The ACC has a large intimidating beast of a program lording its 2nd National Championship in 4 years and 4 straight league titles over their conference mates. It has been a historic number of years for Clemson but the league as a whole has found itself in a rut with limited success stories such as, “Oh, wow Syracuse finished ranked last year good for them!”
2018 Finish
Team – Overall – League – F/+ Rank
* Division Champion
$ Conference Champion
Clemson, 15-0, 8-0, #2 * $
Syracuse, 10-3, 6-2, #34
NC State, 9-4, 5-3, #37
Virginia, 8-5, 4-4, #35
Duke, 8-5, 3-5, #40
Boston College, 7-5, 4-4, #65
Georgia Tech, 7-6, 5-3, #83
Miami, 7-6, 4-4, #32
Wake Forest, 7-6, 3-5, #74
Pittsburgh, 7-7, 6-2, #55 *
Virginia Tech, 6-7, 4-4, #76
Florida State, 5-7, 3-5, #88
North Carolina, 2-9, 1-7, #92
Louisville, 2-10, 0-8, #123
Turns out, Florida State having their worst season in 40 years, Miami still spinning its wheels, and several teams failing to meet expectations equals a giant pile of crap for the 2018 ACC football season. It’s difficult to imagine a worse year for some of the traditionally strong teams. For example, Virginia Tech was ranked 24th in the AP Poll on October 6th when the Irish visited last year and look how far down that list the Hokies finished!
Yes, the ACC has Clemson way out on top with a mix of teams trying to rebuild quickly (FSU, NC State, Virginia Tech, Duke, Miami) and others staying the course (Syracuse, Boston College, Pitt) to offer some competition. Many leagues have turned their fortunes around quickly and we’ll see if that can happen for the ACC in 2019.
New Coaches
Geoff Collins – Georgia Tech
Scott Satterfield – Louisville
Manny Diaz – Miami
Mack Brown – North Carolina
Paul Johnson opted for retirement after 11 seasons in Atlanta, Bobby Petrino was fired in the middle of his 5th season of a second stint at Louisville, Mark Richt abruptly retired after 2 seasons at Miami, and Larry Fedora was fired after 7 seasons in Chapel Hill.
Geoff Collins comes to Tech after 2 seasons of modest success at Temple, Scott Satterfield spent 5 seasons with Appalachian State, Manny Diaz was ever-so-briefly hired by Temple and ran back to Miami where he was defensive coordinator last year, and Mack Brown heads back to his second stint with North Carolina 5 years after leaving Texas.
Say what you want but none of these hires appear to have a terribly high ceiling.
Easiest Schedule: Clemson
The Tigers early schedule may be a bit tricky with an opener against no-longer-triple-option Georgia Tech which could be tricky for a while followed by hosting Texas A&M and a trip to the Carrier Dome. They’ll also close the season on the road against in-state rival South Carolina. Everything in between though looks like complete smooth sailing. Clemson doesn’t face our top 4 predicted teams from the Coastal Division and might challenge 2013 Florida State’s record for margin of victory at 41.8 points per game.
Toughest Schedule: Florida State
It’s not going to be easy for Willie Taggart to turn things around in Tallahassee. Unlike their division rivals above, Florida State faces the top cross-division opponents (Virginia & Miami) and their out of conference games are even tougher with a neutral site opener against Boise State and a finale visit to the Swamp. A finish of 8-4 might actually be really impressive progress for the Seminoles.
Stock Up: Virginia
It’s difficult to imagine Syracuse improving over last year’s strong finish, while the rest of the league is comprised mostly of middling talent or teams dealing with a lot of personnel turnover. The exception seems to Virginia who is nearly everyone’s favorite to win the Coastal Division for the first time in their history. They have a nice core returning from an 8-win team, an emerging star quarterback in Bryce Perkins (sneaky good 3,603 total yards and 34 touchdowns in 2018), and it feels like it’s time for head coach Bronco Mendenhall to make his move in the ACC after a few years of steady if unspectacular progress in Charlottesville.
Stock Down: NC State
The Wolfpack lose quite a bit on defense, and even more on offense in addition to offensive coordinator Eli Drinkwitz taking over the head coaching job at Appalachian State. Matching the last two campaigns of 9-wins looks like a tall task. Although, the schedule isn’t terribly overbearing and 7 or 8 wins could be possible especially if they get past a road trip to West Virginia in week three.
