Who was the best ACC football player of the past decade? | answered by @mattzemek

#StayHealthy and practice social distancing.

Give author @MattZemek a twitter follow and check out his musings on college sports at https://www.patreon.com/Zemek.

ACC QUESTION of WEEK : Who was the best ACC football player of the past decade?

Jameis Winston and Lamar Jackson, unlike Deshaun Watson, won the Heisman Trophy this past decade… but if we are going to use the Heisman as the main reason to elevate one player over others, we’re not using the right standard. Plenty of Heisman votes have been, if not erroneous, clouded by politics and the natural inclinations of the award over many decades.

The Heisman has an anti-defense bias. It has an anti-lineman bias. It has a bias in favor of quarterbacks. It has a bias in favor of blue-blood schools. It seems like an accident of history more than anything else that Deshaun Watson did not win the Heisman. Don’t expect me to downgrade his career because a famous trophy isn’t in his display case.

Jameis and Lamar can make their own powerful arguments as being the best ACC football player of the past decade. Christian Wilkins of Clemson deserves to be in the conversation. So does Lamarcus Joyner of Florida State. Yet, when all is said and done, I can’t shake the idea that Deshaun Watson has to be the choice.

Deshaun Watson is, quite simply, the best quarterback Clemson has ever had. He had a lot of help on the 2015 and 2016 Clemson teams, but he was the leader of those teams, the man who responded to every pressure situation, soared in the big games, provided a steadying presence to his teammates, and transformed the way we think about the Clemson program, Dabo Swinney, and ACC football.

Watson’s game-winning drive at the end of the 2016 season’s national championship game against Alabama didn’t merely win Clemson its first national title since 1981; it struck down Nick Saban in a national championship game. Saban had never lost a national championship game before. He won with LSU in January of 2004 against Oklahoma, then with Alabama in January of 2010 against Texas, in 2012 versus LSU, in 2013 against Notre Dame, and in 2015 against Clemson and Watson.

Deshaun Watson’s drive in Tampa three years ago didn’t permanently end Alabama’s run of national championship glory or relevance; the Tide won it all the next season. Nevertheless, the spell cast by Saban was clearly broken, something the 2018 Clemson team was able to build on in its demolition of the Crimson Tide.

Watson’s victory over Bama on the national championship game stage represents a “before and after” moment in college football and in the ACC. Florida State’s 2013 national title was won against Auburn, not Alabama. It doesn’t therefore possess quite as much historical resonance. Watson took down the Great Saban, dancing with the devil and showing the devil could be beaten. That achievement will continue to ripple through the pages of time 50 and 100 years from now, when the story of college football is considered by future generations of historians and writers.

Jameis, Lamar, Christian Wilkins, Lamarcus Joyner — they all deserve a place at the table. Deshaun Watson, though, deserves to sit at the head of the table in ACC football as the best player of the past decade.

Make sure you follow the All Sports Discussion Twitter account at @AllSportsDACC and please like our Facebook Page