It's draft day, folks. And that means that Clemson football has a chance to pad its lead in the ACC when it comes to players selected in the NFL Draft.
Unfortunately, Clemson doesn't have a projected first or second-round pick this year, so we will have to wait until potentially the end of Day 2 to add to the count. But as it stands, Clemson leads the ACC by a pretty healthy margin in terms of draft picks over the past decade.
According to SB Nation's NC State site, the Tigers have an 11-pick lead over the next school.
Here's what the top five ACC teams look like in terms of NFL Draft picks over the last 10 years:
1. Clemson - 56
2. Miami - 45
3. Florida State - 42
4. Stanford - 36
5. Pitt - 29
In that span, Clemson also has the most first-round picks by a healthy margin with 15 and the next-closest is Florida State with seven. Let's take a look at each first-round pick in that span:
2015: Vic Beasly (No. 8 overall), Stephone Anthony (31)
2016: Shaq Lawson (19)
2017: Mike Williams (7), Deshaun Watson (12)
2018: None
2019: Clelin Ferrell (4), Christian Wilkins (13), Dexter Lawrence (17)
2020: Isaiah Simmons (8), AJ Terrell (16)
2021: Trevor Lawrence (1), Travis Etienne (25)
2022: None
2023: Myles Murphy (28), Bryan Bresee (29)
2024: Nate Wiggins (30)
It's impressive to see that in eight of the past 10 drafts, the Tigers have had at least one first-round pick and on six different occasions, they had at least two. Not many programs around college football can say that and all Dabo Swinney needs to do is show this to recruits and watch them line up to play for him.
While there won't be a first-rounder from Clemson selected this year, I'd be money that there's at least one in 2026.
Happy NFL Draft day, everyone.