Awards weekend
The ACC puts out its postseason all-conference team and awards each December. Those are wrong. Here are the correct choices.
Before we get started, a couple housekeeping notes…
1. Now that we’re at the end of football season and I don’t have regularly scheduled columns and stories, I’m not sure what the cadence of this newsletter will be. I’ll aim for once a week but we’ll see how things progress and whether I actually have something worth writing.
Additionally, I’m not sure what the content will be. I’ll still share any work or longer research I’m doing but aside from that, it will probably stray from sports stuff into… well, who knows?
2. This edition is entirely ACC sports stuff, so if that’s not your jam, feel free to go on with your day now.
But the other big point I want to make is… This newsletter was essentially an experiment to see if I could find a real replacement for Twitter. It hasn’t gone exactly as I’d hoped — could use some more subscribers over here! — but the feedback has been really good, it’s allowed me to dig into some background on stories I’ve done or fool around with ideas on things that could be come stories in the future, and it’s been a far more pleasant experience than the increasingly dull, repetitive, angry Twitterverse. So, I’m excited to keep it going, and I’d welcome any feedback, suggestions, critiques, etc. from y’all.
OK, back to your regularly (intermittently) scheduled newsletter.
Andrea and I were at the Mothership this week for our annual Awards Show for which Andrea dressed up and I did not. But we both got to meet Appy, the sentient app that brings you all your ESPN news and scores.
As for the show… well, I won’t bury the lede. The headliner was our Fifth Annual1 Eric Mac Lain’s Beard Memorial2 Beard of the Year trophy which this year went to Miami defensive coordinator Corey Hetherman.
Here’s the entire acceptance interview. Hetherman is a dude.
In addition to that, our other ACC award winners:
Offensive player of the year: Haynes King, GT
Defensive player of the year: Rueben Bain, Miami
Offensive rookie of the year:3 Malachi Toney, Miami
Defensive rookie of the year: Mandrell Desir, FSU
Offensive transfer of the year: Darian Mensah, Duke
Defensive transfer of the year: Zeke Masses, Cal
Coach of the year: Tony Elliott, UVA
The only ones I had any real trouble deciding upon were Mensah vs. Carson Beck for offensive transfer and Desir vs. Pitt’s Shawn Lee for defensive rookie. What swayed me was Tony White’s recommendation to go back and watch the Alabama game — Desir’s first college action. “He came out of the womb like this,” White said. “280-pound dudes aren’t supposed to move like that.”4
As for our All-ACC team — the official, correct All-ACC team, I might add — here’s where we landed.
OFFENSE
QB: Haynes King, GT
RB: Hollywood Smothers, NC State
RB: J’Mari Taylor, UVA
WR: Chris Bell, Lou
WR: Malachi Toney, Miami
WR: Cooper Barkate, Duke
TE: Justin Joly, NC State
OT: Frances Mauigoa, Miami
OG: Keylan Rutledge, GT
C: Luke Petitbon, FSU
OG: Anez Cooper, Miami
OT: Brian Parker, Duke
Honestly, this was a pretty easy unit to put together. I would’ve loved to find a spot for NC State’s Jacarrius Peak, Clemson’s Blake Miller and Wake’s Demond Claiborne, and we debated Barkate vs. FSU’s Duce Robinson for a while, but ultimately, these were all pretty clear-cut.
DEFENSE
DE: Rueben Bain, Miami
DT: Peter Woods, Clemson
DT: Josiah Green, Duke
DE: Clev Lubin, Lou
LB: Cade Uluave, Cal
LB: Sammy Brown, Clemson
LB: Rasheem Biles, Pitt
S: Nick Anderson, Wake
S: Jakobe Thomas, Miami
DB: Devon Mashall, NC State
CB: Avieon Terrell, Clemson
CB: Zeke Masses, Cal
Defense was a lot harder. Let’s start on the line.
Bain was a shoo-in, but the other spot came down to Lubin, SMU’s Isaiah Smith, Miami’s Akheem Mesidor and Virginia’s Mitchell Melton. In the ACC’s ballot I filled out a couple weeks ago, I went with Melton but he didn’t have a great ACC champ game and he had 13 missed tackles on the year, which Andrea insisted was disqualifying. Ultimately though, what swung us was that a majority of the coaches we spoke to said Lubin was among the most disruptive players they faced all year.
Tackle was perhaps more difficult. I wanted to vote Jordan van den Berg from Georgia Tech over Woods, as I often felt like Woods underperformed in some critical games. But again, every coach we talked to mentioned him as a force, and I couldn’t argue. Louisville’s Rene Konga was a consideration, too, but the other spot ultimately came down to two Duke players — Green and Aaron Hall. Green had more pressures, a better pressure rate, more tackles at/behind the line and more run stuffs though.
Linebacker was next to impossible.
First, we could’ve easily included three Pitt LBs. Ultimately, we thought Biles had the best year, but Kyle Louis, in particular, was really tough to leave off.
Andrea voted for Stanford’s Matt Rose on her ACC ballot, and he’s definitely worth consideration, but I just didn’t think he put up enough big numbers on a very so-so defensive unit to land a spot.
The final spot came down to Uluave or NC State’s Caden Fordham, who was perhaps the toughest player in the conference to leave off. Both Uluave and Fordham would take over games at times, and their productivity was elite — if not always even. But we went with Uluave almost on a coin flip, because we ran into a similar debate at corner.
