{"id":398875,"date":"2026-01-10T08:02:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398875\/"},"modified":"2026-01-10T08:02:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-10T08:02:10","slug":"michigan-football-lands-utah-dt-transfer-jonah-leaea","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/398875\/","title":{"rendered":"Michigan football lands Utah DT transfer Jonah Lea’ea"},"content":{"rendered":"

Michigan Wolverines football<\/a> has landed a commitment from Utah defensive tackle transfer Jonah Lea\u2019ea<\/a>, who played under head coach Kyle Whittingham<\/a> with the Utes the last three seasons and will follow him to Ann Arbor.<\/p>\n

Lea\u2019ea made his official visit<\/a> to Michigan Jan. 8 and began trending to the Wolverines. His former teammate, Utah defensive end transfer John Henry Daley<\/a>, committed to Michigan the same day he was reportedly on his visit \u2014\u00a0and the two will now team up in winged helmets for the 2026 season.<\/p>\n

The 6-foot-5, 285-pounder spent three years at Utah and has two seasons of eligibility remaining, having redshirted as a freshman in 2023. <\/p>\n

Lea\u2019ea is the No. 793 overall player and No. 71 edge rusher in the NCAA transfer portal, according to the On3 Industry Rankings<\/a>. However, he\u2019s spent his college career playing on the interior of the defensive line.<\/p>\n

The San Mateo, Calif., native is coming off a strong 2025 season in which he led all Utah defensive tackles with 623 snaps. He posted 38 tackles, 2.5 tackles for loss, 1 sack, 1 pass breakup, 1 forced fumble and 1 fumble recovery in 13 games, helping the Utes record an 11-2 mark. He added 16 quarterback pressures, including season highs of 3 against UCLA and Texas Tech, showing he can generate pass rush from the interior of the line.<\/p>\n

Utah ranked tied 17th nationally in scoring defense, giving up only 18.9 points per game, and its only losses came to the two teams that played for the Big 12 championship \u2014\u00a0Texas Tech (34-10) and BYU (24-21).<\/p>\n

Lea\u2019ea appeared in six contests as a redshirt freshman in 2024, tallying 2 tackles. He totaled 52 defensive snaps. He competed in two games while redshirting in 2023.<\/p>\n

A Las Vegas (Nev.) Bishop Gorman<\/a> product, Lea\u2019ea was the No. 1,047 overall prospect and No. 90 edge rusher in the 2023 recruiting class, per the Rivals Industry Ranking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michigan Wolverines football has landed a commitment from Utah defensive tackle transfer Jonah Lea\u2019ea, who played under head…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":398876,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,192627,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-398875","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-jonah-leaea-23-bishop-gorman","10":"tag-ncaa","11":"tag-ncaa-football","12":"tag-ncaafootball","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=398875"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/398875\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/398876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=398875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=398875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=398875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}