3 NC State players receive preseason first-team All-ACC honors from Athlon

Athlon Sports recently released their All-ACC picks for the upcoming football season, and they’ve placed three NC State players on the first team: Jaylen Samuels (duh), Bradley Chubb, and Tony Adams. Nyheim Hines and B.J. Hill also earned third- and fourth-team honors.

Those all feel like reasonable picks, though they might be underrating Hines—depending on what sort of role he ends up having. Also, if he’s the fourth-best kick returner in the league then I’m the god emperor of Jupiter. (Some day, some day, the fates willing ...)

I’m mildly surprised that only two of State’s defensive linemen made the cut but then again, DL is a pretty loaded position group in the league this year.

After looking over Athlon’s selections, I was pondering which Wolfpack players might break through and have an all-conference type season this fall. Kelvin Harmon seems like the obvious choice considering the skills he displayed as a true freshman. Stephen Louis has a chance as well with more targets from Ryan Finley; if Louis keeps averaging around 19 yards per catch, it won’t take a huge increase in catches to get him over 1,000 yards.

What do you guys think?