Midseason Grades - ACC Edition
Here are grades for the Atlantic Coast Conference teams at the midway point of the NCAA football season:
Atlantic Division
Clemson (6-0 overall, 3-0 ACC)
Summary: Clemson is primed for another ACC title win and a trip to the playoff. Its season to date has been defined by two wins: away at Texas A&M and home to Syracuse. The Tigers eked past a frisky Aggies team, pulling out a late victory on the road before coming from behind against a good Syracuse side.
They’ve entered the survive-and-advance portion of the season without a dent. According to ESPN Stats & Info, no team in the country has a better percentage chance to make the playoff. True, they haven’t been at their overwhelming best, but this team is coming along. Trevor Lawrence is now the undisputed starter at quarterback. Youth in the secondary, a significant concern, won’t be so raw by the time the playoff rolls around.
Dabo has his guys exactly where he would want them at this stage of the season: undefeated, with just enough issues to keep them fully engaged and ready to work.
Key figure: QB Lawrence. The long-haired, create-a-player looking freshman is as gifted a thrower of the ball as any quarterback in the country. He gives the team's offense a ceiling that Kelly Bryant couldn't. Lawrence can win, single-handedly, from the pocket. He also distributes the ball to the perimeter quicker than Bryant did.
Grade: B+
NC State (5-0, 2-0)
Summary: This was a big year for head coach Dave Doeren. Just what kind of program has he established in Raleigh? NC State lost a record number of players to the NFL. Could it reload and go again?
Yes. The Wolfpack are undefeated, running one of the most expansive offenses anywhere. Doeren relies on quarterback Ryan Finley to marshal everything at the line of scrimmage. Finley has been tremendous thus far, making sure the offense is always in the correct play and protecting the ball - he’s thrown just three interceptions this year.
Right now, Doeren must be ruing the impact of Hurricane Florence on his season. NC State was scheduled to play West Virginia in Raleigh in Week 3. A win over Dana Holgorsen's squad would have done wonders for the Wolfpack's resume, making them a lock for the top-10 in the first playoff rankings.
There are big tests ahead, including road games at Clemson and Syracuse, but there’s a path to 11 wins. Get there, and Doeren will once again be mentioned in discussions for big-time jobs, including at the NFL level.
Key figure: Defensive coordinator Dave Huxtable, who deserves a ton of credit for his team's early success. His group executes the little things and play hard. The Wolfpack don’t have the star power they did a year ago, but they’ve been just as effective, conceding just 17.8 points per game, good for 12th in the country. There will be some regression. The team concedes an average of 5.3 yards per play, 55th in the FBS. How the group plays down the stretch will decide whether or not this becomes a special season.
Grade: A
Boston College (5-2, 2-1)
Summary: Boston College is sneakily one of the most intriguing teams in the ACC, if not the nation. On offense, the Eagles are running an up-tempo, jumbo system that's the future of the sport - melding old-school pro-style concepts with modernized run-pass options and packaged plays, from a variety of formations and at different tempos.
BC will go bowling this year. The big question: whose season will it spoil?
Key figure: Offensive line coach Phil Trautwein. Running back AJ Dillon deservedly attracts much of the credit for the Eagles' success. Dillon is a legitimate superstar, blessed with rare vision, contact balance, strength, and short-area quickness. But recognition should also be given to his offensive line and its coach.
A rising star in coaching circles, Trautwein was a two-time national champion as a left tackle at Florida. He’s done a marvelous job with a talented group at BC. Three of his five starters will be early-day NFL draft picks and all five will make a pro roster. Known as an attention-to-details guy, Trautwein has seamlessly incorporated difficult blocking mechanics into a system that asks linemen to play (and think) at warp speed.
Grade: B
Syracuse (4-2, 1-2)
Summary: Babersball is alive and well. Known for his fun-n-gun offense, Dino Babers has relied more on his defense in 2018. Syracuse held FSU to seven points and Clemson to just 27, a game the Orange probably should have won.
A defeat to Pitt the following week has Syracuse's season hanging in the balance. It was an obvious letdown after Clemson staged its late comeback. But it was how the team lost, a return to their shootout ways, that was most disappointing. Syracuse doesn’t have the horses to hang in those kinds of games. Still, Babers has the team trending in the right direction.
Key figure: QB Eric Dungey. This much can be said: no quarterback offers more entertainment value than Dungey. This issue is he’s not very good. He’s solid enough to keep the Orange in games, provided their defense comes to play. If not, he’s a back-breaking error waiting to happen.
Grade: B
Florida State (3-3, 1-3)
Summary: Let's not sugar coat it: this was Willie Taggart’s nightmare scenario. The Seminoles have been impotent on offense, often looked a mixture of disinterested and unorganized on both sides of the ball, and lost their best shot at salvaging some pride from this season when they lost at the buzzer away to rival Miami.
Taggart’s team is 117th in yards per play on offense. There are only 130 teams at the FBS level. It’s almost impossible for a school with all those springy Floridians on the field to look so terrible.
