How Did These UCLA Transfers Perform in 2024? Part 9

The 2025 college football season is looming which means UCLA Bruins fans will finally get their first look at some of the Bruins' incoming transfers from the offseason.

DeShaun Foster went to work in the transfer portal in his first full offseason as Westwood's head coach and lured 29 transfers to cultivate the 20th-ranked transfer class in the nation on 247Sports' transfer ranking board.

In this new UCLA Bruins on SI series, we're going to dive into each transfer and how they did last season, including a few evaluations from national college football analysts.

In the final edition of this series, we look at four important additions this season -- Jaedon Wilson, Pierce Clarkson, Jake Renda and Morrow Evans.

Jaedon Wilson, Graduate Senior TR WR, Arkansas Razorbacks

Wilson comes to Westwood with one year of eligibility remaining. He was an integral receiver for Arkansas before stepping away from the team. He'll likely be pushed to the back of the UCLA depth chart.

"Wilson is a bit of a mystery, too. He was productive at Arkansas in 2023, catching 15 balls, but then stepped away from the Arkansas program in September.  Even with departures from UCLA's receivers group, it still looks to be a pretty deep position, so it's tough to project him being more than a rotational guy next season." -- Tracy Pierson, Bruin Report Online

Pierce Clarkson, Redshirt Sophomore TR QB, Ole Miss Rebels

Clarkson comes into a stacked quarterback room, but will likely be a third string behind Nico Iamaleava and Luke Duncan. He was a four-star out of high school and didn't find much of an avenue to play at Ole Miss.

"It once again pays off to be located in Southern California. The Bruins have now bolstered their quarterback ranks with not one, not two, but three Southern California quarterback bouncebacks, all of whom were rated either four or five stars out of high school. Even before the Transfer Portal, this was a time-honored tradition for UCLA to land transfers looking to come back home, and now the Bruins have done it again. Now, whether Clarkson impacts at a significant level is anyone's guess, but at worst he provides a different sort of quarterback compared to the Iamaleavas and Duncan with his mobility, giving Tino Sunseri another tool in the tool belt." -- Bruin Report Online Staff

Jake Renda, Redshirt Senior TR TE, Pittsburgh Panthers

Renda played just 12 games in his three-year career with Pittsburgh, sitting out all of last season due to an injury. He was a quarterback out of high school but switched positions to a tight end before going to Pitt.

"We've been trying to glean what we can from Sunseri's scheme since the spring began, and it mostly has cohered with our expectation based on Indiana last year -- this is going to be mostly built around 11 personnel (1 tight end, 1 running back, three receivers), with almost no 10 personnel (1 running back, four receivers) and a leavening of 12 personnel (1 running back, two tight ends, two receivers). A good rule of thumb is you need to have a minimum of three tight ends to have one on the field at all times, and four if you want to have two on the field a fair bit. In other words, adding Renda gives Sunseri the necessary combination of bodies (Habermehl, Pedersen, Renda, Bario) to be able to run what appears to be his ideal offense without having to dip into the freshmen." -- Bruin Report Online Staff

Morrow Evans, Redshirt Freshman LS, Ohio State Buckeyes

Last but certainly not least, you can't go wrong with a long-snapper. Evans learned a lot in his lone year at Ohio State and is bringing it to Westwood as the projected starting long-snapper for the Bruins.

"Evans, a rising redshirt freshman, joined the Buckeyes last summer. Out of high school, he was ranked the No. 2 longsnapper in Chris Rubio's rankings. Evans understudied behind John Ferlmann last season before entering the Portal this spring.

"UCLA has a freshman longsnapper coming in this summer in Halakilangi Muagututia Jr., and we imagine there will be a competition between the two for the starting job. UCLA was very light on specialists this spring, with Mateen Bhaghani handling double-duty as the kicker and punter." -- David Woods, Bruin Report Online