The countdown of the top 10 list of players of the decade started out with the honorable mention list and now we are moving to the second best player of the past decade.
#2 Jerry Huges DE TCU (2005-2009)
- First-team 2008 College Football All-America Team by CBS Sports, FWAA, Rivals.com, SI.com and AFCA
- First-team 2009 College Football All-America Team by AFCA, Walter Camp Foundation, CBS Sports.
- 2009 Ted Hendricks Award winner
- 2009 Lott Trophy winner
- 2009 Lombardi Award finalist
- 2008 & 2009 Bronko Nagurski Trophy finalist
- 2008 and 2009 All-MWC first team defense
- 2008 and 2009 MWC Defensive player of the year
Jerry Hughes is the most dominant defensive player in Mountain West history, and this year was the second best defensive lineman behind Mr. Suh from Nebraska. He had 28.5 sacks in his career with 26.5 the past two years to go along with 34.5 tackles for loss over the past two years.
Hughes was constantly double teamed for his career but was still able to make plays against the quarterbacks as well causing QB hurries which are hard to measure and he had quite a few of those. Hughes was an amazing defensive lineman and will be on an NFL roster next year and a first day pick.