Key figure: Head coach Taggart. What can he do to rally the troops? One of the worst situations for a year-zero head coach rebuilding from the ground up would be to have veteran members of the roster lose focus during the second half of the season. That’s the kind of thing that bleeds into recruiting and practices, and can impact a coach for the rest of their tenure.
Taggart needs to keep his defense engaged. It's been, for the most part, brilliant this year, giving FSU shots to win on the road at Virginia Tech and Miami. But there’s only so long those guys can watch the team’s offensive line implode before we see a decrease in their intensity and effort.
Taggart’s job isn’t in any jeopardy. But how his team finishes the season will lay the foundation for what his program will look like the rest of his reign. He needs a big win somewhere.
Grade: D
Wake Forest (3-3, 0-2)
Summary: Wake Forest faces an uphill battle to make a bowl game. There are winnable games remaining on its schedule, but not a whole host of easy wins. The Demon Deacons still have to play Florida State, Louisville, Pitt, Syracuse, NC State, Pitt, and Duke. Their test against the Seminoles next week will be a springboard game one way or another.
The bye week couldn’t have come at a better time.
Head coach Dave Clawson fired defensive coordinator Jay Sawvel after his team took a 56-27 pasting at the hands of Notre Dame in Week 4. Since then, the team has given up 24 points to Rice and 63 to Clemson.
Key figure: Defensive coordinator Tim Gilmore has his work cut out to get this unit into some kind of serviceable shape. He was promoted from his analyst spot with the team conceding 6.9 yards per play, the 12th-worst mark in the country. Not much has changed during his short stint in charge. What will the group look like the rest of the way?
Grade: C-
Louisville (2-5, 0-4)
Summary: What a mess. With each passing week, Louisville looks increasingly incompetent. The offense has cratered since Lamar Jackson left for the NFL. The Cardinals are averaging 4.6 yards per play; that’s 114th in the country, behind the likes of Ball State, UNLV, and Texas-El Paso. Isn't Bobby Petrino supposed to be some sort of offensive wizard?
The Jawon Pass hype proved to be a fallacy and he's been sent to the bench. Nothing Petrino has tried has injected life into his limp group. What his future holds is now the overriding question left to answer this season.
Key figure: Athletic director Vince Tyra has a giant decision to make in his first year at the helm: does he stick with Petrino? If Louisville decides to fire the coach during this season or right after it, the school could owe him more than $14 million in buyout money, thanks to one of those classic why-are-you-doing-this-now contract extensions the coach penned in 2016.
The school is already paying a bunch of people to not work, including former athletic director Tom Jurich and former basketball coach Rick Pitino. Moving on from Petrino, then, would be a huge ask, even if Tyra wants to cut ties to the past.
This could all be irrelevant should Petrino want out anyway. His longtime ally Jurich is gone, and Louisville has long been rumored to be his stepping stone back to a big-time SEC job. Now would seem like a good time to jump ship. Meanwhile, Louisville faces a gauntlet the rest of the way, and it's not inconceivable that the team could lose every remaining game.
Grade: F
Coastal Division
Virginia Tech (4-2, 3-0)
Summary: What a weird start to the season it's been for Justin Fuente’s Virginia Tech. The Hokies are 3-0 in conference play and sit merrily atop of the Coastal Division, but they lost on the road to Old Dominion and were waxed at home - in prime time - by Notre Dame. They only just snuck by a bad North Carolina team the following week. Has a 3-0 conference side ever looked so unconvincing?
Still, they are top of the division. There isn’t an easy game left on their schedule, but I guess someone has to win it!
Key figure: Defensive coordinator Bud Foster. Isn't he always? Foster has a particularly tough job this year. Tech’s defensive backfield was depleted before the season began, thanks to a battery of injuries and suspensions. Foster has been coaching with one hand behind his back since the spring.
Grade: B-
Virginia (4-2, 2-1)
Summary: What a job Bronco Mendenhall has done in Charlottesville. He inherited a mess when he took over as head coach in 2016. Now, Virginia is heading in the right direction. Through six games, Mendenhall has already matched or bettered the win totals of four of Mike London’s six seasons. Mendenhall won six games a year ago. He’s set to beat that mark this time around.
Mendenhall earned his program-defining win this week, beating Miami at home. It served as a microcosm of the coach’s tenure: solid, tenacious defense overcoming a sputtering offense.
The Cavaliers are averaging close to two takeaways a game this season. Mendenhall’s defense is holding opponents to under 200 passing yards per contest, and 4.1 yards per carry. Altogether, that's a recipe for success.
Don’t laugh: Virginia has a real shot to meet Clemson in Charlotte.
Key figure: WR Olamide Zaccheaus. Virginia’s go-to receiver is averaging over 154 yards per game and has already racked up six touchdowns. Zaccheaus is a small receiver who does most of his damage in the middle of the field, acting as a security blanket for wayward quarterback Bryce Perkins.
One tidbit to monitor: Virginia is converting over 40 percent of its third downs. If that rate holds up, the wins will continue to pile up.
