A panel of ESPN college football reporters ranked the top 10 defensive backs for the 2025 season, and Clemson’s Avieon Terrell earned a spot on the list.

Heading into his upcoming junior season, Terrell was picked as college football’s sixth-best defensive back, based on the voting in the ESPN survey.

Terrell garnered 28 points, good for sixth place behind Oregon’s Dillon Thieneman (49 points), Indiana’s D’Angelo Ponds (52 points), Tennessee’s Jermod McCoy (54 points), Notre Dame’s Leonard Moore (66 points) and Ohio State’s Caleb Downs (90 points).

The younger brother of Atlanta Falcons All-Pro and former Clemson cornerback A.J. Terrell, Avieon Terrell has made a name for himself at Clemson and blossomed into one of the best players in college football at his position.

Here’s what ESPN’s Bill Connelly had to say about the younger Terrell, who collected second-team All-ACC honors last season:

Four college football players finished the 2024 season with at least 5 tackles for loss, 3 forced fumbles, 2 interceptions and 1 sack. Three were linebackers, which makes sense … but the fourth was a cornerback. Avieon Terrell is one of the more uniquely physical CBs in the sport; he plays like he’s 6-foot-2 and 210 pounds, but he’s actually 5-11 and 180 pounds.

The former blue-chipper from Atlanta can play outside or in the slot, and he raised his game spectacularly last season as a sophomore. Among ACC defenders with at least 400 snaps in coverage, he ranked first in total havoc plays (TFLs, forced fumbles, passes defended), fifth in yards allowed per attempt (4.5) and seventh in forced incompletion rate (21.7%).

Terrell heads into the 2025 season having tallied 82 tackles (4.5 for loss), 19 pass breakups, three interceptions, three forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries and a sack in 27 games (19 starts) over his first two seasons at Clemson.

Last season, the Westlake High School (Atlanta) product was credited with 64 tackles (4.5 for loss), 13 pass breakups, two interceptions, three forced fumbles, two fumble recoveries and a sack across 14 games (all starts).

With that performance in 2024, Terrell became the first Clemson player under Dabo Swinney to finish a season with at least three forced fumbles and multiple interceptions and multiple fumble recoveries.

His 13 pass breakups tied the Clemson sophomore record shared previously by James Lott (1987) and Justin Miller (2003), while those 13 pass breakups were the most by a Clemson player in a season since 2014 (15, Garry Peters).

Terrell was also recently ranked by Pro Football Focus as the fourth-best returning cornerback in the country ahead of the upcoming college football campaign.