Rav's ACC Preview: Buys, Sells, and One Team I'm HATEWATCHING

This conference is the CFB league I still hold near and dear to my heart. Although the ACC gets dragged way more these last couple of seasons for its quality of play (for good reason, last season with the tiebreakers was ridiculous and the bottom half of this conference is genuine dogshit this season), I grew up watching my childhood team play in this conference. I root for this conference's success. I am an ACC guy maybe even more than a Big 12 guy, although ASU trumps Pitt in any fandom at this point. The Big Ten and SEC clearly clear (except in the Playoff LMAO EVERYONE LAUGH AT THE SEC'S LOSING RECORD vs ACC SINCE NIL LMAOOO), but the top of this conference still produces serious national championship caliber teams. 

I'll quit yapping. Let's get into it.

Carson Beck is gone, and Miami went back to the transfer well for a third straight year at quarterback. This time it's Darian Mensah, who threw for 3,900+ yards, 35 touchdowns, and a 67% completion rate at Duke last season while leading the craziest conference title run maybe ever. He had the most downfield pass attempts in all of Power 4. Miami's passing game was already good last year, but it was missing exactly one thing: a guy willing to push it vertically instead of settling for the easy stuff underneath.

That's the fit I love. Mensah brought his own Duke receiver, Cooper Barkate, with him to South Beach, who actually led the nation in the 10-19 yard intermediate range last season (per Pick Six Previews). Pair him with Malachi Toney, who broke Miami's school records for catches and yards ... as a TRUE FRESHMAN btw... and workhorse back Mark Fletcher who averaged 125 yards a game in the Playoff run.

Miami was already one of five Power 4 offenses to run it back with a 3,000-yard passer, 1,000-yard rusher, and 1,000-yard receiver in the same season. Now they've added a quarterback whose entire game is built around the one thing that offense lacked.

This is the best offense in the conference, and it isn't especially close. Goat Whale has not finished construction yet, but I am heavily considering involving Mensah in some capacity.

Jeff Brohm has hit on three straight transfer quarterbacks at his alma mater, and the defense and run game carried Louisville to a near-ACC-title season last year even with Miller Moss struggling towards the end of the season.

There is A LOT to really like about this roster. The pass rush duo of Clev Lubin and AJ Green combined for 12.5 sacks and return, the linebacker room is a top 2 unit in the conference, and Isaac Brown and Keyjuan Brown give Louisville arguably the best running back duo in the ACC. 

Here's my hesitation. Brohm's fourth straight portal quarterback, Lincoln Kienholz, is the first one of the four without any real Power 4 starting experience. He spent his career backing up Kyle McCord and Will Howard at Ohio State and lost the 2025 fall camp battle to Julian Sayin. He showed flashes in garbage time with a strong arm and is very athletic with some juice in the run game, but that's a small sample against backups. Brohm has a track record of developing signal-callers, and I trust the program. I just want to see it before I fully buy in, because an offense with this complimentary around him is wasted if the guy throwing it can't handle tight games in November due to inexperience. Luckily for him, the Cardinals face only of the ACC's top six teams.

Kevin Jennings is back for his third and final year as the starter, and shoutout our guy Jaxon Durelo in chat who would not stop spamming "JENNINGS FOR HEISMAN" in every Saturday Sweats twitch chat throughout the entire season last year ... this time he is a legitimate Heisman dark horse.

Back-to-back 3,000-yard seasons, top five in the ACC in QB Rating both years, and a full recovery from the leg injury that limited him down the stretch last season. He's got a retooled receiver room behind a veteran offensive line that already ranked top 25 in pass protection last year. This offense should be a fun, fast, high-scoring unit again.

Now for the other side of the ball.

SMU lost defensive coordinator Scott Symons to the NFL and had to promote from within. That alone is a real downgrade. Then look at the roster losses: the entire starting defensive line is gone, four starting defensive backs are gone, and in total NINE of their TWELVE All-ACC defenders from last season are no longer on the roster. The linebacker trio is pretty good, as Alex Kilgore, Brandon Booker, and Brandon Miyazono combined for 174 tackles last year, but everywhere else this defense is starting over with three-star transfers plugged into nearly every spot.

A coordinator change plus that much lost star power is exactly the recipe for a defense taking a real step backward, even with a first-round offense carrying the team.

I know how this looks. I had Clemson as my national champion last year, they came in as unanimous ACC favorites at a top-four preseason ranking, and it turned into one of the worst collapses in recent college football memory. Between them last year and how high I was on Oklahoma State two seasons ago (another extremly veteran roster that collapsed), it feels like I pick a team like this every year. Anyways, an 0-3 start to a supposed title run. It would be easy to write this off as me holding a grudge.

But that's not it.

Clemson's offensive line loses all five starters and they didn't sign a single lineman out of the transfer portal to help. Four of the five new starters are former Top 200 four-stars, which sounds fine until you remember none of them have meaningful game reps and played on a team that placed 105th in the nation at rush yds/game. Like, you would think if they had better options behind one of the most veteran O-Lines last year ... they would've went to them. Right? AM I FUCKING CRAZY TO THINK THAT? Sorry. PTSD.

At QB, Cade Klubnik graduated and Chris Vizzina, a three-year backup, has exactly one real start on his résumé: a 29-of-42, 317-yard game against SMU. That's it. And in the secondary, three more All-ACC-level defenders are gone, replaced almost entirely by three-star transfers from Southern Miss, Old Dominion, and Penn State.

