Cole Wisniewski finished his Texas Tech season with 78 combined tackles, six tackles for loss and two forced fumbles, the kind of production that tends to travel well when scouts start building draft boards. The 6-foot-4 safety started all 14 games for Joey McGuire and the Red Raiders this past season, then put together a highlight reel that reaches back across 60 career games and two programs.
Wisniewski, who spent four seasons at North Dakota State before transferring to Texas Tech, showed up everywhere for the Red Raiders. He added one sack, six pass breakups and a fumble recovery this season, and his best days came in the kind of games that get taped and rewatched: eight tackles on the road against Utah, six against Kansas State and six against Arizona State. Over his career with North Dakota State and Texas Tech, he finished with 267 tackles, 10.5 tackles for loss, two sacks, eight interceptions and 13 pass breakups.
That track record helps explain why Texas Tech’s rise mattered beyond Lubbock. The Red Raiders made a run at the Big 12 title in 2025 and ended up in the College Football Playoff, giving a former FCS standout a bigger stage just as the 2026 NFL Draft picture began to take shape. Wisniewski arrived from North Dakota State with a reputation for consistency, and he left Texas Tech with a season that matched it.
The one thing NFL teams will still weigh is whether his production at two levels of competition translates cleanly to Sundays. The numbers are there, and so is the workload: 60 games, 267 tackles and a starting role every week this fall. For a defender who kept showing up in the box score, that is the sort of résumé that makes the next step feel less like a leap than a test.
