Evaluating Clemson and Miami as ACC Football’s preseason favorites

The ACC Football preseason media poll was released on Tuesday with Clemson and Miami as the top contenders for the league title. 

After winning six consecutive ACC football championships, Clemson football fell off last season as Pittsburgh captured the crown.

But according to ACC Football media members, the Tigers will reclaim it in 2022.

At least that’s the prediction of the media as the Tigers and Miami were projected to win their respective divisions, with Clemson football getting an overwhelming number of votes to be the projected champion.

The tweet below shows the predicted order according to the ACC Media poll and Pitt beat reporter RJ Sepich points out that the Panthers tend to do better than the media predicts, at least they have their last seven years in the ACC.

https://twitter.com/RJSepich/status/1551992010009108484?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Etweet

Early thoughts on the race for ACC title in 2022

Despite a down year, Clemson football still won 10 games last season and wasn’t that far away from playing for the ACC championship last season.

The defense was elite last season and the defensive line should be even better this season. The question mark is quarterback DJ Uiagalelei, a former five-star prospect that struggled in his first season replacing Trevor Lawrence as the starter.

However, Swinney recently praised his expected starter, and even if Uiagalelei does struggle, the Tigers have five-star freshman Cade Klubnik waiting in the wings and he was the No. 1 rated quarterback in the 2022 class according to the 247 sports composite rankings.

Yet, Clemson football does have questions. The Tigers are replacing both of their coordinators and that’s never easy, especially when both were elite.

Miami football has a new head coach in Mario Cristobal and speaking of new coordinators, he hired away the Broyles Award Winner (top assistant) from Michigan in OC Josh Gattis.

So with Mario helping to run the defense and Gattis on the offensive side, Miami has two of the best minds in college football on each side of the ball. The Hurricanes also have a potentially elite quarterback in Tyler Van Dyke.

Some are projecting Van Dyke to be a first-round pick. Yet, he’s not the only talented passer in the ACC as Kedon Slovis (Pitt), Brennan Armstrong (Virginia), Devin Leary (NC State), and Sam Hartman (Wake Forest) are highly-touted quarterbacks for one reason or another.

Slovis is based more on potential, just like Uiagalelei, but the others are proven commodities and the ACC is arguably as talented as any league in the country in terms of quarterbacks.

That’s not even including Boston College’s Phil Jurkovec.

Outside of Clemson, NC State is given the second-best chance by the media to win the ACC football championship, although Miami is the pick to represent the Coastal Division compared to Clemson which is the favorite in the Atlantic.

Miami, Wake Forest, Pitt, and Virginia, each have high-level quarterbacks and if all goes right, you could make an argument for each team making a run at the ACC crown. The league is wide open but if Clemson figures out the quarterback position, it might not stay that way.

But Miami football is talented enough to be a playoff contender and if Van Dyke lives up to the hype, the Hurricanes could be a very real threat to win the ACC championship.