LOS ANGELES — Earlier this week, Jamaal Jarrett was all but convinced he’d sign with Arkansas.

The big-bodied Georgia transfer wanted to stay in the SEC, after all. He’d visited Fayetteville on Tuesday, and came back telling agent Bobby McRae he planned to take the rest of his visits – USC, Kentucky, Ole Miss, Texas A&M and more – but would probably be a Razorback. I just felt so comfortable there, the defensive tackle told his agent.

Then he came to Southern California and met Eric Henderson.

“He said that, just, he just felt like he’d known him for years,” McRae reflected on Jarrett’s interactions with Henderson, speaking with the Southern California News Group on Saturday morning. “And said, and then, looking at Coach Henny’s résumé and just seeing all his years of experience, the accolades. He said he was beyond impressed.”

After visiting USC this week, Jarrett officially committed to the Trojans on Saturday morning, a quite literally massive get for Henderson’s defensive line. A former four-star recruit out of North Carolina, Jarrett – self-nicknamed “Big Jah” – stands 6-foot-5 and weighs 350 pounds, profiling as an immediate fit to eat up space in the trenches for USC.

He arrives after two years of minimal playing time at Georgia, McRae saying he entered the portal in a search for greater opportunity.

“He met with them, how they had a plan for him and actually explained that in detail, how they were going to utilize him and how excited they were,” McRae said of USC’s recruitment of Jarrett. “It was kind of one of those things where he just felt extremely respected.”

It’s a significant commitment, as USC is simultaneously showing a significant commitment to its own expressed goals. The program’s primary defensive focus in the transfer portal, as coordinator D’Anton Lynn said Wednesday, was the defensive line. And he didn’t hesitate when asked what USC was looking for in the portal in players up front.

“Size,” Lynn said, “is the No. 1 priority.”

Check that off the list. A few days ago, USC landed Keeshawn Silver, a highly sought 6-foot-4, 336-pound veteran who started 11 games for Kentucky and finished with 26 tackles in 2024. Then came Jarrett, standing even larger. Suddenly, optimism for USC’s defensive line room in 2025 is sky high, the Trojans landing the kind of projectable talent and size at defensive tackle that they’ve never quite had in three years under head coach Lincoln Riley.

After Riley went into detail Wednesday on explaining some of USC’s philosophies with utilization of NIL money, under what he referred to as a sort of “salary cap,” Jarrett’s add also served as direct proof of the program’s ability to throw funds around. McRae told the Southern California News Group that Jarrett had received NIL offers of “well over” $500,000 from collectives at Arkansas and other SEC schools, and that USC’s House of Victory was “in the same ballpark.”

Jarrett’s add, though, comes with some controversy. In 2023, he tweeted an apology after appearing to make a racist remark towards Asian people while live-streaming himself watching the NFL draft. Before arriving at Georgia, he was investigated by police for allegations of sexual assault while on a campus visit as a minor, per a 2023 story by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. He faced no charges.

“At one point in time, he made an inappropriate remark, and then another time, he made a poor decision with a young lady, and both of those have been documented,” McRae told the Southern California News Group. “But there was never any consequences … he learned from those things, and it made him a better person as a result.”