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After a summer break, the ACC Question of the week is back with our esteemed friend and college football writer @MattZemek, Editor at @TrojansWire . Do yourself a favor and give him a follow on twitter.
ACC QUESTION of WEEK : Where does Lamar Jackson rank among the best ACC QBs of all time?
ACC Network ( @accnetwork ) is celebrated Lamar Jackson Day Saturday, so the question naturally emerges: “Where does Lamar Jackson stand among the ACC’s best quarterbacks of all time?”
We have seen a number of great quarterbacks in the ACC in recent years, Deshaun Watson and Jameis Winston in particular. Given that Florida State has cranked out multiple Heisman Trophy winners — Chris Weinke and Charlie Ward — in addition to Winston, the Seminoles are going to be in the thick of this discussion.
Studying the best ACC quarterbacks of all time requires an ability to dig deeper into the past: Boomer Esiason was a great quarterback at Maryland when the Terrapins were in the ACC in the 1980s under then-coach Bobby Ross. Speaking of Bobby Ross, he moved to Georgia Tech, a school which — under coach George O’Leary — cultivated the talents of quarterback Joe Hamilton, who became a Heisman Trophy runner-up in 1999 when Ron Dayne won the award.
Philip Rivers of North Carolina State is part of the collection of great ACC quarterbacks. Matt Ryan of Boston College is an ACC great, since B.C. had moved to the ACC from the Big East before Ryan’s playing days began in Chestnut Hill. Tyrod Taylor of Virginia Tech deserves a mention. Mitchell Trubisky of North Carolina and Daniel Jones of Duke weren’t extraordinary ACC quarterbacks, but both became top-10 NFL draft picks.
Out of all these quarterbacks, Lamar Jackson certainly belongs in the top tier.
I think it’s safe to say that Jackson, Deshaun Watson, Jameis Winston, and Charlie Ward must occupy the Mount Rushmore of ACC quarterbacks. They set standards of excellence and brilliance the other aforementioned names can’t quite match.
Where you choose to slot Jackson among that top four is the much harder exercise. What makes Jackson look better in a comparison is that his Louisville teams were so much weaker than the Clemson and Florida State rosters Deshaun, Jameis, and Ward had to work with.
We also know that Bobby Petrino — who was spectacular in his first go-round at Louisville — was much less effective and agile in his second stint with the Cardinals. He was a different and much more careless coach than he was in the early years of the 2000s, when he made far fewer mistakes and had teams which trusted him.
It’s reasonable to say that Lamar Jackson was almost entirely responsible for anything and everything Louisville achieved. Take Lamar away, and those Cardinals might have struggled to make a bowl game.
Yes, Deshaun, Jameis and Charlie were all extraordinary college (ACC) quarterbacks, but they certainly had a lot more help. They did carry their teams. They did — like Jackson — make their teams far better than they would have been without their presence. However, they didn’t always have to do everything by themselves. They did at times, but they didn’t have to shoulder the burden at every turn.
My fundamental stance on this issue is that Lamar Jackson, Charlie Ward, Jameis Winston, and Deshaun Watson are extremely hard to separate, and putting one above another would represent an unproductive exercise.
If you absolutely need to get a 1-2-3-4 ranking of these players, you can ask me… on Twitter. In this column, I’m going to leave it up to you to decide.
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