ACC Football: What We’ve Learned, Week 2

Mark L. Baer-USA TODAY Sports

We’re two weeks into the 2013 college football season and the Atlantic Coast Conference is still relatively free of embarrassment. What strange and mystical land did we wake up in, folks?

Boston College 24, Wake Forest 10

It was a fairly decent effort for the Eagles on Friday night, who don’t look nearly as bad as they did last year. Want to know where this team actually is, though? Watch the next two games. On Friday, we learned that Boston College is not the worst team in the ACC anymore.

Miami 21, Florida 16

Ugly football game to be sure, but a big win for the ACC. The ACC Coastal favorites took care of business against a good Florida Gators team which, honestly, didn’t look very good yesterday. The Gators coughed it up five times, but Miami only had 212 yards of total offense. If you’re Miami, you can happily claim the fact that you won, but a dominant effort it was not. Opportunistic, yes, but not dominant by any stretch. If anything, Florida dominated them on paper, but the last time I checked, games are played on turf, not box scores. In this one, we learned that Miami apparently doesn’t need a lot of yards to win games.

North Carolina 40, MTSU 20

Nice rebound for North Carolina against the Blue Raiders, posting 511 yards of offense. The run game wasn’t great, as they got just 134 net yards on 41 carries, but Middle Tennessee wasn’t much better. The Heels can work with this, but their run defense is going to have to be air-tight in two weeks as they go to face Georgia Tech following a bye. Here, roughly all we learned is that Conference USA is no match for UNC.

Clemson 52, South Carolina State 13

Clemson did exactly what they had to do in beating the stuffing out of South Carolina State, and then took the second half off. What we learned here is that the possibility of a team going up big and then cruising is why you don’t lay 52 points in games like this.

Virginia Tech 45, Western Carolina 3

The Hokies rolled in their home opener on Saturday, taking out a hapless Western Carolina team by 42 points. In spite of that, Logan Thomas did not have a great game, throwing a touchdown and two picks. The Virginia Tech defense made sure this was never a game, with WCU only managing 162 total yards, and the Hokie run game did much of the rest. Here, we learned that Virginia Tech can do things when not playing Alabama, but we still need to learn what’s up with Thomas.