Phil Steele released his 2015 preseason All-ACC team on Monday. Ten Hokies are among the 112 total Atlantic Coast Conference players chosen. Bucky Hodges (TE), Dadi Nicolas (DL), Ken Ekanem (DL) and Kendall Fuller (DB) are all first team selections. They are joined by Isaiah Ford (WR, 3rd team), Jonathan McLaughlin (OL, 4th team), Corey Marshall (DL, 2nd team), Brandon Facyson (DB, 2nd team), Deon Clarke (LB, 3rd team) and Chuck Clark (DB, 3rd team). Fuller (1st team), Nicolas (4th team) and Hodges (3rd team) all made Steele's preseason All-American squad.
Virginia Tech is well represented on Steele's ACC team, but in order to better compare us to the rest of the conference, I did some simple number crunching (the same as in 2010). Below you'll see I weighted each ACC teams' offensive, defensive and special teams units. My formula was simple, 4 points for a first team selection, 3 for a second, 2 for a third and a single point for a fourth. Therefore, the weighted total is out of a possible 120 points. My intent was to identify which are the more talented teams in the conference according to Steele. However there are two flaws in the logic. It doesn't weight position importance. For example, it assumes a first team guard is "more important" than a second team quarterback. Second a first team player isn't necessarily going to be four times better than fourth team player. Therefore, I don't think the analysis is complete enough to conclude that team one > team two > team three, and so on. However, I do believe it is a good indicator of general overall ranking, that is to say the teams at the top are more talented than the teams at the bottom.
Offense
| School | First Team | Second Team | Third Team | Fourth Team | Total | Weighted Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston College | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Clemson | 3 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 8 | 21 |
| Duke | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 7 |
| Florida State | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 10 |
| Georgia Tech | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 10 |
| Louisville | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Miami | 0 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 4 | 8 |
| NC State | 0 | 2 | 1 | 0 | 3 | 8 |
| North Carolina | 2 | 3 | 3 | 1 | 9 | 24 |
| Pittsburgh | 3 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 4 | 15 |
| Virginia | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 4 |
| Virginia Tech | 1 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 7 |
| Wake Forest | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Total | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 48 | 120 |
Defense
| School | First Team | Second Team | Third Team | Fourth Team | Total | Weighted Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston College | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Clemson | 0 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 6 |
| Duke | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 3 | 10 |
| Florida State | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 15 |
| Georgia Tech | 1 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 5 | 14 |
| Louisville | 2 | 1 | 1 | 2 | 6 | 15 |
| Miami | 0 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 4 | 10 |
| NC State | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| North Carolina | 0 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 2 | 2 |
| Syracuse | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Virginia | 2 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 4 | 11 |
| Virginia Tech | 3 | 2 | 2 | 0 | 7 | 22 |
| Wake Forest | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 4 | 9 |
| Total | 12 | 12 | 12 | 12 | 48 | 120 |
Special Teams
| School | First Team | Second Team | Third Team | Fourth Team | Total | Weighted Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Boston College | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Clemson | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Duke | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 | 3 | 8 |
| Florida State | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Louisville | 0 | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Miami | 0 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 2 | 4 |
| North Carolina | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 5 |
| Pittsburgh | 1 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 3 | 6 |
| Virginia | 0 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 3 |
| Wake Forest | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 | 4 |
| Total | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 16 | 40 |
Conclusions
This may be overkill given my simple methodology, and all of these statistics and conclusions are based off the opinions and analysis of one person. Take this with a grain of salt if you'd like, but remember that one man is sage Phil Steele.
If not for the early departures of defensive Eli Harold and outside linebacker Max Valles, Virginia might have had one the conference's elite defenses.
North Carolina senior quarterback Marquise Williams (or Mitch Trubisky if Fedora still is playing QB switcheroo) has plenty of talent around him. No excuse for The Tar Heels not to score points in bunches this season.
Clemson's offense led by quarterback Deshaun Watson should be back to form near the top of the ACC statistically after finishing seventh in points and yards last season. On paper at least, the league's best defense in 2014 is primed to take a step back this year.
Virginia Tech's defense has the pieces to be the best in the league. Keep in mind, that while Steele didn't consider Maddy (a definite oversight if Big Lu is healthy), he did push in most his chips on Facyson.
Shout out to Phil Steele!— Luther Maddy (@luthermaddy_) June 1, 2015
#Hokies DB coach Torrian Gray said Brandon Facyson was lifting with his legs in weight room today. Couldn't do that in spring. "Encouraging"— Mike Barber (@RTD_MikeBarber) June 1, 2015
#Hokies DB coach Torrian Gray said of CB Brandon Facyson (leg), he's "anticipating him fully back" for the start of fall football camp.— Mike Barber (@RTD_MikeBarber) June 1, 2015
Steele believes there are twenty offensive linemen in the ACC better than Wyatt Teller, that's news to me. Surely he tops the league in Taco Bell calories consumed.
Syracuse's roster seems to have bottomed out.
Based on top-end known quantities, I'm less apprehensive about the Miami and NC State games.
Comments
There's no doubt about it, this year's defensive line is capable of causing some serious damage. Seeing all four guys as 1st or 2nd team All-ACC is within reach. Others with a real chance of making one of these teams...
Teller
Maddy
Phillips
Motuapuaka
Malleck
I think we're going to surprise more than a few people this year when our OL starts to show some serious competency. I have long wondered just how good our program can be if and when we get a OL playing rock solid football in front of our QB and RBs, and I think we'll finally start to see that possibility coming together late in the season.
