Leading up to the first game of the historic 2026 season, hornetsports.com will take a look at each position group. Today featuress the offensive line coached by Manako Tuifua.

• Seniors Xavier Williams, Malik Tullis and Miles Bailey will guide a defensive front which features 17 players for the Hornets in 2026. Williams returns for his seventh year with the program and is coming off a 2025 campaign which saw him credited with 32 total tackles, including 8.5 for loss and six sacks. Williams has played in 37 games during his career but has also seen his 2020 season canceled and missed all of 2021 and 2024 due to injuries.
• Tullis appeared in nine games during his first year with the Hornets after transferring from Eastern Michigan. That total included four TFLs and a sack. Bailey played in all 12 games a year ago and finished the season with 17 total tackles.
• Brodie Tagaloa and Malachi Kindle also return to the unit. Tagaloa started the season opener but was injured in the game, costing him the remainder of the year. Kindle appeared in seven games as a true freshman and concluded the year with five tackles.
• Four four-year transfers and four junior college transfers will add depth to the defensive line. Nick Dimitris comes from Florida A&M where he had 19 total tackles, three for loss, and a sack in two seasons with the Rattlers. Isiah Chala played in five games at Fresno State in 2025 and had a pair of tackles against Southern. Jamel Howard spent the three previous seasons at Wisconsin where he redshirted in 2023. Will Weber returns to California after playing the 2025 season at UTEP. Prior to that, Weber was an all-conference player at San Jose City JC.
• The JC transfers are comprised of Kaden Briggs, Austin Chambers, Austin Aten, Collin Kallhoff and Jadakiss Vaokakala. Briggs was a three-star prospect out of Holmes CC in Goodman, Miss. Chambers and Kallhoff played together at Iowa Central CC. Chambers had 21 tackles, including three for loss while Kallhoff finished the year with 12 stops. Aten is a local product who attended American River JC but did not compete in football in 2025. A graduate of McClatchy HS in Sacramento, he had 79 tackles with 13 TFLs in two varsity seasons. Vaokakala posted 59 tackles in two years at Citrus JC.
• True freshmen Peyton McCutcheon, Federico Cobarubio and Devyn Blake will make the transition to the college game after all three were three-star prospects by 247Sports. Blake enrolled early at Sacramento State after recording 126 tackles in three varsity seasons. Cobarubio was also with the Hornets during the spring, gaining valuable reps. McCutcheon was the Moore League Co-Defensive Player of the Year.

NOTEBOOK

• The team conducted one of its longest scrimmages of camp on Saturday night inside Hornet Stadium. The session placed the offense in multiple positions on the field but the saw the defense come out with the upper hand for the first half of the action. Quarterback Brian Salazar, Jr., threw two touchdown passes late in the scrimmage. His first found Drey Garner in the right side of the end zone while his second connected with tight end Kyle Koontz who bullied his way in from the 2-yard line. The night ended with a special teams segment which saw Grant Meadors and Saul Marks make all their field goal attempts.