ACC power rankings, Week 4: Florida State goes down in flames

The ACC schedule was significantly affected by Hurricane Florence this week, but unfortunately for Florida State, their game at Syracuse was unaffected.

There’s no question what the biggest storyline in the ACC was this week. Florida State’s blowout loss at Syracuse has people in Tallahassee very upset. The Seminoles have quickly fallen from conference title contenders to the group of teams hoping to scrape out enough wins to make a bowl game.

Several teams also got unexpected weeks off. Our thoughts and prayers go out to everyone in the Carolina who has been affected by Hurricane Florence. The terrible storm caused North Carolina, NC State and Virginia Tech to miss out on their regularly scheduled games this weekend. As such, there’s less movement in the power rankings than normal.

This week also served as Boston College’s chance to really move up the rankings. They went to Winston-Salem and scored at will against Wake Forest. That win won’t get a ton of national attention, but the Eagles are for real. They have a real shot of finishing just behind Clemson this season.

Without delay, let’s take you through where every ACC team stands. We’ve got enough game tape to make some solid evaluations. That’s not going to be good news for some teams.

It took an act of God for Larry Fedora to avoid taking another loss this week. Missing out on taking on UCF is likely a blessing in disguise for the Tar Heels. They might have had a shot to knock off the Golden Knights, but an upset was pretty unlikely.

Now they can turn their full attention to trying to knock off Pittsburgh next week. It may be Fedora’s last chance to build meaningful momentum this season.

Most Virginia fans would have accepted a 2-1 start to the year, but the narrow loss at Indiana might come back to haunt them. Even so, winning pretty comfortably against Ohio this week was a nice effort from the Cavaliers.

Next week they host Louisville in a game that should tell us a lot about both teams. One thing we definitely know about this team is that Bryce Perkins is the heartbeat of their offense. He threw for 379 yards and three touchdowns in a really efficient performance against the Bobcats. It will be interesting to see what he can do when the level of competition goes up.