ACC power rankings, Week 2: North Carolina climbs, Virginia Tech falls hard

There is a canyon as wide as the Grand Canyon between Clemson and the No. 2 team in the ACC power rankings.

It shouldn’t shock anyone to see that Clemson is still at the top of the ACC. That’s not going to surprise anyone. In fact, it would be more of a shock to see Clemson anywhere but No. 1 in the ACC.

However, the race for No. 2 in the conference is going to be a wild, wide-open one. Many of the teams in this conference will be able to make a run at that spot. So far, it appears that several teams are interested in doing just that.

But, before we get to the teams that are capable of doing that, let’s go over a few of the teams who whiffed during week one of the college football season and work our way to the best teams in the ACC.

The first week of 2019 wasn’t all that great for Geoff Collins and the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets. Tech struggled mightily against Clemson, and lost 52-14. The fact that Georgia Tech scored a couple of touchdowns and picked off Trevor Lawrence twice is worth noting.

Louisville entered the season in the last place spot of the ACC simply because the Cardinals looked like they had a long, uphill climb to make before they’d be any good. Week one has come and gone and that is still the case. However, Louisville made Notre Dame sweat on a national stage on Monday, challenging the Fighting Irish before ultimately losing by 18 points. That’s pretty impressive for this sort of team.

Duke was embarrassed on national television. Duke should have never scheduled a neutral site game against the Alabama Crimson Tide. Duke deserves to drop a couple of spots simply for agreeing to play in that game.

Florida State was flashing some serious firepower on offense against the Boise State Broncos. The Seminoles seemed so close to getting a good win against a very respectable opponent. And they were so close to getting that win. Right up until Florida State forgot how to score and Boise State realized that it could indeed also score. FSU had a 31-19 lead at the half. FSU lost 36-31.

The Pitt Panthers have some soul searching to do after losing 30-14 to the Virginia Cavaliers. The Panthers were bad at throwing the ball and were bad at running the ball and were unable to consistently stop Virginia from scoring. The Panthers had brief moments of success, but that wasn’t enough to win.

Justin Fuente’s seat has to be warming up more and more each and every day. The Virginia Tech Hokies had far too many mistakes against Boston College and lost what was a very winnable game. Fuente and the Hokies will need to find wins moving forward, or Fuente might end up needing to find a new job.

Boston College took advantage of every interception that Virginia Tech threw en route to a 35-28 win over the Hokies. Steady running, solid defense and a decent passing attack can realistically provide BC with a path to seven or eight wins this season. That formula got them their first win of the season this past weekend.

The East Carolina Pirates are not exactly a great team, and nobody really expected them to be that. But I’m not sure anyone expected ECU to look flat out helpless against NC State. And, the North Carolina State Wolfpack made the Pirates appear to be completely inept this past weekend. NC State used a collective running attack to get things going on the ground, but Matthew McKay picked the Pirates apart and appears to be another solid quarterback for the Wolfpack.

North Carolina’s win over South Carolina might be the beginning of the end of the Muschamp era for the Gamecocks. It was also a great start to the second iteration of the Mack Brown era for the Tar Heels. Coming back, down 11 points in the fourth quarter, Brown’s Tar Heels scored 15 points on two drives that each went over 90 yards. That’s impressive. Brown may not always make the right decisions, he made a mind-boggling one in this game, but he guided his team to a solid win.

Wake Forest and Utah State played in what ended up being the most underrated game of the week. The Demon Deacons and the Aggies combined for 73 points, 817 passing yards, and 1,175 total yards of offense. And Wake Forest came out on top! The Demon Deacons won thanks to a touchdown with just over a minute remaining in the game. Wake Forest’s defense will likely let them down if it doesn’t improve from how it played Friday night, but this offense could certainly keep the Demon Deacons in plenty of games this season.

The Virginia Cavaliers took care of Pitt with relative ease. The game was sluggish and defense oriented for most of the time, but UVA was able to wear the Panthers down and consistently get points on the board throughout the contest. Virginia’s offense was unimpressive, but there was just enough to get the Cavaliers a decent 30-14 win.

Miami got to take a solid breather after playing Florida in Week 0. So, the Hurricanes didn’t move one way or the other from where they were ranked last week. For Miami’s sake, hopefully, Manny Diaz and his team were able to clean up some of their mistakes. The young coach and his team have plenty of potential to be special this season.

In what was a notably odd game for reasons other than what was happening on the field, Syracuse took care of Liberty without exerting much effort on Saturday. Hugh Freeze coached from a hospital bed up in the coaches’ box, which was weird, and the Orange shutout the Flames. Syracuse’s offense could really use some help as the Orange struggled whenever they had the ball, but that’s something that, theoretically, could be worked out as the season goes.

The Clemson Tigers weren’t challenged when the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets arrived in Death Valley on Thursday, but Trevor Lawrence did have some hiccups and did throw a couple of picks. However, it’ll take more than just a couple of errors to slow Clemson down at this point. Dabo Swinney and the Tigers will almost certainly be able to clear any obstacle that the ACC presents to them right now.