ACC Football: What We’ve Learned, Week 2

Oregon 59, Virginia 10

Now this was ugly and it went exactly how most people thought it would. We didn’t learn anything about these two teams that we didn’t already know, except that maybe Oregon takes a lot of penalties.

Maryland 47, Old Dominion 10

The Maryland Terrapins have had two easy games on the schedule to start the season, but they have nevertheless blown both opponents apart. Next week, the Terps play UConn, who they will most likely obliterate as well. Here, we learned that Maryland can beat teams like Old Dominion, and will probably stay hot in the near term, but let’s see how they do in the conference. Will they stay as hot?

Duke 28, Memphis 14

Two easy ones in the first two weeks for Duke and now two wins. The Blue Devils just about doubled-up the Tigers in terms of yardage and Brandon Connette threw two touchdowns. One negative, however, was that Duke was -1 in terms of turnover margin. I don’t know that we learned much of anything about Duke this week, or last week for that matter, but the Yellow Jackets will be a tough task next week.

Northwestern 48, Syracuse 27

Poor Syracuse, scheduling two reasonably difficult games in their first two weeks. Their 0-2 doesn’t say too many great things, but at least the Orange were losing to good teams. This week, they got blasted by a ranked Northwestern team. They can’t feel good that Drew Allen threw four interceptions, though. We’ve learned this week that, as expected, Syracuse is going to struggle against better competition.

NC State 23, Richmond 21

If any game was going to truly be embarrassing on Saturday, this would have been it. NC State needed late heroics to beat FCS Richmond. The Pack were -2 on turnovers and looked very much in doubt of victory all the way. Their next game is against Clemson following a bye, so what we’ve learned is that NC State has plenty of figure to figure out before then.