Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - REINFORCED: Jayhawks Secure David Santiago—Key Addition from Michigan State to POWER Kansas' Front

Starting point is 00:00:00 KU's respecting the troops, David Santiago, a transfer from Air Force and Michigan State with some pretty good production is going to be joining the Jayhawks to possibly be their strong side defensive end. You are Locked on Jayhawks, your daily podcast on the Kansas Jayhawks, part of the Locked on Podcast Network, your team every day. What's going on, Derek Johnson? here, and this is another episode of Locked on Jayhawks. Thanks for making it your first listen every day, and thank you for making the Lockdown Podcast Network, the number one sports podcast network, another transfer portal commit for Lance Leipold and KU, another defensive lineman. They are beefing up the lines of scrimmage. This one comes in the form of David Santiago. We'll get into the news. We'll get into his scouting report, what he brings to

Starting point is 00:00:53 the table, and what this all means for the KU defensive line, as well as the defensive end position in his projected role with the team. Let's start right here with the news, which is that David Santiago has committed on Tuesday night to the Kansas Jayhawks. He's been somebody who's been playing outside linebacker at his previous stop. So he was at Air Force after coming out of high school from Raleigh, North Carolina, spent two years at Air Force where if you look at his Michigan State profile, it says he redshirted at Air Force.

Starting point is 00:01:23 I thought you weren't allowed to redshirt at the academy schools. I don't know if that changed or if that's something. you can have a redshirt in hindsight after leaving, but, you know, listed that first year's a red shirt. Then he played his next year at Air Force, then plays a year this past year is a rotational defensive end at Michigan. He's going to be a redshirt junior, which means not only you're adding him now, but he is somebody who has two years left to play, which certainly is kind of a nice additive with all this. In theory, I know you never know with the transfer portal. Like, are you getting players for one year, two year, three years, four years, whatever? But like,

Starting point is 00:01:56 you look at the KU defensive line now, it's a lot of juniors. to have a chance to not just make an impact in 2026, but do so in 2027 as well, because Santiago, Leroy Harris, Blake Harold, Eamon Small is one of your other Transfer Portal editions, Marcus Calvin, Treel Condé, all those guys are juniors on this team. So that's exciting that you could potentially get a couple years out of all those guys, or at least you'd hope a majority of those guys. But again, there's a player who played outside linebacker with those previous stops as part of kind of a three-four system. Now you would think he's going to be moving to a defensive end edge role for KU.

Starting point is 00:02:31 And I think that becomes very interesting with one, how does it affect his game? But two, how does it affect KU? Because when I look at the strong side defensive end spot, you lost Justice Finkley, one of your starters there for KU. And Alex Bray is a serviceable rotation body for KU there. But I think you wanted to add somebody else that you could rotate with Alex Bray. And it feels like Kansas is really building from the inside out, like they are grabbing linemen on the offensive and defensive line.

Starting point is 00:02:59 above everything else right now, which I applaud that strategy. I think that is a great strategy for this KU team to have going into the off season, especially one where, you know, if you're going to be a team led by Isaiah Marshall or Cole Ballard, like you might be more of an option team or a team that's using the quarterback run more, be a gritty, grind it out type team and try to make this best defense a lot, try to make this best defense of the Lance Leipoldera. And I think David Santiago has a chance to help KU do just that. Let's get to what his game brings to the table.

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Starting point is 00:04:44 is officially joining the Jayhawks. So again, he's been playing outside linebacker, but KU runs, I don't know, I guess this does give you an opportunity where KU who likes to play with multiple fronts. if there are times or D.K. McDonald wants to throw out a three four front, you can put Santiago's an outside linebacker. If there's time he wants to throw out one of his like three defensive tackles plus two defensive end fronts where the DNs are kind of like outside linebackers, you can use that. If you want to use a four down front, I think he can play strong

Starting point is 00:05:14 side defensive end for you. And that's where I'm most interested in how he translates over. But for his career, which began in Air Force, Redshirted in 2023, and by the way, he's six four, 253 pounds. So he has the height and weight to do strong side defensive end. Maybe Kew even adds, you know, 10 pounds to him. But then he appeared in 10 games Falcons in 2024. And then he had 38 tackles, five tackles for loss, three and a half sacks, three past deflections and a forced fumble. He then transfers up to Michigan State this past year where he had 24 tackles as a rotational player in 12 games, two and a half TFLs, one and a half sacks, one pass deflection, a forced fumble, and a fumble recovery. And

Starting point is 00:05:54 and strong pro football focus grades in both seasons. In his 2024 season at Air Force, he had a 70.9 overall grade in 521 snaps. That was good for the 14th best edge player among 50 qualified in the Mountain West. So that's a good place to be out, especially considering he was a redshirt freshman at that point in time. And that year in the Mountain West, he was top 13 in the league for edges in pressures,

Starting point is 00:06:22 miss tackle rate and stops. So very good redshirt freshman season. Parlays that into an opportunity at Michigan State. In Michigan State, he has a 72.8 PFF grade, a little more limited snaps, 247 snaps, but he was good in what he was being asked to do. That was good for the 18th ranked edge among 71 qualified in the Big 10 this past season.

