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Man, I know things aren't all going super incredibly well for us right now, but 11th feels like a bucket of cold water. I want to argue it, but I'm struggling to find a reason why.
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FSU is too damn high!
Lol, who gave VT a first place vote?
Someone hoping we shock the world so then they can claim clairvoyance
First guess, Egbert:
"13-0 but no votes to CFB Playoff."
Second guess:
One of the people Whit talked to that encouraged him to keep Fuente.
Someone who thinks very poorly of the ACC
maybe he wrote 11 really close together and the person reading it was squinting and saw 1
Maybe he meant to write 11 but forgot to add the second 1
On first instinct, 11 seems low but I'm trying to justify why we are clearly better than the 2-3 teams above us, and I can't.
GT I think is overvalued...yes, they beat Miami and played UGA tough, but they were also a 7-6 team last year.
FSU -- I just don't see it at all, they can't be much worse than last year but I really don't see them as better than a .500 team.
GT was missing their starting QB for a big stretch of their losses.
Agree on FSU. Honestly think Castellanos is a downgrade at QB and that's saying a ton
Honestly have a bigger problem being behind Pitt and NC State. They were both 3-5 in ACC and both played weak sauce OOC.
Honestly, this sounds about right to me. Maybe a little low. Guessing more like 9 or 10. But honestly, how many of the teams ahead of us do we really expect to be better then?
This is fine with me anyway. Maybe it gets the team riled up and a chip on their shoulder. I'd rather be pleased on the upside than disappointed again.
I 'member when we used to get a preseason ranking of #11 in all of CFB
I was waiting for that picture.
11th best team in the ACC...thanks, Whit!
Locker room material. Fourth on that list, easy. Clemson, Miami, Louisville in front. SMU getting love for over performing last year. GT that high is wild. FSU should be good, but Castellanos is ass. UNC overrated because Belichick. Pitt and NC State over us is insulting
I see 11th is as much a reflection of last year's let down in the same way UNC is slightly overrated because of Belichick
GT is too low (if they stay healthy). I firmly believe that Key has them going in the right direction and last year wasn't a fluke, but the beginning of a trend. I'd have them 2nd.
Miami is only this high based on name and hype, as usual. That and the ACC being ass so someone should be at the 2 spot so give it to the name brand. How good are they going to be without Ward saving their asses in half their games? Beck is a huge downgrade.
FSU is too high. Don't see them improving without a regime change.
Spots 8-12 are basically toss-ups and right where VT belongs with all of the uncertainty coming into the year.
I could go along with someone justifying SyrupCubes being ranked higher. They looked to be righting the ship last year and gaining momentum. We'll see if it was a new coach bounce or the start of an upward trajectory.
I think this year's Miami could be last year's FSU. Mario's an idiot. Carson Beck is somewhere between streaky and hot garbage (If he didn't get injured, Kirby would've benched him the second half of that playoff game IMO).
I also think Norvell is a better coach than you give him credit for. They upgraded at both coordinator spots, QB, and Linebacker (their linebacker play last year was similar to ours). I see them winning 8-9.
Hard disagree on an upgrade at QB. Castellanos is straight garbage. Even as bad as DJ Uiagalelei was I still think Castellanos is worse. FSU has almost as big a problem at offensive line as we do so I can't see Castellanos surviving that. BC had a really good line and he did moderately better than DJ stat wise.
miami lost all those recievers that caught any ball with in a country mile of them
Norvell is a good coach but hasn't recruited well enough and has a number of issues and their QB sucks.
Personally, I'm OK with the ranking. Historically VT is better when they are dogged in the rankings. There is literally no reason why the Hokies should get any hype after the dog shit pile of a season they had last year with the returning talent on the field. This year is going to have a big question mark looming over it due to the new coordinators/coaches, the major loss of talent, and the influx of portal talent. But relatively speaking, I haven't paid enough attention to the rest of the ACC's offseasons to have any legitimate opinion on the relative ranking. I just know, in my personal opinion, we're going to be a very underwhelming team this year until Pry finally proves us wrong.
I'm back, FAM!
It's been a long year, and I've missed interacting with you all. Glad to be back.
It's difficult for me to see us ahead of any team "ranked" higher. Our roster is unproven in a number of spots. Where we do have proven players we've seen some inconsistency. The defense was a hot mess last year. Can it improve with a new coordinator? Does the offense take a significant step towards consistency with a new coordinator? And how do we play when facing an opponent with more talent (which will be many of our P5 games). Add to that, Coach Pry, as much as I love him, has not proven that he can get it done on gameday. Period. I honestly wouldn't care if we were ranked 3rd or 16th. It wouldn't matter to me. Just show us all something... anything.
The thing that really stood out to me is Duke at #6. Good for them for making a good hire, for recruiting as well as they have, and for actually putting a watchable product on the field. My, how things have changed....
Welcome back!
Two (arguably 3) hires in a row! (Diaz, Elko, Cutcliff)
I'd say 3 amazing hires plus knowing when knowing when Cutcliffe's time was done and having an amicable split with him retiring.
What's interesting to me about this is how bucketed the schools are:
If I were voting, I would bucket it like so:
Favorite: Clemson
I think your VT under the trash bucket is meant to be UVA, but also... yeah
If NCAA 26 is to be believed, while we might have some playmakers at WR and RB, our offensive line is going to be so horrendous this year that whoever is at QB will barely be able to get to the end of his dropback before needing to scramble. Man, its rough trying to be the Hokies in that game
Seriously. It's just dink and dunk and RPO down the field. Mesh, stick, spot, RB screens, and RPO reads are all that reliably work.
Even on Freshman you barely get 2 seconds after the snap before you need to scramble. The VT OL is straight up bad in that game
Tough to say with a new coach and all the transfers, but man it's got to be better than last year right?
Parker Clement's gave up more sacks than the rest of the OL combined and was one of the worst in all of college football for that. Guaranteed better line this year imo
Name another team that has had not one, but two national sack leaders on the same team.
... just not on the same side of the ball.
Not to mention how impossible it is to recruit in your first season of dynasty. I usually do RTG first but it was impossible even when I was a high 4 star recruit (lost my 5 star on senior night sadly). Then in dynasty I am barely beating FCS teams and JMU with 0 chance of landing any recruits. I am targeting 3 star VA players and not even making top 8. It's almost a good thing I don't make it to the visit stages because half the priorities are orange and red.
Watching college O-Lines, especially VT, over the last ten years since the prior game, made me a lot more forgiving of the "broken logic" for the O-Line in CFB25. VTs O-Line is pretty realistic.
I started looking at schedules within the conference and every team I looked at it appears to have an easy to manageable schedule with the exception of Clemson. I guess that's how bad the ACC is now. With only 4 (at best) good teams, 8 decent teams, and 4 terrible teams, everyone's schedule looks easy.
This made me start to look at other conference schedules and yikes...we might want to thank our lucky stars we are in the ACC. Here is an example of an average SEC schedule. Oklahoma:
Illinois St
Michigan
Temple
Auburn
Kent State
Texas
USC(e)
Ole Miss
Tennessee
Bama
Missouri
LSU
How many ACC schools go 6-6 with that schedule?
Tech might win 3 of these. Maybe Clemson and Miami could hang and get you greater than 6
In fact PFF predictive models have UVA Wake UNC and SMU in the top ten easiest schedule ranking