Clemson football was able to add seven more players to NFL rosters after the 2020 NFL draft.
Throughout college football season, you cannot go a Saturday without hearing how bad the ACC is because of how dominant Clemson football has become. Many pundits continue to talk about how easy Clemson has it when getting to the college football playoff.
Over the weekend, just seven of the 27 players drafted from the ACC played college football at Clemson. No one talks about how easy Ohio State has it or how easy Oklahoma has it.
The Big Ten had 48 draft picks over the weekend, 20 of them coming from Ohio State and Michigan. The Big 12 had 21 of them with TCU and Baylor leading the way in the number of draft picks. Sure, the SEC had 63 total draftees, but nearly one in five draftees came from conference champion LSU, while only in 4 ACC draftees came from Clemson.
No one is saying that the SEC isn’t good, of course they are, but so is the ACC. Lamar Jackson, the current 22-year-old NFL MVP, is a former ACC player of the year and Heisman Trophy winner.
A guy like Joe Burrow got a huge bump after spending a year in the SEC, but a never seen before type player like Isaiah Simmons has NFL head coaches taking shots at him and his skill level. When you look at the number of players LSU had drafted in 2020, any quarterback would have run the table with them, even a current backup ACC quarterback.
All in all, it was a great weekend for the seven Clemson football alumnus that were able to have their names called by NFL commissioner Roger Goodell and a great weekend for the ACC football conference.
2021 will be a special year for both the ACC and Clemson as they could break their previous draft records in players drafted.