ACC Football Power Rankings: Does Clemson have a challenger?

Duke is this low simply because of losing Daniel Jones. They have questions all over their offense. They don’t have much experience at wide receiver, and Quentin Harris is a fifth-year senior, but hasn’t played a ton. They weren’t very good on defense last year and they lost some of their better players. Depth will be an issue for the Devils.

All of this came to fruition in a 42-3 drubbing at the hands of the Alabama Crimson Tide. They aren’t lower simply because they played the toughest opening day opponent, save Georgia Tech. They won’t look this bad all season, but they will have some struggles. Luckily they’re in the ACC Coastal which means they could still contend for a bowl because their offense should be OK.

The issues in Blacksburg were obvious as they fell to the Boston College Eagles 35-28. The impending retirement of long-time defensive coordinator Bud Foster might not be just because he’s been coaching for over 30 years. The Hokies gave up an uncharacteristic five plays of 20 yards or more including two 50-plus yard passes.

Boston College quarterback Anthony Brown averaged 10.6 yards per pass. There might be some cracks in the Justin Fuente era showing. People are staring to make a bigger deal of the mass exodus from Blacksburg during the off season than they did initially.

Maybe everyone is looking at this wrong.

We might want to look at Frank Beamer the way we look at Oklahoma State coach Mike Gundy. Gundy’s been in Stillwater for so long, he’s made it easier than it looks to recruit and find talent. Beamer is Virginia Tech football. His entire football life as an adult has been in Blacksburg. He knows how to recruit and find talent along that Eastern seaboard that fits the Hokie culture. Maybe, just maybe, it’s not as easy to recruit as Beamer made it look all those years.

This is too high a ranking, right? They should be in the bottom four after their 36-31 loss to the Boise State Broncos. They had every advantage in this game. It was moved from Jacksonville to Tallahassee, and from an early afternoon kick to a noon eastern kick.

They looked fantastic in the first half, and then stopped playing football in the second half. As a result, they were outscored 17-0 in the second half. It was literally like watching two different games. Both James Blackman and Cam Akers had the type of games you want from your stars; they seemed to rest on their laurels in the second half.

This just might be a good faith ranking — faith in the fact that they have great athletes and head coach Willie Taggart will figure this out. It might be faith in the fact that Jimbo Fisher didn’t leave the program as big a mess as it seemed last year. This is for sure, they will fall in the rankings and Taggart won’t make it another season if the Seminoles don’t figure out how to deal with adversity better.