Why defensive tackles won the 2024 Spring portal window

The spring transfer portal window for college football is officially closed, as players can now no longer re-open their recruitment and decide to join a new program ahead of the 2024 season.

There are still many players who have not committed to new destinations after entering the transfer portal this spring, but also plenty who have decided where they’ll take their talents and plan to make a strong impact with new programs. Highlighted by a position that continues to grow in prominence in the professional and collegiate levels of football.

On3’s Pete Nakos believes that the defensive tackle position has become the most valuable during the spring transfer portal window, which he explained on Andy Staples On3 Tuesday morning.

“Yeah the defensive tackles won the spring transfer portal, and there’s still a few out there who are completely dominating the market at this point,” Staples said. “But you look at it right, Simeon Barrow, Derrick Harmon, Damonic Williams are all big names that have come off the board.”

Last offseason in the NFL many defensive tackles secured massive paydays, as a position that traditionally gets overlooked saw an increase in overall market value across the league. This also trickled down to the college level during the spring transfer portal as teams sought after players who could build up the interior of their defensive lines.

From the former Michigan State duo of Barrow and Harmon committing to Miami and Oregon. Each respectively bolstering their new defensive line units while also adding to the overall strength of Mario Cristobal and Dan Lanning‘s impressive offseasons in the transfer portal. To all-conference defensive lineman Damonic Williams joining an Oklahoma team that desperately needed to add depth and experience to their young defensive front. There’s no doubt that defensive tackles served as key transfer players that likely made NIL collectives put their money where their mouths are, a trend that may continue this offseason.

“And then you look at who’s left, there’s the Kent State defensive tackle CJ West and then there’s also the Wyoming nose tackle Gavin Meyer who’s from Wisconsin, has like 69 career tackles as a grad transfer,” Nakos added. “And really for some of these programs who’ve missed on the Barrows and the Williams, he provides a pretty viable one-year stop gap if you need a guy to kind of just jump in and make an impact right away.”

There’s no doubt that defensive tackles have been an integral part of teams that have been able to achieve championship success lately. As teams will continue searching for these unsung heroes in the transfer portal this offseason and beyond in the future for a market that will continue to be intriguing to monitor.