BLOOMINGTON, Ind. – Indiana's busy 24 hours in the transfer portal continues.
Troy transfer linebacker Jayden McDonald announced his intentions to transfer to Curt Cignetti's Hoosiers on Friday afternoon, becoming the fifth different portal addition spanning the previous 24 hours for the program.
McDonald, a native of Suwanee, Ga., will be entering his seventh season of college football this fall. After his career started at Iowa in 2018 with a redshirt, he sat out a season in 2019 due to transfer rules at the time. Then, with the NCAA ruling the 2020 season didn't count toward players' eligibility with opt outs due to COVID-19, his previous four seasons on the field have only subtracted three years off his eligibility.
Thus, the 2024 season will be his absolute final year of eligibility – and he'll spend it in Bloomington.
Over four seasons spanning 2020-2023, McDonald totaled 191 tackles and 22 tackles for loss, with 75 and 9.5 of which coming in this most recently concluded year for the Trojans – a year which saw Troy win 11 games in the Sun Belt Conference.
Graded out as a 67.4 overall defender by PFF, his 2023 season was the second-best of his career by the site's evaluation. Only his 2021 campaign, in which he earned an 80.4 mark, was better. McDonald saw the most snaps of his career last season with 533, a slight margin favoring rush defense and pass rush over a responsibility in coverage.
There's a clear emphasis on bringing in experience to compete and fill the depth chart with production across the board in Cignetti's first season. It buys him and his staff time to lay foundation with recruiting in years to come while still maintaining a projected competitive outfit in the first season. The process has been accelerated plenty due to the nature of the job cycle and how quickly player movement occurs in the landscape of the sport as it stands, and this is how Cignetti and company have chosen to rebuild its roster in year one.
The process has been successful everywhere else. So far, there's certainly a direction and plan in place so far.
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