Burning Question: More than 50 Passing Touchdowns for Trevor Lawrence?
Dawyne Haskins hit 50 passing touchdowns last year but exceeding 50 has only happened 3 times in college football history–and only once (B.J. Symons, Texas Tech, 2003, 52) at the Power 5 level. Trevor Lawrence hit 30 touchdowns through the air while not playing in over 300 snaps as a freshman due to sharing time early in the year with Kelly Bryant.
Clemson will have the best wideout group in the country and elite freshman Frank Ladson joins the mix as an early enrollee, too. Their defense might take a step back just enough to provide Lawrence with more opportunities. However, the strong Clemson running game and the fact that they might be blowing out numerous teams by the third quarter could have Lawrence standing with a towel on the sidelines in many 4th quarters.
Top League Game: Virginia Tech at Virginia (Nov. 29th)
Unless Florida State takes a huge step forward nothing in the Atlantic Division looks appealing as no one is catching Clemson this year (or next, very likely).
Miami being in the most important game is an intriguing option if you can buy Diaz fielding a strong defense and Ohio State transfer Tate Martell bringing explosiveness and playmaking to the quarterback position which has been lacking for years in Coral Gables.
However, it wouldn’t come as a surprise if this regular season finale in Charlottesville decides the division. You can’t imagine a younger, more inexperienced, or bad Virginia Tech defense like last year and Bud Foster should improve that side of the ball quickly. Their offense should be average to fine with quarterback Ryan Willis, too. Can it be enough to win the division?
Worst Team: Georgia Tech
The Yellow Jackets had the 4th worst F/+ rank last year but tied for the 6th most wins in the ACC. Now, they’re returning 8 starters and going through the difficulty of transitioning away from the flexbone offense. They open with Clemson followed by South Florida and host Geoff Collins’ former team Temple on the road in week 5. If they lose all 3 of those games with tough divisional road games plus Georgia still remaining it could be a 3 or 4-win team at best.
Predicted 2019 Finish
Atlantic Division
Clemson 12-0
Syracuse 8-4
Florida State 7-5
NC State 7-5
Boston College 5-7
Wake Forest 6-6
Louisville 3-9
Coastal Division
Virginia 9-3
Virginia Tech 8-4
Miami 8-4
Pitt 6-6
Duke 5-7
North Carolina 4-8
Georgia Tech 3-9
These are dark times for the ACC as no one seems capable of beating Clemson let alone challenging the defending champs for the division or league title. My predictions have last year’s 2nd, 3rd, and 4th place teams in the Atlantic taking a step back with Florida State’s modest improvement coming nowhere near contending.
If there’s hope it comes in a somewhat exciting Coastal Division battle that should be much, much better than last year when a 7-7 Pitt team that finished -32 in point differential ended up taking this side of the league.
We probably shouldn’t get too excited about Virginia–they are way down the blue-chip recruiting rankings with national/ACC team finishes of 34/7, 59/11, 58/12, and 63/13 over the last 4 seasons–and are replacing 10 starters even if most of their best players are back. I’d say buy their stock but be cautious. The league really needs Virginia Tech and Miami to be better–especially the former team where Justin Fuente was once a hot coaching commodity and is coming off a deflating 6-7 season, has been dealing with a lot of roster upheaval, and is 1-6 against ranked teams with a 6-game losing streak since coming to Blacksburg.
This is a reminder of how absolutely weird Pitt’s 2018 season was.
Also, I’d quibble with saying Satterfeld has a low ceiling. His time with App State was pretty impressive, leading the team up to FBS level and winning the Sun Belt for three straight years. All in all, he’s one of the better hires from this year’s edition of the coaching carousel. I guess the biggest concern there is Louisville itself; Petrino left behind a disaster, and I have no idea has stabilized after a few years of bad, weird, and often bizarre stuff, from all the Pitino scandals, to Petrino’s disastrous comeback tour, to taking Papa John’s name off the stadium after a conference call went terribly wrong. They’re clearly not going to compete with Clemson as long as Dabo is there, but I’d he builds a good program I can see Louisville jumping over most of the other mediocrities in the conference.
