Paul Pasqualoni is headed back to Division I football at 77, adding another stop to a coaching career that has already stretched across college, the NFL and beyond.
According to Pete Thamel of ESPN, the former UConn head coach is set to join Florida State as a defensive analyst. The Seminoles recently fired head coach Mike Norvell, which opened spots on the staff. There is no certainty Pasqualoni will still be there in 2027, since the next head coach will likely want to shape his own first staff, but for now it’s another turn in a long and winding career.
Pasqualoni’s path back to the college game has deep Connecticut ties. He began as an assistant at Cheshire High School in 1972, then moved on to Southern Connecticut State as an assistant. From there, he became the head coach at Western Connecticut State from 1982-86 before leaving the state for a linebackers job at Syracuse in 1987.
That move launched the most successful stretch of his career. Pasqualoni was promoted to head coach at Syracuse in 1991 and stayed through 2004, guiding the Orange to nine bowl games, going 6-3 in those appearances, and developing 17 NFL players who were drafted in the first three rounds of the NFL Draft. His Syracuse teams featured some of the program’s biggest names, including Donovan McNabb, Marvin Harrison and Dwight Freeney.
After Syracuse, Pasqualoni spent time in the NFL with the Dallas Cowboys and Miami Dolphins, where he served as defensive coordinator. He later returned to college football and took over at UConn from 2011-13.
His résumé didn’t stop there. Pasqualoni has also had stints with the Chicago Bears, Houston Texans, Boston College, Detroit Lions, University of Florida and Carolina Panthers. More recently, he worked in the United Football League in 2024 and at the high school level again in 2025.
At UConn, Pasqualoni followed Randy Edsall, who ran the Huskies from 2000-2010 and put together six winning seasons, five bowl trips and a Fiesta Bowl appearance in 2010 before leaving after that season. Pasqualoni couldn’t match that run, or the success he had at Syracuse.
UConn went 5-7 in both 2011 and 2012, then opened 2013 at 0-4 before he was dismissed. That rough start came as the program moved from the Big East to the American.
The Huskies didn’t post a winning season from the time Pasqualoni was hired until 2024 under Jim Mora. Now under Jason Candle, UConn is 4-4 and set to face North Carolina this weekend in East Hartford. It will also mark the first return to New England for Bill Belichick since he was fired by the Patriots after the 2023 NFL season.
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Paul Pasqualoni is headed back into Division I football, landing on the Florida State staff after a long coaching career that has taken him from head coaching stops at Syracuse and UConn to assistant jobs in both college and the NFL. For UConn fans, his name still carries the memory of a difficult stretch in Storrs, where his three seasons as the Huskies head coach were defined by losing records and little momentum.
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