ACC Football: Biggest offseason question for every team
By John Buhler
Miami Hurricanes: Can Mark Richt lead his alma mater to a Coastal Championship?
Maybe the ACC Champion will come out of the Coastal this year? It could happen. The Atlantic beasts of Clemson, Florida State, and Louisville could cannibalize themselves. From there, a Coastal team could get it together in their division and take back the power in the ACC.
One of the most likely candidates to win the ACC Coastal has to be Mark Richt’s Miami Hurricanes. Miami is fortunate to have a strong head coach the caliber of Richt leading its football program. He’s the type of coach that can get a traditional power humming at year two. He did it at Georgia and we should expect it at Miami in 2017.
Richt will have to replace starting quarterback Brad Kaaya, who foolishly left for the NFL a year early. Kaaya’s likeliest replacement is redshirt junior Malik Rosier. However, he will have several quarterbacks in the Miami program pushing him, just like in the good old days when Richt played quarterback for the ‘Canes.
Outside of Notre Dame coming at the end of the year, Miami’s non-conference slate is very navigable with games against Bethune-Cookman, Arkansas State and Toledo. Drawing Syracuse out of divisional rotation helps, as Miami has its three toughest ACC games on the road: Florida State, North Carolina and Pittsburgh.
The ACC Coastal is a very well-coached division, but Richt is the most proven commodity of the seven in the Coastal. With North Carolina losing Mitch Trubisky to the NFL and Pittsburgh having to replace Nathan Peterman with USC transfer Max Browne, maybe it is the year that the Hurricanes come back to national prominence with a 10-2 (6-2) campaign and win the ACC Coastal?