On October 14, the SMU Mustangs received a commitment from little-known Texas defensive end Je'lin Samuels, but 6-foot-7 sleepers don't stay a secret for long. Fourteen days later, Ole Miss extended Samuels his first SEC offer, Arkansas and Baylor followed suit.

Samuels, now with 10 offers, is playing on Sam Rayburn's varsity squad for the first time as a senior after starting for the basketball team as a junior. The rules and regulations on transfers forced the defensive end to sit out a year from varsity play–relegating him to play on JV in 2019. It's been a short-lived varsity career for him, but Samuels' future has a lot more football in store.

"On one hand, it's my senior season and it's my first year of varsity football, I didn't get to experience a lot of it the other years, so I'm sad it has to end so early, but I'm looking forward to getting the next page of my life started," the 3-star said.

Like all recruits, Samuels had been posting his highlight tapes on HUDL, but it wasn't until he posted 1:04 of varsity film against Milby High School that he started getting real attention. That video now has 1,300 views.