All of this traces back to ONE decision. Dabo Swinney remains committed to an anti-transfer philosophy in an era where every other blue blood is using the portal to patch holes immediately. Clemson signed the ACC's second-fewest transfers this cycle and added zero quarterbacks and zero offensive linemen. As dumb and idiotic of a decision this is, I actually respect Dabo for sticking to his intuition this hard. Do I think his seat is getting increasingly hotter by the game and could even be cooked by the end of this season? Absolutely yes I do. But I just think a totally green offensive line, a quarterback with one real start, and a rebuilt secondary is a bad combination to walk into a schedule that still includes the league's contenders + LSU Week 1.

James Franklin brought 12 Penn State transfers and flipped 11 more commits to Blacksburg, and the most important piece of all is quarterback Ethan Grunkemeyer. He was thrown into action as a redshirt freshman after Drew Allar got hurt and completed 69% (nice) of his passes down the stretch. He's a guy who already proved he can run an offense, not one walking into the job cold. That gives Virginia Tech a floor most rebuilding programs don't have.

He's got good weapons too. Ayden Greene returns outside, Duke transfer Que'Sean Brown caught 107 balls the last two years with only two drops, and then there's the tight end room, which might be the best in the conference. Franklin brought five-star Luke Reynolds, the #1 tight end recruit in the 2024 class and the #1 transfer tight end this cycle, WHO I ABSOLUTELY LOVE, to pair with returning co-starter Benji Gosnell. That's an enormous mismatch weapon for a quarterback who already has starting experience and familiarty with his favorite target.

Defensively, Franklin re-hired Brent Pry, the coach he just replaced, as his coordinator, and both starting defensive tackles return in Elhadj Fall and Kemari Copeland. The staff pumped the edge with transfers and the linebacker room adds Noah Chambers, who impressed as a freshman, behind returning leading tackler Kaleb Spencer.

Good quarterback, dangerous tight ends, and a defensive line and linebacker corps that got real reinforcements. Maybe Krabs gets one this season with the Hokies.

CJ Bailey is a legit All-ACC candidate. He's NC State's first 3,000-yard passer since Devin Leary, and he gives this team a puncher's chance in every game. That part of the roster is fine.

The other side of the ball is where I'd be worried if I were a Wolfpack fan. NC State's entire defensive front six is gone. All three starting defensive linemen graduated after combining for 1,600-plus snaps. Caden Fordham, who led all of Power 4 in tackles with 130 last year, is gone too, along with his running mate at the other starting linebacker spot. The replacements are backups moving up a level plus a scattering of portal adds, nothing close to the experience that just walked out the door.

NC State finished 55th of 68 Power 4 teams in defense last year even with that group intact. Take away the entire front six and I don't see how opposing offenses don't just run the ball right at them all season.

Longtime defensive coordinator Randy Bates retired, and on paper that's a massive loss. He built the most consistently disruptive defense in the country, leading the nation in sacks since 2019 and the ACC in defensive touchdowns since 2021. But new coordinator Cory Sanders has been on staff for eight years coaching this same defense, and the scheme and identity aren't going anywhere. Both starting tackles return in Sean FitzSimmons and Nick James, and even after losing two of "The Sharks" linebacker trio (All-ACCs Rasheem Biles and Kyle Louis), Braylan Lovelace comes back as another proven All-ACC piece in the middle. I trust Pitt to keep producing a Top 5 ACC defense with or without Bates.

And then there's Mason Heintschel. The true freshman took over midseason and threw for 16 touchdowns with a 64% completion rate, finishing #2 in the entire country in QB Rating among true freshmen. He now gets a full offseason as the starter. The problem is what's around him. Pitt loses three of its top four receivers and all three tight ends from last year, leaving speedster "Blue" Hicks as basically the only proven weapon in the room. Heintschel is talented enough to make even a thin receiver room competitive, and with that defense behind him, Pitt has a chance in most games on their schedule. But the upper-tier of the ACC may be a stretch.

Just two years removed from being absolutely jipped from the College Football Playoff, FSU is in dire straights.

Florida State is on a 4-17 run against Power 4 competition over the past two seasons, and the 7-17 overall record is the program's worst two-year mark in 50 years, and it happened one year after signing a top-rated transfer class that opened with a win at Alabama before completely collapsing in conference play. Offensive coordinator Gus Malzahn left after that. Norvell is taking the play-calling back himself.

Nearly every position group looks like a downgrade. The QB job goes to Ashton Daniels, who I didn't even know was still in CFB. He finished dead last in the ACC in QB Rating in both of his seasons as a starter at Stanford before a short, horrible stint at Auburn. The offensive line loses all five starters, replaced mostly by non-Power 4 transfers. The defense lost seven starters and twelve defenders transferred out to other Power 4 programs while the staff only brought in four to replace them, a net loss. 

And then there's the schedule. Florida State draws seven of the ACC's top nine teams and only one of the bottom eight, on top of playing Alabama and Florida outside the conference. I mean holy shit man. A downgraded roster walking into arguably the hardest slate in the country is not exactly the recipe for a bounce-back that you're looking for as a Noles fan. This finally feels like the year the Norvell era ends.