Michigan State Football’s Mel Tucker after completing spring training
Michigan State football coach Mel Tucker speaks to the media after the spring game Saturday, April 15, 2023 in East Lansing.
Michigan State Athletics, Detroit Free Press
Mel Tucker used the portal and his familiarity with a player for an addition, but lost a potential corner kick later that day.
Michigan State Football added its 15th inbound transfer for the 2023 season on Wednesday when defensive tackle Jalen Sami announced he would join the Spartans this fall. Sami was supposed to be the 16th signing, but just hours after his signing, former TCU cornerback Kee’yon Stewart — who tweeted his intention to join MSU on May 6 — came forward. tweeted he would choose Arkansas instead.
Sami, a 6-foot-1, 330-pound man from Colorado Springs, played for Tucker in Colorado during the 2019 season, the coach’s only season as head coach before joining MSU. Sami was a redshirt freshman this year after signing with the Buffaloes for the 2018 season under previous coach Mike MacIntyre, and then stayed with the program when Karl Dorrell took over in 2020 following Tucker’s departure to East Lansing.
Sami won the Buffaloes’ “Trench” award for the most outstanding defensive lineman of 2022 and received the All-Pac-12 honorable mention from the league’s coaches. Last season in Colorado, he played 467 snaps in all 12 games for a total of 29 tackles. That included three stops for a loss and four for no yards.
He started 36 of his 40 games in Colorado over the past four seasons, including 19 straight to end his career there, and finished the game with 78 tackles, 2½ sacks and seven QB pressures. Sami also had 12 tackles for a loss, two pass breakdowns, forced two fumbles and recovered another.
Sami is a sixth-year senior and already a graduate student, having completed his undergraduate degree last summer. He has one year left to play due to the COVID waiver for the 2020 season. According to 247 Sports, he was a two-star recruit to Vista Ridge High, where he was ranked the No. 67 transfer on the portal that spring.
Sami is Tucker’s third defensive tackle from the transfer portal since the end of last season, joining Tunmise Adeleye (Texas A&M) and Dre Butler (Liberty). MSU is bringing back a strong group of defensive players, including veteran starter Simeon Barrow and key backups Maverick Hansen and Derrick Harmon, as well as four-star 2022 signing Alex VanSumeren. The Spartans lost veteran DTs Jalen Hunt (Houston) and Dashaun Mallory (Arizona State) to the Portal after a 5-7 in 2022.
During his time in Colorado, Sami played alongside MSU grad transfer running back Jaren Mangham, who joined the Spartans in January after leaving the Buffaloes for South Florida for the first time in 2021. In the last three season breaks, Tucker brought in a number of other transfers, either coaching or employed as an assistant in Georgia.
Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari.
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