The preseason ACC football poll will be out this week, which is a fine excuse for me to produce my own probably very wrong predictions about the upcoming season. Please feel free to do the same in the comments.
1.) Clemson — There’s one no-brainer and it’s Clemson, which has the likely ACC OPOY in Cade Klubnik, in addition to the usual plethora of talent elsewhere. The Tigers are back to a point where they look like they can do damage in the playoffs. And since they’re not on NC State’s schedule for once, I can be totally okay with this. The ACC could use the perception boost, anyway.
2.) SMU — Say this much for SMU: as much as the school is an odd fit in the ACC, it’s also clear that SMU is going to be far more valuable than either Cal or Stanford, because SMU actually spends like a power-conference school. I’ll take the Mustangs to rematch with Clemson in the ACC title game because they get Miami at home, and they also have the better coach.
3.) Miami — I’ve decided that Miami is my nemesis, and that everything the Hurricanes do is a personal affront to me. This is totally not related to anything. Still I must grudgingly accept the obvious, which is that this team will be very good. On the bright side (for me), Miami is still coached by Mario Cristobal, who is guaranteed to make at least one very high-profile mistake each season.
4.) Duke — We get into muddier territory starting around here, and when in doubt, I’ll lean on the team with the best quarterback of the second tier, and that’s … Duke. Darian Mensah came with a big price tag, but he’ll be worth it. Getting a player of his caliber with three years of eligibility remaining is a huge development for Duke, which is actually showing commitment to football. What a world!
5.) Georgia Tech — Defense is a question mark still, but if Haynes King can stay healthy for the entire season, then the Jackets can do damage. King still seems to be an under-the-radar guy despite his excellent play last season, probably because Tech wasn’t a prolific passing team.
6.) Louisville — While I wonder if Jeff Brohm’s extremely transfer-heavy approach will result in a complete bust one of these years, I also think he’s one of those guys you can trust to make a good offense out of whatever spare parts happen to by lying around the locker room.
7.) Florida State — If FSU has a successful bounce-back this fall, resulting in a top-five finish or something like that, it’ll probably be because Gus Malzahn worked some magic with Thomas Castellanos. Certainly Castellanos will be a better fit for the system Malzahn puts into place.
8.) NC State — Okay, fine, put me on board the positivity train. The back end of the defense is deeply concerning but I think DJ Eliot’s system will make the defense more disruptive up front, and a CJ Bailey breakout campaign, while ultimately resulting in his transfer to Miami in December, will at least be worth the ride.
9.) Pittsburgh — It’s easy to forget about Pittsburgh, all tucked away up there. Remember how the Panthers started last season 7-0 and then finished 0-6? That was kinda neat, honestly. You don’t see that a lot. Credit where it’s due. Pat Narduzzi, the confusion king!
10.) UNC — It is typical of UNC, generally, to do something extremely expensive that also shows a complete lack of imagination. Bill Belichick is a fine football coach and a headlining presence, even if he is the most boring man ever to live, but there are serious questions about the nuts and bolts of this whole thing, and I’m not sure that even Belichick is capable of taking that defense from Mack-Brown-soft to sturdy in one offseason.
11.) Virginia Tech — You ever just look at a guy and think “that guy there, he’s not a good coach, I can just tell.” This is my brain every time I see Brent Pry. Does that make any logical sense? No, no it doesn’t. And yet the feeling persists.
12.) Syracuse — Fran Brown, however, is looking like a very well-calculated gamble on Syracuse’s part. At a place like Syracuse, it takes that sort of approach, I think. Brown came in with a reputation as an ace recruiter at Georgia but had no head coaching experience, and we saw how the remodel went in year one. Without Kyle McCord, though, I have to think some struggles are inevitable.
13.) Boston College — Bill O’Brien is doing good work at Boston College, it’s just difficult for that to amount to anything more than going 7-5 there. If Grayson James plays as well in ‘25 as he did off the bench last season, the Eagles could surprise some folks.
14.) Virginia — The Cavs have been spending this offseason, but they might have the worst head coach in the league, which is a slight problem, I feel.
15.) Wake Forest — Jake Dickert is a perfect fit at Wake, given the challenges he faced at Washington State after the Cougs were left out of the power-conference reshuffle. He’ll have more resources at Wake (which is an odd thing to say), and the need to stretch undertalented rosters to their maximum is something he’s familiar with.
16.) Cal — The Bears have a chance to be decent (adding Kendrick Raphael helps) but have a large question mark at QB after losing Fernando Mendoza to Indiana (we live in a really strange sports world now).
17.) Stanford — The heinous odor emanating from northern California on a given day is 25% the result of whatever morally depraved action Elon Musk is up to and 75% the result of Stanford football. If I were a Stanford fan, I’d be wondering why we couldn’t be more like Duke, but that would require at least a little desire to be competitive. The Cardinal fired Troy Taylor in March amid a gross scandal and opted to punt on this season, even moreso than usual, by anointing Frank Reich the interim coach while promising him he’d have no recruiting responsibilities. Though in fairness, no one at Stanford seems to have any of those.