I looked at Louisville and wondered will Satterfield reach the heights that Petrino did? 8 or 9 wins every year, pretty good consistency (until 2018)? Except for a few Kragthorpe seasons, Louisville has a nice tradition of quality coaching although they are still figuring things out at the Power 5 level.
In that light, Satterfield is just okay I guess? App State did move from 42 to 38 to 27 to 21 over the last 4 years in F/+ which is really impressive. At the same time, they had some really weak schedules and only faced 6 Power 5 teams since 2015 losing all of those games. And Jerry Moore built such a culture there that I do wonder if App State was kind of a Brian Kelly —> Chuck Martin situation at GVSU where the guy who followed the program builder looked even more impressive but wasn’t?
I think Satterfield will do fine–maybe 21 wins over the next 3 seasons? He’s a good hire and definitely feels like an upgrade to 2018 Petrino but I don’t know if his ceiling is really that high.
I can see your point that maybe Satterfeld inherited a machine and just kept it going. The biggest reason I’m impressed with him is that he did take over a good program, but he was able to take that up a level to FBS and really only have one down year before doing very well in conference. That just sticks in my mind as a positive indicator.
This makes the season feel close and that’s definitely welcome!
Reading this got me thinking about how ACC and member teams feel about Notre Dame as a pseudo-member of the conference.
I mean if you’re BC who is projected at 5 wins, do you really want to see ND on the schedule instead of an easy game to get bowl eligible? (Maybe bad specific example since BC is an aspirational rival, but just speaking broadly).
Similarly, if you’re a 6-7-8 win type team – which most the conference is in the outlook- playing Notre Dame most likely means a loss. Oh and ND can hop you for a better bowl, potentially.
If you’re a building program and a 3-4-5 win team, you can’t enjoy seeing ND on the schedule because that’s just a needless loss for the coach to take.
Probably the only ACC program that doesn’t care is the powerhouse 11+ win team since ND (sigh) doesn’t exactly beat many elite teams.
Just kind of a thought I had while reading this. I know fans sometimes grumble mildly about the bowl situation but overall for the ACC I wonder if it’s good or bad to have ND scheduled 5 times a year, and like this year probably go 1-4 or 0-5 in those games. From the conference perspective does the prestige of having ND become enough? Is the potential for a big Miami or FSU or Clemson win over ND outweigh the other 75-80% of the league racking up L’s?
If you’re a 3-4 win team, you like having Notre Dame on the schedule, as ND draws. You get butts in the seats if it’s a home game, and if it’s a road game, your truly devoted fans get to make a trip to one of the legendary stomping grounds of college football. The 90% likelihood of getting stomped is still worth it, since a big loss as a terrible team won’t hurt your national profile anyway.
If you’re a 6-7-8 win type team, I’d think you’re excited too. It’s a chance to play, most likely, on national television. Your players who are from far away will have their friends and family able to watch the game. The 30% chance for a big win over ND is absolutely worth it.
For the 9-10 win teams, it’s probably a good deal too. Most of your bowl tie-ins are going to come down to conference standings anyway, so a loss doesn’t hurt you in that regards. The 45-50% chance of knocking off the Irish and boosting your national profile is worth it.
It’s that bowl bubble team that really hates playing ND. If you could be playing a local pushover to grab that bowl eligibility, it would make all of the difference in the world.
Of course, fans of all of these teams will likely hate us, as ND is so different as an independent “leeching” off the ACC. But for the coaches and administrators in the programs, having ND on the schedule is almost always a good thing.
Some valid points there.
The one I would just bandy back is that is national TV aspect of Notre Dame a meaningful draw any more? Pretty much every ACC in-conference game is covered on ABC/ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, right? And these days the footprint for those channels are huge. (I guess the ACC Network might mess this line of thought up though, since their new channel isn’t as widely carried).
I didn’t really care about the fan perspective, my initial thought was just more from the view of the member teams is this agreement with Notre Dame a good one for them. Obviously for national profile and prestige (and I’m sure the $$ aspect) they’re thrilled to have ND involved. So that’s enough to extend the agreement and be happy, but I was thinking more for competitive purposes does it do the ACC good to add a powerful semi-member that will beat up on most of their conference? Does that help them?