Grade: B+
Miami (5-2, 2-1)
Summary: This isn’t how 2018 was supposed to go for Miami. This season was all about proving it had closed the gap on Clemson.
Nope. A neutral-site loss to LSU on the opening weekend of the campaign could be chalked up to poor quarterback play, bad bounces, etc. Then the Hurricanes changed quarterbacks and lost to Virginia on the road - a team, on paper, Miami should have steamrolled. Yuck.
Mark Richt’s offense hasn't gotten going. The team still boasts one of the best defensive fronts in the nation. It turns opponents over for fun. But a lack of talent on the offensive line and bad play behind center has now sunk the Canes twice. And they only inched by Florida State.
They should still be the favorites to make it to the ACC title game, but the season will nonetheless be viewed as a failure.
Key figure: QB N’Kosi Perry looked excellent in flashes against Florida State. He was poor against Virginia, benched in favor of Malik Rosier. Rosier was chosen to start at the outset but is showing himself to be a significantly limited player. Richt must now decide which guy gives his team the best chance to win moving forward.
Grade: C
Pitt (3-4, 2-1)
Summary: It’s been an odd season for Pitt. The Panthers are 3-4, despite a positive point differential and a trio of excellent performances against Syracuse, Notre Dame, and Georgia Tech. Unfortunately, they were blown off the field by Penn State and UCF and lost to a truly terrible North Carolina team.
Key figure: Head coach Pat Narduzzi, who established himself as one of the defining defensive coaches of his generation while at Michigan State. He integrated an innovative quarters-match defensive system (a hybrid man/zone coverage), that compressed the field and held spread attacks in check.
It hasn’t quite carried over to Pitt; at least, not yet. The Panthers have conceded 30-plus points five times this season. Worse still, they’re among the worst teams in the country in defensive red-zone efficiency. The whole point of Narduzzi’s system is to take away deep plays, force opposing offenses to drive the length of the field, then restrict them to field goals in the red zone.
Grade: C
Duke (5-1, 1-1)
Summary: Duke is rolling. Its remaining schedule is brutal, but there’s still an outside shot that head coach David Cutcliffe could drag his side to the top of the Coastal. The Blue Devils' success has stemmed from a suffocating defense that’s conceding fewer than 20 points per game. How that holds up against the likes of Miami and Clemson is an open question.
Key figure: QB Daniel Jones. You might not have heard of Jones, but get used to the name. He’s going to be an early-day NFL draft pick and has all the tools that NFL evaluators look for. He’s tossed eight touchdowns to two interceptions so far, averaging better than 8 yards per attempt. He's yet to put together a complete game, but if any player can put the team on his back and win a close contest against one of the big boys, it’s Jones.
Grade: A
North Carolina (1-4, 1-2)
Summary: A two-win season is a real possibility for North Carolina. Other than its 38-35 win over Pitt, it's run only one team close, losing 22-19 to Virginia Tech. Every other side has obliterated Larry Fedora's men, including East Carolina, whose staff were coaching for their jobs.
The remainder of North Carolina's schedule is as follows: at Syracuse, at Virginia, vs. Georgia Tech, at Duke, vs. Western Carolina, vs. NC State. Besides the Catamounts, it’s not clear if the Tar Heels are better than any of their remaining opponents.
Key figure: Athletic director Bubba Cunningham. The Tar Heels will have a tricky decision to make come season's end. The team is trending downward and Fedora was embroiled in a couple of preseason controversies. His $12-million buyout, part of a seven-year extension inked at the end of 2017, is a sizable obstacle. The Tar Heels seemed to panic when media reports stated Fedora was being mentioned for other jobs. Now Cunningham will have to go, hat in hand, to a series of boosters who just agreed to pay Fedora over $2.5 million annually. Gulp.
Grade: D
Georgia Tech (3-4, 1-3)
Summary: You knew Paul Johnson wasn’t going to go quietly into the night. As rumors of his job status continue to swirl, the head coach is finding ways to make the school’s administrators pause, including dropping over 60 points in back-to-back weeks against Bowling Green and Louisville.
Johnson’s side faces a tough schedule, though. The Yellow Jackets will travel to Virginia Tech, UNC, and Georgia. At home, they play Miami and Virginia. How many wins are needed to give Johnson another year?
Key Man: Athletic director Todd Stansbury. When Stansbury took the Georgia Tech job he outlined a four-point plan for the athletic programs: define the GT athletics brand, establish the internal culture, align the internal structure, and generate new revenue.
GT is the triple-option Power 5 school. That’s the brand. Will the school’s brass remain content with that moving forward? What about revenue? If Johnson fails to reach a bowl game, Stansbury and the program would fail to reap the financial rewards that accompany the postseason contests.
Georgia Tech has long been considered a sleeping giant by folks around the sport, both in the media and coaching professions. It's been suggested that coaches would be queuing up for the prestigious head coaching job. It might be time for Stansbury to test that thesis.
Grade: C