Michigan State football adds Colorado DT transfer Jalen Sami
Mel Tucker went back to the portal and his familiarity with a player for an addition, but lost a potential corner on the same day.
Michigan State football added its 15th inbound transfer for the 2023 season Wednesday as defensive tackle Jalen Sami announced he would join the Spartans this fall. Sami was set to be the 16th newomer, but hours after he committed, former TCU cornerback Kee'yon Stewart — who tweeted his intention to transfer to MSU on May 6 — tweeted he was committing to Arkansas instead.
Sami, a 6-foot-6, 330-pound Colorado Springs native, played for Tucker at Colorado in the 2019 season, the coach’s only season as head coach before arriving at MSU. Sami was a redshirt freshman that year after committing to the Buffaloes under previous coach Mike MacIntyre for the 2018 season, then remained with the program when Karl Dorrell took over in 2020 following Tucker’s departure to East Lansing.
Sami won the Buffaloes’ “Trench” award as their most outstanding defensive lineman in 2022 and earned All-Pac-12 honorable mention from the league’s coaches. He played 467 snaps while starting all 12 games last season at Colorado, totaling 29 tackles. That included three stops for a loss and four for no yards.
He started 36 of his 40 games at Colorado over the past four seasons, including 19 straight to end his career there, and finished with 78 tackles, 2½ sacks and seven QB pressures. Sami also had 12 tackles for a loss, two pass breakups, forced two fumbles and recovered another.
A sixth-year senior and already a graduate student after finishing his undergrad program last summer, Sami has one year of eligibility remaining with the COVID waiver for the 2020 season. He was a two-star recruit out of Vista Ridge High according to 247 Sports, which ranked him as the No. 67 transfer in the portal this 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 returns a strong group of defensive tackles, including veterans in starter Simeon Barrow and key backups Maverick Hansen and Derrick Harmon, along with 2022 four-star recruit Alex VanSumeren. The Spartans lost veteran DTs Jalen Hunt (Houston) and Dashaun Mallory (Arizona State) to the portal after going 5-7 in 2022.
While at Colorado, Sami played alongside MSU graduate transfer running back Jaren Mangham, who joined the Spartans in January after first leaving the Buffaloes for South Florida in 2021. Over the past three offseason, Tucker has brought in a number of other transfers he either coached or recruited as an assistant at Georgia.
Contact Chris Solari: csolari@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @chrissolari.
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan State football adds Colorado DT transfer Jalen Sami
