Clemson handled Boston College and Syracuse looks ready for Notre Dame as we look at this week’s ACC power rankings and assess the Coastal division race.
There isn’t much drama left about what teams deserve to be at the top of our ACC power rankings. Clemson and Notre Dame have both separated themselves from the competition. It’s hard to imagine any team dislodging them from the top spots before the end of the regular season.
Things are wide open behind the Tigers and Fighting Irish though. NC State looked like a possible contender for much of the season, but losing at home to Wake Forest on Thursday night exposed the Wolfpack as pretenders. Ryan Finley and company have enjoyed some nice moments this year, but it’s not going to be a special season in Raleigh.
The same can’t be said for Syracuse. The Orange handled their business against Louisville and continue to shoot up the ACC standings. The same can be said for Pittsburgh’s big home win over Virginia Tech. Both former Big East programs have a chance to enjoy historic seasons if things break right.
We start our power rankings this week as a team that continued to solidify their place at the ACC basement this weekend.
We’ve been talking about Bobby Petrino’s tenuous grip on the Louisville job for weeks, and his team’s lopsided loss at Syracuse proved to be the school administration’s final straw. They elected to fire him on Sunday.
In fairness, the game against the Orange looked a lot like every other Cardinals game this season. Jawon Pass couldn’t get the offense moving consistently and the defense looked powerless to stop the opposition. Jeff Brohm will immediately emerge as Louisville’s top target, but this might be a bigger rebuilding job than some people think.
With the dismissal of Petrino, it’s now Larry Fedora’s turn to sweat bullets. His Tar Heel squad gave Due a real scare on Saturday, but as usual, North Carolina came up a play or two short of getting a big win. Quarterback play continues to be an issue for this team. Nathan Elliott threw for 221 yards against the Duke secondary, but it took him 41 passing attempts to get there. In fairness to the Tar Heels’ signal caller, that should have been good enough to get his team a win. Unfortunately for fans in Chapel Hill, it’s tough to win when you give up over 600 yards of offense to your opponent.
Florida State at Notre Dame sounded like an appealing primetime matchup for TV executives in the preseason, but it was nothing close to entertaining on Saturday. The Fighting Irish just gave Willie Taggart’s team another lesson in just how far they are away from being a good football team.
Fans in Tallahassee might have thought Ian Book’s injury gave them a chance to pull off a big upset, but their defense could not handle Dexter Williams and the Notre Dame ground game. They rolled up 365 yards on 50 carries to allow their squad to cruise to a pretty easy victory.
The Seminoles offense wasn’t much better. They couldn’t get anything going against the physical Irish defense. Taggart and company have a lot of work to do in the offseason.