There have been plenty of elite players to come through the Clemson football program.
The Tigers have sent guys like Trevor Lawrence, Travis Etienne, AJ Terrell, Tee Higgins, and Bryan Bresee to the NFL over the past few seasons but Dabo Swinney has had plenty more stars drafted.
One of the best NFL coaches of all time has scouted some of those stars and he's now a head coach in the ACC as a counterpart of Dabo. Six-time Super Bowl champion Bill Belichick retired from the NFL a couple of years ago and he's now at North Carolina, taking over for the legendary Mack Brown who seemingly lost his touch in recent years.
Now Dabo will see Belichick almost every year as part of his conference schedule. The coaching in the ACC just improved drastically this offseason.
While everyone is familiar with the legendary Patriots head coach, Belichick is no stranger to Clemson players either. He has scouted some as potential draft picks for New England over the years and in a recent sit-down with Dabo, he revealed who his favorite Clemson prospect ever was.
And it's not a huge surprise.
Christian Wilkins was a first-round pick in the 2019 NFL Draft by the Miami Dolphins and I bet he wishes that the Clemson star fell to him at No. 32 overall but that wasn't in the cards.
Wilkins was one of the best defensive linemen in the country when he came out in 2019 after a monster senior season in which he recorded 50 tackles, 15 tackles for loss, and six sacks. He had 110 total tackles over his final two seasons with Clemson.
Belichick had a good reason to love what he saw from Wilkins' game and it has since translated to the NFL as he has 22.5 sacks and 45 tackles for loss since being drafted in 2019.
There's a reason Belichick is a Hall of Famer. He knows elite talent when he sees it.