If I’m a UNC or BC* or Pitt* or UVA level program, I don’t really want a tough game on the schedule that’s a probable loss, when I could add a cupcake to get closer to a bowl or better bowl. If I’m the coach of Wake or Duke or GT, I really don’t want a ND game that just adds a loss to my resume for the sake making it harder to keep my job.
(*ignoring any rivalry/emotional aspect and just looking at it clinically)
As far as the bowl games go, I really don’t think a cupcake helps at this point unless:
A) We’re talking about a New Year’s 6 type bowl, which most of these teams won’t be competing for
B) Just making bowl eligibility
So I’d guess most years, those teams would prefer to have ND on the schedule. Of course, in the years where it would actually be bad to have ND on the schedule, it would be really really awful.
The last point might be what I’m getting caught up on and thinking about,
I’m taking that bowl bubble remark as a vicious troll of Florida State.
I live that conference previews are back, that means we’re getting in the ballpark of the return of the season.
Virginia seems earmarked by everyone as this years trap game, but I’m hoping it goes like Syracuse last year. Where Syracuse was ranked way higher than their actual F+ ranking; feels like Syracuse will be ranked the same and an easy early season schedule will leave them ranked high to the point ND cannot overlook them
UVA is scary to m because Bryce Perkins is a very good QB and they have a reasonably competent head coach, two things that UVA almost never has had in the past 20 years. (Also the spot in the schedule one week after @UGA is a nightmare).
I hope you’re right that ND can roll them like ’18 Syracuse, but also the Syracuse starting QB got hurt early and they never looked like they got on track afterwards.
Counter point to Eric’s comment above but Perkins isn’t actually that good. His accumulation stats are good but his efficiency stats are not. I only watched 1 virginia game (va tech) last year but I wasn’t very impressed. And in that game he racked up 3 touchdown and zero ints with a 26 QBR.
Honestly we will have the advantage at QB in that game. The one thing I’m unsure of is how an athletic qb will play against the inexperienced linebacker corps.
“I only watched 1 virginia game (va tech) last year but I wasn’t very impressed. And in that game he racked up 3 touchdown and zero ints with a 26 QBR. ”
Add in for those 259 passing yards and 3 TDs with 24 carries for 112 yards and you must be a tough customer to impress (especially considering ditch ESPN’s QBR for traditional passer rating and it was a sterling 157.3).
I do think you’re right though that ND should have a QB advantage, but like you point out QB’s don’t line up against one another.
Perkins’ performance in the bowl game against South Carolina was also really good and leaving a lasting note (71% completion, 208 pass yards, 3 TD, 0 INT, 81 yards rushing). He’s probably a rich man’s Wimbush but he’s electric and can actually toss the ball a bit better. That’s a really good college level QB to me.
He runs a lot which I get sometimes makes “accumulating” stats a little tricky, but I don’t see much else where he has poor efficiency.
29 pass attempts and 24 rushing attempts for 371 total yards in that game against Va Tech is pretty solid no matter which way you slice it.
He was 14-29 passing in that game. On the season he was ~45th in yards per attempt while also being 25th or so in completion percentage. He’s less accurate and less explosive than book. I guess I don’t know the threshold for good qb in college football but outside top 25 in efficiency rating completion percentage and yards per attempt
Book is definitely better.
As a passer, I agree Perkins isn’t great but he’s pretty good overall. Third-best passer rating in the ACC last year, tied for 39th in YPA, 30th in completion percentage. Pretty solid when you add his rushing–7th most yardage from a QB last year.
Yeah I’m almost certainly underrating his running value, and while he’s a better passer than Wimbush i think I’m still traumatized from the Wimbush starts and attributing that to Perkins here a bit
Wimbush is a 50.5% career passer though and 6.8 Y/A. Perkins is 64.5% and 7.7 Y/A. Perkins a lot is closer to being Book (66.8%, 7.9 Y/A) then he is being Wimbush when it comes to throwing the ball.
And he’s a lot better of a runner than Book is.
But since you said you only saw him play 1 game and it was the Tech game, that makes sense, it was a Wimbush-ian type of day from him. (Even though Wimbush didn’t really put up 370 yards/game much if at all)