ACC Power Rankings 2016: Does anyone want to win this conference?

Now that the race for the ACC title has some new players in the lead positions, here are our Power Rankings after Week 7 of the 2016 season.

Ladies and gentleman, would whoever wants to actually win the ACC this year please stand up?

Week 7 of the college football season saw the top two teams in the conference being pushed deep into the fourth quarter and overtime before coming out with the wins, while the Coastal Division is back to being anyone’s ball game – if someone actually wants it.

This weekend will be a light week for the conference, as just four games take place with each one having some kind of say in the divisional standings. But before we get to that, let’s step back a week and recap what took place in the ACC.

Here’s a look at our power rankings following week 7 action.

Just when it looked like the Cavaliers were going to keep away from heading back to the cellar of the power rankings, they go out and lose at home against the Panthers from Pittsburgh. It’s not that they lost, which was expected, but how they lost.

While the offense was able to put 31 points on the board, they gave the game away on both an interception return for a touchdown and a kickoff return for a score. When you’re as bad as Virginia is, you can be giving points away that easily.

It may be a controversial rule, but when you are off a week you get moved down at least one spot in the rankings. When you are one of the most underachieving teams in college football, you get moved down two spots.

You can’t argue with the fact that Patrick Towles has been the worst of the graduate transfers this season in all of college football. Much like Everett Golson last season at Florida State, Towles was supposed to be the savior but could easily be watching a bowl game this year at this rate.

Congrats, men of the engineering program. You went out and got a 11-point win over an in-state foe who was a FCS program just three years ago. I guess when you’ve lost three straight, any win is a step in the right direction, right?

All jokes aside, the Yellow Jackets were a team that looked like a team who could make a run at the Coastal Division just weeks ago. Now, they look like a team who still has work to do just to make it into a bowl game.

There was a large segment of the population in the state of North Carolina, Tallahassee, Florida and a decent amount of college football fans everywhere else that was rooting hard for the Blue Devils to come out on top, being within three points of Louisville with less than two minutes to go.

After seeing what he has been doing all season – especially to better defenses like Florida State and Clemson – the fact that Duke was able to hold Lamar Jackson to just 325 yards of total offense is something to build on. The offense, however, needs massive help and Daniel Jones may not be the answer at quarterback.

The drop in these rankings isn’t as much about the loss to the Seminoles, since they were a big underdog and on the road, yet still stuck with it. It’s HOW they lost the game: by having a miserable offense that couldn’t take advantage of the defense keeping them in the game.

With all the problems the Seminoles have had this season, the fact that John Wolford threw for under 185 yards and the leading rusher for the Deacs had just 33 yards on the ground is something that Wake Forest and the coaches should be alarmed by.