In a fast-moving recruitment, Wake Forest Demon Deacons transfer offensive tackle Melvin Siani officially entered the NCAA transfer portal on Thursday, hours before committing to the Texas Longhorns.<\/p>\n
The 6\u20196, 302-pounder has two seasons of eligibility remaining and entered the portal with a \u201cdo not contact\u201d tag, suggesting that Siani landing at Texas was already a done deal when his name went live in the portal<\/p>\n
A Canadian who played basketball and football at Wyoming Seminary Prep in Pennsylvania, Siani was an unranked recruit when he signed with former Texas running backs coach Stan Drayton at Temple in the 2023 recruiting class over offers from Bryant, Delaware State, Maine, Monmouth, New Hampshire, and Towson.<\/p>\n
In 2023, Siani redshirted while appearing in four games, starting at left tackle against SMU and Navy, according to Pro Football Focus, and showing signs of an impressive developmental trajectory \u2014 in the 37 snaps that Siani played in the season opener against Akron, he allowed five quarterback hurries and a hit on the quarterback in 30 pass-blocking snaps, but didn\u2019t even allow a hurry over 56 pass-blocking snaps in his two starts at the end of the season.<\/p>\n
The evaluation of Siani by then-Temple offensive line coach Chris Wiesehan looked even better in 2024 when Siani started nine of 11 games for the Owls at tackle, including the last two games at left tackle, grading at a high level as a pass blocker and providing average play in the running game. PFF credited Siani with allowing two sacks, two quarterback hits, and 13 hurries.<\/p>\n
After Drayton was fired, Siani entered the portal and landed at Wake Forest, where he started every game at left tackle for the Demon Deacons and graded out by PFF as the team\u2019s best blocker \u2014 in 859 snaps, Siani didn\u2019t allow a single sack and only gave up three hits and six hurries while improving significantly as a run blocker.<\/p>\n
Landing Siani seems to confirm the emerging belief that Texas will move rising junior right tackle Brandon Baker inside to guard for a year to improve the athleticism along the line before Baker moves back outside again after Trevor Goosby\u2019s departure after the 2026 season.<\/p>\n
How else will the decision impact the Longhorns? Don\u2019t expect Flood to pursue Colorado transfer Jordan Seaton, who has more name recognition, but only graded out marginally better as a pass blocker and worse as a run blocker \u2014 if Seaton is a better player, it\u2019s not by much, and will command a much higher investment from whichever program lands him.<\/p>\n
Now Texas has more budget available to pursue a starter at guard and invest in further depth beyond the additions of Oregon State transfer Dylan Sikorski and Texas A&M transfer Jonte Newman.<\/p>\n
So that makes Thursday\u2019s addition of Siani a major portal development for the Longhorns that won\u2019t be the talk of college football like Seaton\u2019s eventual decision will be, but immediately profiles as a smart move by offensive coordinator and offensive line coach Kyle Flood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In a fast-moving recruitment, Wake Forest Demon Deacons transfer offensive tackle Melvin Siani officially entered the NCAA transfer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":681820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,49,48,1079,10951],"class_list":{"0":"post-681819","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-football","11":"tag-texas-longhorns-football","12":"tag-texas-longhorns-football-recruiting"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115904993164622229","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=681819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/681819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/681820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=681819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=681819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=681819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}