Let the portal madness begin again. After landing 18 transfers in the winter window, the Tar Heels added their first commitment of the spring window on Wednesday night.
As he announced via his social media page on shortly earlier this evening, Penn State transfer edge rusher Smith Vilbert has announced his commitment to UNC after entering the transfer portal back at the end of February. Vilbert, who will be entering his seventh season at the collegiate level, will have one year of eligibility remaining.
Vilbert, the No. 142 overall and No. 17 edge rusher in the portal according to 247Sports, spent the last five years in State College with the Nittany Lions, playing in 35 games across those seasons.
In 2019, as a true freshman, he played in just two games, failing to register any stats before he took a redshirt season. The following year, during the COVID season, he played 49 snaps between defense and special teams, finishing with just one total tackle and one quarterback pressure.
In 2021, he saw the most extensive action of his career to that point when he played 182 snaps on the defensive side of the ball and finished the season with seven total tackles, 4.0 tackles for loss, 3.0 sacks and four quarterback hurries. All three of his sacks that season came in the Outback Bowl against Arkansas where he simply wrecked shop and had many hopeful about what he could become.
He was hoping to build off of that the next season as a junior in 2022, but only saw action in the team bowl game against Utah where he played just five snaps before he missed the entire 2023 season with an injury that led to a medical redshirt.
This past year was his most successful at the college level, as he featured in all 16 games that the Nittany Lions played, playing a career-high 339 defensive snaps and 80 special teams snaps. In those snaps, he collected 12 total tackles, 4.0 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks.
Vilbert becomes the third edge rusher that the team has added in the transfer portal this offseason joining Connecticut transfer Pryce Yates and Delaware transfer Melkart Abou-Jaoude who transferred in with the team back in the winter and are currently participating in spring camp. Vilbert gives the team some much-needed depth and experience on the edge and is more capable of playing at least a rotational role for the team this season, especially with how good of a run defender he is. He might even be able to challenge for a starting job if guys like Yates and holdover Beau Atkinson don’t already have those locked up by the end of spring practice.
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