ACC Football Power Rankings, Week 11: Clemson has sights set on playoff

The Tar Heels are starting to show their age. They start or play 12 freshmen or sophomores this season including the living legend Sam Howell at quarterback. Still in their perpetual Groundhog Day, they’ve played the same game over and over. The Tar Heels’ loss to Virginia is their eighth one-possession game this season.

Tied at the half, the Cavaliers out-scored 21-14 North Carolina in the third quarter — their final touchdown the game-winner — to defeat the Tar Heels 38-31. They could not stop Virginia quarterback Bryce Perkins who had 490 yards of total offense and five total touchdowns.

The Tar Heels need two of their last three for a bowl, and they have a shot at all three. Hopefully they can get out of Groundhog Day.

Bye weeks can be good for some teams. This is the case for the Blue Devils. Every team in front of them had no so good weekends so they get bumped by default. We’ll see how long they hold their spot in the top 10. They have a difficult home stretch to close the season that begins with hosting Notre Dame and ends with hosting a resurgent Miami team. With their injury issues, and offensive struggles, I don’t know where they get two wins; they are going to have to pull off an upset somewhere and they might not have it in them this season.

This was the performance everyone in Charlottesville had been waiting for from Bryce Perkins. He’d been steady all season, but hadn’t had the breakout performance. He had quite the breakout performance against the Tar Heels, though. They needed every bit of his outing to get past the Tar Heels as well.

The defense didn’t play very well, and they got nothing from the run game. Moving toward the end of the season, this might be of some concern for the Cavaliers. They have two winnable games against Georgia Tech and Liberty, but their game against rival Virginia Tech might just be for the Coastal title.

We tease a lot around here at the ACC power rankings headquarters, and the Pitt Panthers make it easy with their Lightning McQueen philosophy on playing football. If you don’t know what that is, you probably don’t have small children — go rent Cars and learn something. However, Pitt knows how to win. They are limited this season. They don’t have the great bell-cow running back they usually have, but their pass rush is as good as its ever been.

There might not be a team better in close games than the Panthers this season. They defeated the Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets in a nice and neat 20-10 win. They are off this week before they finish the season with three consecutive conference games.

This division is going to have quite the ending.