We reached the conclusion of PFF’s top-10 returning players at each position series last week, so now we are able to present to you the All-PFF College Team.
Using a combination of PFF grades and PFF’s Wins Above Average (WAA) metric, we give you our team of the best players returning to college football for 2020.
QB TREVOR LAWRENCE, CLEMSON
Justin Fields might have had a slightly better 2019 season, but we have never seen a quarterback perform at the level Trevor Lawrence did as a true freshman and sophomore. Lawrence earned a 90.0-plus PFF overall grade in each of his first two years of college action, joining only Tua Tagovailoa as the only quarterbacks to have graded at an elite level in both 2018 and 2019.
Lawrence’s decision-making has been crisp throughout his college career — his career turnover-worthy play rate is the sixth-best in college football since 2018 — and a third of his career turnover-worthy plays came in the rough stretch of play in the first three weeks of the 2019 campaign.
SECOND TEAM: QB Justin Fields, Ohio State
RB TRAVIS ETIENNE, CLEMSON
Etienne is in a tier by himself. Not only has he earned the nation’s highest PFF rushing grade since 2018, but he’s also been the most valuable non-quarterback in all of college football over that span, per PFF WAA. On top of that, he’s also broken the most tackles per attempt (0.35), picked up a first down or touchdown at the nation’s highest rate (36.5%) and he averaged the most yards after contact per attempt (4.7) among players at his position. Had he declared, he would have been PFF’s RB1 in the 2020 NFL draft.
SECOND TEAM: RB Chuba Hubbard, Oklahoma State