Starting point is 00:06:46 So you're getting a player who was basically one of the top quarter edge players in the Big Ten this past season, albeit limited snaps, like, how do you scale that up? But, and that was as a redshirt sophomore. Theoretically, he could be getting better, right? And, you know, I think in general, not always the case, because there are some teams of the Big Ten that would be worse than the teams even in the Big 12, but there's also more teams who are higher-ups that in theory, maybe it'll be a little easier. you know, I don't think a ton easier.

Starting point is 00:07:23 Like, I don't think the difference is huge, but, you know, there's a little bit more talent at the top, I guess, in the Big 10 than in the Big 12 overall. But he was top 10 for those qualified edges in mistackle rate as well. So what you're getting here is a good tackler. You're getting somebody who is a fine enough pass rusher. I think is the, like, if we look at his past rushes, he had 39 pressures over his two seasons.

Starting point is 00:07:47 That's 19 and a half per year. That actually, if you gave him 19 and a half this year, that would have been second on KU. He had a 6.1 pass rush productivity on at Pro Football Focus in 2025. He had a 5.9 rating in 2024. What does that number mean? Well, Dean Miller was at a 6.1 PRP in 2025. And so you're saying he's just kind of an adequate pass rusher, but also keep in mind,

Starting point is 00:08:10 you know, usually you're going to get more pass rush in KU's system from the weak side defensive end over the strong side defense event. So if you're getting Dean Miller level pass rush from the strong side, And then you know your strength in the pass rush is going to come from the weak side with Leroy Harris or Dak Brinkley that does actually set you up in a good way. But he's a good tackler. He's a solid run defender. He had 34 stops over his two seasons, 17 per Leroy Harris led KU on the defensive line with 19 last year for non-linebackers and safety.

Starting point is 00:08:40 So I think Santiago is a good player. When I saw he was visiting KU, this is one that I really wanted KU to land. And they did. So what is his projected role? How does he fit in with KU at next? Thanks again for joining us on the show. Don't forget to check out all of our episodes breaking down some of the recent commits for KU Football in the Transfer Portal, Trayvon McAlpine earlier on your Tuesday. And now we're at what, eight or nine, nine, I think at this point.

Starting point is 00:09:06 And we have all their videos up on our YouTube page or anywhere you get your podcast. Plus check out our KU basketball postcast content from the TCU game. So Santiago comes in. I think he's going to be the strong side defense event. But this continues another theme for KU and the portal. only are they adding a lot on the lines of scrimmage. Not only are they adding a lot of like SEC talent, but they're also adding lines who give them different ways to play. They've added some defensive tackles that can be nose tackles or they can be, you know, kind of a three

Starting point is 00:09:35 technique or they have a bunch of different options of what they want to do. And then the same goes for Santiago. You want to use him as, you know, standing up as an outside linebacker. You want to use him as a strong side defensive end. I think you can do those things. And it just feels like you're going to have more flexible pieces this year. I view it as a competition. between Santiago and Bray, Alex Bray, to be the strong side defensive end. To me, I would lean Santiago in that race, but we do know Lance Leipold and company values the familiarity. So maybe Bray ends up starting. Either way, both guys are going to play. Either way, both guys are going to rotate and both guys are going to be a part of the rotation. And then now you're not counting

Starting point is 00:10:11 on some of your youngsters like Adrian Hawley and Garrett Martin to have to play right away. If they earn the playing time because they're that good as a redshirt freshman, then great. that's a good problem to have but now they're not rushed into the action right um this just helps in a lot of ways for k u and now i see i would love situations where it's like okay on running downs you have santiago at the strong side you have you know leroy harris at the weak side you've got your your two defensive tackles or i guess whatever front you're playing and then in passing down situations do you do you sub in you know so that you have both harris and brinkley on the field at the same time. There's just a lot of different things KU can do now with their defensive

Starting point is 00:10:49 line. So I think this is a good addition for KU. I think this is somebody that right now I would be viewing as a starter, but at the very least he's going to play big snaps for this team. We've seen them, you know, both strong side defensive ends have played a lot. Going back to Jeremy Robinson a couple years ago, Dylan Woodke, going back to Malcolm Lee with Jeremy Robinson, going back to this past year with Alex Bray and Justice Finkeley. Both these guys with Bray and I think now when you're looking at it with Santiago are going to play for KU and yeah the defensive line additions man these have been really really good hopefully KU can keep the foot on the gas pedal with some of these other positions but if you're using a little more of your spend to beef up the lines of scrimmage

Starting point is 00:11:29 I think that's the right way to kind of approach it for KU are that over this episode of locked on Jayhawks you can find our show anywhere you get your podcast including on our YouTube page or you can like and subscribe to the show see you next time on LOJ

Locked On Jayhawks - Daily Podcast On Kansas Jayhawks Football & Basketball - REINFORCED: Jayhawks Secure David Santiago—Key Addition from Michigan State to POWER Kansas' Front

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