08-17-2025, 09:27 AM
Time for one of my favorite posts of the year, giving a preseason prediction of our top players. This has been a fun annual exercise for me since 2019. The basic rule of it is I'm trying to predict the top 35 players by snap count at the end of the season and rank them in terms of quality (best understood in terms of things like quality in relation to ACC peers, which can be approximated by year-end PFF grades). Specialists are not ranked here. The top 35 in snaps is essentially synonymous with the non-specialists who matter in a season, those with approximately 200 snaps over the course of a 12 game season give or take a dozen snaps or so.
In the earlier attempts I did quite well at this the first two years before whiffing in 2021, doing a nice job in 2022 overall but struggling predicting who would be best, doing even better in 2023, and then doing quite well last year. Let's see how I can do this year:
1. Collin Wright
2. Ben Gulbranson
3. Jahsiah Galvan
4. Scotty Edwards
5. Jordan Washington
6. Sam Roush
7. Jay Green
8. Hunter Barth
9. Cole Tabb
10. Benji Blackburn
11. Zach Johnson
12. Matt Rose
13. JonAnthony Hall
14. Mitch Leigber
15. Micah Ford
16. Tevarua Tafiti
17. Clay Patterson
18. Ernest Cooper
19. Zach Rowell
20. Anthony Franklin
21. Caden High
22. Wilfredo Aybar
23. Che Ojarikre
24. Simione Pale
25. Braden Marceau-Olayinka
26. Brandon Nicholson
27. CJ Williams
28. Niki Prongos
29. Nick Fattig
30. Bryce Farrell
31. Kahlil House
32. Fisher Anderson
33. Ziron Brown
34. Cam Richardson
35. Emeka Ugorji
Apologies to Elijah Brown, Sedrick Irvin, Chris Davis, Tuna Altahir, Myles Libman, Jordan Onovughe, Brendan Doyle, Jack Leyrer (sadly I'm betting on injury nuking his year, at least insofar as who is able to get 200-ish snaps), Nathan Mejia (same), Zak Yamauchi, Charlie Hoitink, Dylan Stevenson, Gabe Kaminski, Zach Buckey, Omar Staples, Darrius Davis, Omari Gaines, Jaylen'Dai Sumlin, Sam Neely, and others who could have been included. it was especially jarring/brutal to omit Sumlin and Chris Davis, as they were among our top 35 players last year as true freshmen. Davis and Buckey were two of our highest graded returning players, so odd to not have them on here. I think that those three as well as Elijah Brown, Libman, Staples, Neely, or Darrius Davis easily could be top 35 but I really try to keep this prediction realistic and in particular think really systematically about how many guys are likely to get significant playing time at each position and how things are trending. The last spot (Johnson vs. Staples vs. Buckey vs. Brown) was, as always, a tough call, but trying my best to be predictive here.
As always, look forward to folks' thoughts/discussion.
In the earlier attempts I did quite well at this the first two years before whiffing in 2021, doing a nice job in 2022 overall but struggling predicting who would be best, doing even better in 2023, and then doing quite well last year. Let's see how I can do this year:
1. Collin Wright
2. Ben Gulbranson
3. Jahsiah Galvan
4. Scotty Edwards
5. Jordan Washington
6. Sam Roush
7. Jay Green
8. Hunter Barth
9. Cole Tabb
10. Benji Blackburn
11. Zach Johnson
12. Matt Rose
13. JonAnthony Hall
14. Mitch Leigber
15. Micah Ford
16. Tevarua Tafiti
17. Clay Patterson
18. Ernest Cooper
19. Zach Rowell
20. Anthony Franklin
21. Caden High
22. Wilfredo Aybar
23. Che Ojarikre
24. Simione Pale
25. Braden Marceau-Olayinka
26. Brandon Nicholson
27. CJ Williams
28. Niki Prongos
29. Nick Fattig
30. Bryce Farrell
31. Kahlil House
32. Fisher Anderson
33. Ziron Brown
34. Cam Richardson
35. Emeka Ugorji
Apologies to Elijah Brown, Sedrick Irvin, Chris Davis, Tuna Altahir, Myles Libman, Jordan Onovughe, Brendan Doyle, Jack Leyrer (sadly I'm betting on injury nuking his year, at least insofar as who is able to get 200-ish snaps), Nathan Mejia (same), Zak Yamauchi, Charlie Hoitink, Dylan Stevenson, Gabe Kaminski, Zach Buckey, Omar Staples, Darrius Davis, Omari Gaines, Jaylen'Dai Sumlin, Sam Neely, and others who could have been included. it was especially jarring/brutal to omit Sumlin and Chris Davis, as they were among our top 35 players last year as true freshmen. Davis and Buckey were two of our highest graded returning players, so odd to not have them on here. I think that those three as well as Elijah Brown, Libman, Staples, Neely, or Darrius Davis easily could be top 35 but I really try to keep this prediction realistic and in particular think really systematically about how many guys are likely to get significant playing time at each position and how things are trending. The last spot (Johnson vs. Staples vs. Buckey vs. Brown) was, as always, a tough call, but trying my best to be predictive here.
As always, look forward to folks' thoughts/discussion.