Michigan State football player Mel Tucker after finishing spring training
Michigan State head football coach Mel Tucker speaks to the media after the spring game on Saturday, April 15, 2023, in East Lansing.
Michigan State Athletics, Detroit Free Press
Mel Tucker returned to the gate and knew the player in order to add, but lost a potential corner kick on the same day.
Michigan State Football added its 15th transfer of the 2023 season on Wednesday as Jalen Sammy announced he will join the Spartans this fall. Sammy was slated to be the 16th newcomer, but hours after his commitment, former TCU linebacker Keon Stewart — who tweeted about his intention to transfer to MSU on May 6 — turned up. He tweeted that he was committed to Arkansas instead.
Sammy, a 6-foot-6, 330-pound Colorado Springs native, played with Tucker at Colorado in the 2019 season, the coach’s only season as head coach before arriving at MSU. Sammy was a redshirt freshman that year after committing to the Buffaloes under former head coach Mike McIntyre for the 2018 season, then remained with the program when Carl Durrell took over in 2020 following Tucker’s departure to East Lansing.
Sammy won the Guffaloes “Trench Award” as the most outstanding defensive lineman in 2022 and was named All-Pac-12 honorable mention by the league’s coaches. He played 467 snaps while starting all 12 games last season at Colorado, totaling 29 tackles. This 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 direct games to finish his career there, and finished with 78 tackles, 2½ sacks and seven QB presses. Sammy also had 12 tackles for loss, two pass deflections, forced two fumbles and recovered one rebound.
Sammy is a sixth year and already a graduate student after completing his undergraduate program last summer, Sammy has one year of eligibility remaining with a COVID waiver for the 2020 season. He was a two-star recruit from Vista Ridge High according to 247 Sports, which rated him as the No. 67 in the gate this spring.
Sammy is Tucker’s third defensive tackle out of the transfer gate 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 starting veterans 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 gate after going 5-7 in 2022.
While at Colorado, Sammy played alongside MSU alumni transfer Sammy, who joined the Spartans in January after leaving the Buffaloes for South Florida for the first time in 2021. Or was recruited as an assistant at Georgia.
Contact Chris Solari: [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @employee.
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