Texas Tech just turned a Stanford transfer into a first-team All-American pass rusher and a first-round pick. Now the Red Raiders have handed David Bailey 's old job to San Diego State 's Trey White , and one PFSN analyst thinks that makes him the best Group of Five to Power Four transfer in the country.
The debate closed out the latest episode of PFSN's Football Debate Club , where host Cam Mellor asked Oliver Hodgkinson and Ian Cummings to name the top riser of the 2026 portal cycle. Hodgkinson went with the edge rusher. Cummings went with a package deal.
Hodgkinson opened with an honorable mention, calling UNLV-to-Nebraska quarterback Anthony [Colandrea] "the best quarterback that Matt [Rhule] has ever had," before landing on his answer.
"Trey White going from San Diego State to Texas Tech enters this season with the second-most career sacks amongst all returning college football players," Hodgkinson said. "Back-to-back 10-plus tackle-for-loss seasons. He goes into a defense led by [Shiel] Wood, who we saw what he did with David Bailey. He's had a top-25 defense in either scoring or total defense [at] every stop of him being a defensive coordinator."
The resume supports the hype. White piled up 19.5 career sacks at San Diego State, including 12.5 in his 2024 Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year season, with 18.5 and 12.5 tackles for loss in his back-to-back first-team All-Mountain West campaigns. And every defense Wood has coordinated since 2021, at Army, Troy, Tulane, and Houston, has finished top 35 nationally in total defense, before his Texas Tech unit cut its scoring allowance from 34.8 points per game to 10.9 and made him a Broyles Award finalist.
"Trey White has got the motor and the explosion to be an incredible force for the Texas Tech Red Raiders this season," Hodgkinson said.
Cummings called his pick "the chalk answer" and took it anyway, with a twist.
"I'm going to go with Drew [Mestemaker] from North Texas to Oklahoma State, but with a caveat. I think the addition of Wyatt Young, his star wide receiver, is just as big, because you need that familiarity," Cummings said.
Take a Quick Break. Run a Mock Draft!Before you keep reading, jump into the shoes of the GM of your favorite team.
Powered by PFSN's NFL Mock Draft Simulator
"[Mestemaker] was one of the top QBs in college football last year. He had a top-20 QB impact rate for PFSN . He generated 0.54 EPA per clean dropback. But then Wyatt Young had the top PFSN wide receiver impact rate in the entire nation."
The pair headline the 17 North Texas players who followed new coach Eric Morris to Stillwater. Mestemaker, a former walk-on, led the FBS in passing yards (4,379) and touchdowns (34) while piloting the nation's top offense to a 12-win season, and 247Sports rated him the No. 3 overall transfer in the cycle. Young caught 1,264 yards' worth of passes, the second-most in a season in program history .
"My early comp for him, it's kind of a diet Cooper [Kupp], with the alignment versatility, three-level threat ability," Cummings said. "They work in tandem and they're so important to each other."
MORE FDC: Why Jeremiyah Love Isn't the Next Saquon Barkley, and What He Is Instead
That tandem framing is exactly where Mellor found his tiebreaker. He sided with White, 3-2, handing Hodgkinson the episode, because the pass rusher's production travels alone while Mestemaker and Young arrive dependent on each other against a new level of competition.
The Bailey precedent makes it hard to argue. Texas Tech has become the sport's proven edge-rusher amplifier, and White walks into the same scheme, the same coordinator, and a vacancy created by two NFL departures. The transfers everyone can project are rarely the ones that hit hardest. The ones walking into a machine usually are.
