cowboy hat (star cornerback Jahdae Barron rates it an 8-out-of-10). He pulls off the ranch hand look so effortlessly that it’s easy to forget this is only his fourth year at Texas - or what the defense looked like when he first got here.

The Longhorns allowed over 30 points per game in Kwiatkowski’s first season. This year, it ranked third in the country in average points allowed and second in turnovers gained. Barron’s won the Thorpe Award, given to the nation’s best defensive back. Safety Michael Taaffe is an All-American. 

And the mastermind behind it all has stayed in the background, right where he wants to be. Kwiatkowski said before the Arizona State game he’s never actively aspired to be a head coach, preferring to stay in his lane. 

“He’s kind of the anti-football coach,” Nevada head coach and longtime friend Jeff Choate recently told Kirk Bohls of the Houston Chronicle. “He doesn’t get too wound up. He has his process, and he’s almost like an artist.”

Or, a genius, according to Barron. The senior defensive back switched to full-time outside cornerback this season after a career spent rotating between nickel and safety. Kwiatkowski then switched the base defense from two-high safeties to one-high, which allowed for an extra man in the box to offset the loss of defensive tackles T’Vondre Sweat and Byron Murphy II, but put his cornerbacks on islands.  

Barron and his fellow defensive backs responded by improving their passing yards allowed from 113th in the nation to third in the nation. 

“He’s a confident guy that loves challenges,” Kwiatkowski said. “He embraced it.”

Barron and the rest of the secondary will face its biggest challenge of the season on Friday night in the College Football Playoff Semifinals against Ohio State. True freshman Jeremiah Smith, whom Oregon head coach Dan Lanning described as NFL-ready after the Rose Bowl, has 1,224 receiving yards and 14 touchdowns. The Buckeyes’ second-leading receiver, Emeka Egbuka, is a projected First Round NFL Draft pick. 

“This is the reason you play football when you’re a little kid,” Barron said. “To have opportunities like this on the biggest stage, at the right time when no one else is playing football and the whole world is watching.”