The final DB spot was a toss-up between Cal’s Paco Austin and NC State’s Marshall. Austin was mentioned by a number of coaches, as was Marshall. When I spoke to DJ Eliot about Marshall, however, he told me that we really only saw the full version of him over the last half of the season. Early in the year, the Pack played a pretty standard left/right split. In the latter half of the season — highlighted by the FSU game — Marshall just got the opponent’s best receiver, and he was lockdown.
For what it’s worth, no ACC corner allowed a lower completion percentage on the year than Marshall (34.6%), alongside 4.7 yards-per-target, 32 contested catches and 17 passes defended. He was elite.
So, with Marshall the pick at corner, we opted to go with a Cal player at LB, and I feel good about where we landed.
SPECIAL TEAMS
K: Aiden Birr, GT
P: Jack Stonehouse, Cuse
Ret: Caulin Lacy, Lou
The ACC ballot has an “all-purpose back” and a “specialist” option but no “returner” which is ludicrous to me. Lacy was obviously the best return man in the league (though there were several others who were quite good.) And it’s nice to see Cuse back to its well established space at the bottom of the standings but with the league’s best punter. Riley Dixon for Heisman.
Lastly, two other players I wanted to highlight, though they don’t appear on the list: Pitt’s Desmond Reid and Virginia’s Kam Robinson each missed significant action this year, but when they were on the field, they were clearly All-ACC caliber players. Nearly every coach who faced Reid this year mentioned him as a problem, and one UVA coach I spoke with called Robinson the best player he’s ever had on his team.
Also, Reid gets bonus points for being a good sport about appearing in a “How short is Andrea” photo.
These weren’t official awards we gave out, but adding a few more…
ACC game of the year: FSU at Virginia (2 OT) — I was there for it. It had so many twists and turns along the way, and it proved to be the point that launched Virginia and sunk FSU. Great game.
ACC decision of the year: Allowing transparency in replay reviews. Has the ACC ever done anything so overwhelmingly popular and progressive? The single best bit of PR the league has ever had.
ACC meal of the year: Ham biscuit at JM Stock Provisions in Charlottesville. I ate a lot of great food this year, from a Michelin-starred experience in Napa while visiting Stanford and Cal to the annual pork and brisket delights of Smokin’ Pig, but perhaps my favorite bite came from a recommendation from reader Peyton B. who told me to snag one of these while in C’ville for a Chandler Morris feature. The tasso ham and honey glazed biscuit is the absolute perfect mix of sweet and savory and was something I’ve been thinking about ever since. Can’t wait to get back to UVA for another one soon.
ACC promotion of the year: Capt. Andrew Luck bobbleheads. Amazing, and a great addition to my increasingly ridiculous TV backdrop.
ACC pregame show of the year: Ludacris at UNC. Nothing else about covering the Heels was fun this year, but Luda brought the heat… at 10 a.m. local time.
Most fun ACC player: I lean Toney here. He was awesome. King, too. But let’s give a shoutout to Cal’s Jaron-Keawe Sagapolutele. His overall numbers don’t jump off the page, but watching him, it was clear: He’s going to be an absolute stud.
A few more items of note…
On this week’s Inside ACCess, we talked with new Stanford coach Tavita Pritchard, who I must say, I am now a HUGE fan of. Among the things we discussed:
That “Tavita” is the Samoan version of “David”
That I can be a Tavita except that I’m an Eagles fan
That Pritchard, the former Commanders QB coach, cannot bring Jayden Daniels with him to Stanford and thus remove him from the NFC East. Sad.
It would be great if you wanted to listen to the show in its entirety and subscribe to the podcast, which you can do HERE.
But we also learned that Pritchard used to work in a pizza shop, and he taught me how to properly fold a pizza box while Andrea really struggled. Again, not surprising in the least.
Looking forward to seeing what Pritchard does with the program. I wasn’t sold on the hire until we talked with him, and then I completely got it.
And while Andrea stunk at folding pizza boxes, she did put together a really good story this week on Chris Weinke, the former FSU Heisman winner and current GT QBs coach. It’s worth your time.
I’m going to try to enjoy a largely football-free weekend but will have a post some time next week (and will reveal my Heisman ballot after the winner is announced) before I head off to College Station for Miami-Texas A&M.
Hope everyone has a great weekend!
Past winners include Florida State OL Dillon Gibbons in 2021, Syracuse QB Garrett Shrader in 2022, Louisville OL Bryan Hudson in 2023 and Duke head coach Manny Diaz in 2024.
It should be noted that Eric is fine. It’s his college beard that is being memorialized.
This is only for TRUE freshmen. None of that redshirt BS.
Of note: For our awards and All-ACC teams, Andrea and I were the ultimate arbiters, but we spoke to about 20 ACC coaches and assistant coaches for input first.
I have a suggestion for a newsletter.
The X world and YouTube are alive with anger about the Notre Dame MOU with the CFP. And, the college football is also clamoring for a decision on the 12-14-16 CFP for 2026. My suggestion that would solve the problem (well, meaybe not for the SEC) follows.
Make the CFP 16 teams. Four each from the SEC and B1G. Three each from the B12 and ACC. The top two G5 conference champs. No invited teams beyond those 16. That would force ND to join a conference. It would give the conference members certainty about what takes to be in the CFP. The only rankings that would matter are the G5 rankings.