ACC Football Power Rankings, Week 9: What should we make of Miami?

The Miami Hurricanes played this week like they were drinking hurricane before the game. There’s a rant about not having a home stadium for games like this, but when look as bad as they did in the second half against Georgia Tech, it doesn’t matter where the field is — no one’s coming to watch that.

Miami head coach Manny Diaz said after the game, “We will compete the way the Miami Hurricanes compete,” in reference to their game next week against Pitt. The way the Hurricanes compete this season isn’t the way they want to go about their business. If getting a field goal blocked, giving up a fake punt for a touchdown and not scoring in the second half against a defense that gives up 30 points per game is competing like the Hurricanes, Diaz might want to find another team to emulate.

Boston College just gave every school in the ACC the secret sauce for defeating one of the most feared pass rushes in the conference: don’t throw the ball. The Boston College Eagles racked up 60 carries in their 45-24 drubbing of the Wolfpack. This is further proof that the Wolfpack aren’t the type of program that can instantly recover from losing NFL-caliber talent.

The Wolfpack should get comfortable here at the bottom of the rankings. They have Wake Forest, Clemson and Louisville over the next three weeks. They get Georgia Tech in a month, but that baby’s growing up — see the Tech rankings for that joke. Consider this: the Wolfpack have one Power Five win this season against a team that doesn’t have a Power Five win in 2019.

The team that NC State beat would be the Syracuse Orange who is O-fer the conference this season — the wins include Liberty, Western Michigan and Holy Cross. This team has no continuity on offense, and put too much pressure on their defense to make plays. This was not how coach Dino Babers saw this season going. It was supposed to be a smooth transition from Eric Dungey to Tommy DeVito. This was supposed to be the best defense Babers has had since he’s been at ‘Cuse.

Well, DeVito has been sacked 32 times this season and outside of their pass rush the defense hasn’t been impressive, but has played better than they did at the beginning of the season. Maybe they put it together against another struggling team in Florida State.