I expect our O-line to perform better, and I think we'll see much fewer pre-snap penalties, but I think we'll see drop off in performance towards the end of the season and late in games, just due to depth and relative inexperience.
Linemen Are conditioned and used to playing every down. Depth should really only play a factor if there are injuries. Typically, linemen get better as the year progresses, so barring injuries, I see them getting stronger through the year as they continue to gel, gain experience and confidence.
A solid line can make an average running back great, so our stable should be awesome if the line is as strong as some forecasts indicate.
Is this true? I didn't realize that.
it's less true when you have sufficient depth, but OL is a position you don't see as much substitution.
When you don't have much depth...
Jeeesh....Syracuse. Wow, that's awful.
The thing that stands out to me is that I think VT may have the best defense in the ACC by a considerable amount. I expect our defense to be top 10 ranked in the country (top 5 is a real possibility, just hard to project since it is large part due to the offenses you face). I'm not sure there is another top 30 defense in the ACC. Now.....does VT have the offense to take advantage of how bad the rest of the ACC's defenses are?
It's going to be really hard to throw on us. If Big Lu is healthy (sure looks it), it's going to be hard to pound us like Pitt and Miami did last year. So, I'm looking at mobile QB's as the best way to hurt our defense. And we face a lot of mobile QB's.
Even if Lu isn't healthy, we could maybe plug in Sobchak or (fingers crossed) Settle to that role of gap plugger. We have great size at DT in addition to great depth.
Good to know that even if Luther goes down, we still have Sobczak Security
Closed on Shabbos.
if Lu isn't healthy you probably just see more of the same from last year with the 4 guys rotation (marshall, Williams, baron, walker).
Sobchak will crack that rotation with the spring he had. I expect him to see playing time even if Lu is healthy.
personally doubt it, but it's a good problem to have being that deep. I think ricky walker is going to have limited snaps as it is.
Maybe my math is off, but if you add the weighted total of Offense and Defense, we have 29. That looks like tops. HYPE TRAIN IS BOARDING.
Edit: Yes, my math was wrong.
29 by my count, but your point still stands.
If my math is correct, maybe I'm doing my stats wrong, but we will have just more than 3 players (3.33333.......) on the field at any given time who are All-Americans. Let us go, Hokies.
Edit: Preseason All-Americans*
All-ACC. We have three All-Americans on the entire team.
Syracuse lost pretty much everything from last year. Only 9 returning starters off of an already bad team, with Terrell Hunt and Rod Johnson being pretty much the only names of note. They're probably gonna be really, really bad this year.
Like Wake Forest 2014 bad.
Not as bad on the o-line, but way, way worse on defense. This is especially true for pass defense, where they only return two starters in their back seven and lose their star players in Lynch and Eskridge.
I think they'll be around where they were last year on offense (111th in ypp, 116th in ypg, 104th in S&P+) but even worse than Wake on defense. So probably worse than Wake 2014 overall.
Also, the player's name is Ron Thompson, sorry.
I wish we would have had Wake on our schedule last year.
Hey, that Wake team had its moments.
So you're saying that the 10/17 game between Syracuse and LOLUVA should likely be a noon game?
That one should be played at noon PDT.That one should be played at noon GMT.
So, 3pm ET?
Did I mention I suck at math? Ugh. This is what I get for trying to be funny when taking a 5 minute break from work...
I thought HS teams played Friday nights?
Assuming everyone is/stays healthy as in the Ohio State game last year, VT could be a contender for the NCAA playoff. Imo.
getting way ahead of ourselves with playoff talk IMO.
Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
Joe,
You qualified this analysis by stating it doesn't take certain factors into consideration, like position importance and closing talent gap, but it's still interesting to look at...
North Carolina- Look at their numbers - Their offense is pinball, but their defense sucked.
Virginia Tech - The opposite - struggled on offense at times, defense elite.
ACC Divisional champs - GT and FSU - Both are very balanced between offense and defense according to your score... interesting indeed.
One last thing- I've seen Joseph Yearby on several lists as a top 5 back in the ACC, which I think is premature. 300+ of his yards and his sole TD came against UNC, Cincinnati, and Florida A&M. Going by that JC Coleman deserves first team recognition.
Shaun Wilson of Duke had better stats either way...
JC probably would get some recognition if he was going to be the workhorse back. Miami tends to have more of that offense or at least did with duke, so i'm guessing that people are predicting yearby to get the bulk of the carries and put up monster stats where JC will probably split carries with 2 other RBs.
Minimum
I don't agree at all.
you don't think he'll split carries and lose goal line carries? These awards are all about yards/tds and JC even if he was the primary back probably won't be the primary when we get within the 3 yard line and that's without marshawn or shai even being back.
I may be a huge trey Edmunds homer, but to me he is still our biggest homerun threat at the position. if he can ever look more natural (vision) there he could be a monster.
I believe the point was he didn't agree that JC will split carries with at least 2 other backs.
FWIW, neither do I.
not saying split evenly or anywhere close to it, but I think we'll see a 45/35/20 type split between the backs we have. The 20 might be split amongst multiple including how we use our FBs.
I would love for it to be true. But Shane's track record suggests otherwise...
Actually his track record is to roughly split 80-90% of the carries between two backs...
The only time he hasn't done this is when he had nothing to work with due to injuries or a LOFT problem.
Minimum
Ok, you convinced me.
Haha. I didn't mean to post twice... Must be something weird with my phone
I think Gus Edwards will steal a lot of his goal line and redzone carries.