When Robert Nkemdiche broke his verbal commit to Clemson and signed with Ole Miss a few years back, Clemson head coach Dabo Swinney was not upset. Instead he walked into the coaches’ locker room and said, “It doesn’t matter because we got Shaq Lawson.”
Swinney was right. While Nkemdiche had a good career in his own right at Ole Miss, Lawson’s has been equally, if not, better than Nkemdiche’s. It again went up another notch for Lawson on Thursday when the Associated Press named him as its Defensive Player of the Year in the ACC.
This past Sunday, the Clemson defensive end was named to the news outlet’s All-America First-Team Defense.