Around the Conference Table: ACC College Football 2026 - Week 2

Welcome back to Season 3 of Cal in the ACC. Let’s take a look at what our neighbors on the East Coast are doing.

Florida A&M - 7 Miami (Miami wins 77-7)

Piotr T Le - Miami did what Miami does, no new info here.

Callie Wake - Boring game. Miami showed off they’re Miami.

Christopher Helling - Miami was unstoppable all the way down to their 4th string players (or true freshmen), finishing 77-0 Miami at the end of the 3rd quarter, and the teams played an abbreviated 4th quarter. Miami also had a record 856 yards of offense, and their one misstep was a 4th string player getting stripped for a fumble return TD.

Villanova - 24 Louisville (Louisville wins 59-13)

Callie Wake - Louisville won as expected, but surprised they didn’t hang more on nova

Norfolk State - 25 Virginia (Virginia wins 59-3)

Piotr T Le - Miami did what Miami does, no new info hereVirginia will continue to mash people’s faces into the ground.

Callie Wake - Virginia was being nice, they could’ve won by way more

Christopher Helling - Virginia is an efficient, well-balanced offense, while the defense was mostly bend but not break. NSU had more success than I would have expected (this game felt less lopsided than Clemson-LSU) but couldn’t finish drives. UVA mainly rushed 4 and had good coverage behind it, and NSU QBs didn’t have much success throwing the ball. The NSU run game was shut down as well (under 2 yards/rush), while UVA just played vanilla football and kept scoring. 3 NSU turnovers didn’t help.

Richmond - NC State (NC State wins 73-0)

Callie Wake - NC State won as expected.

Christopher Helling - Richmond is supposed to be a good FCS team, usually in the FCS playoffs (4 of the last 5 years), but this was a blowout. NCSU set program records for rush yards in a game (428), rush TDs (8), total yards (734), and had the most TDs since 1919 (10) and most points since 1936 (73). There were a lot of missed tackles by Richmond that turned normal runs into explosive 40+ yard runs, and terrible coverage for easy completions to wide open receivers. The only negative for NCSU this game was that NCSU WR Victor Snow muffed two punts, and lost one for a turnover. Yet to be seen if Richmond is not as good as they were, or if FCS schools can’t compete in the modern NIL era.

Rutgers - Boston College (Boston College wins 28-21)

Piotr T Le - Rutgers, you are now the worst team in the P4. Rutgers is also 0-2 against the football powerhouse state of Massachusetts.

Callie Wake - Finally, and interesting game. This one was uuuuuuugly! Not as bad as the UMass game last week, but definitely one of the two games in the ACC where neither team wanted to win.

Nick Kranz - The kind of game that fills you with ACC pride.

18 Tennessee - Georgia Tech (Georgia Tech loses 24-45)

Piotr T Le - Rough game for GTech who is face tanking a season where their OC and DC have left with the former taking the QB in waiting with him to Florida.

Callie Wake - Alberto Mendoza I’m glad we never went after you. This one was ugly from the start. Tennessee had GTech’s number from play one. Mendoza looked rattled for a lot of the game, and the Volunteers defense took advantage.

Nick Kranz - There were some signs that Haynes King was papering over plenty of issues at Georgia Tech and it’s looking more and more like this season (and the program generally) are going in a rough direction.

East Tennessee State - UNC (UNC wins 35-3)

Piotr T Le - Bill B is 2-0 for the first time since 2019!

Callie Wake - As expected, UNC won. Hard to believe there’s a real future where UNC starts the season 3-0.

Old Dominion - Virginia Tech (Virginia Tech wins 44-21)

Callie Wake - While closer than expected, this one was never in doubt for VTech.

Christopher Helling - The biggest factor in this game was probably the dominance by the VT defensive line, who ended up sacking ODU QB Quinn Henicle 7 times (not to mention all the fumbles they forced, with 3 first half fumbles as VT shot out to a 34-6 lead at halftime). Henicle is apparently a good runner, and he started to find some success on the ground by the time VT had some backups in for the defense. QB Ethan Grunkemeyer relied pretty heavily on his tight ends this game, as VT’s run game didn’t find much success. ODU’s WR Josh Rodriguez and S Lucas Struck were pretty impressive, though.

Nick Kranz - Some early proof of tangible progress for Tech under James Franklin to basically flip last year’s result against ODU, but I’m much more interested to see if the Hokies can defeat September Maryland next week.

Wake Forest - Purdue (Wake Forest wins 38-36 in 2OT)

Piotr T Le - ACC > Big 10, many people are saying this. Also Wake Forest’s HC Dickert will be a hot name in the coaching carousel come this coming off-season.

Callie Wake - Easily game of the week. Despite being bottom level teams in their respective conferences, Wake Forest and Purdue fought with true honor. Despite having the lead at the half, the Demon Deacons squandered opportunities and stalled on drives, resulting in just 6 points in the final 2 quarters. The overtime heroics make this one an instant classic.

Here’s some nifty trivia: The Boilmakers picked up 329 yards from the arm of Ryan Browne in the loss to Wake Forest.

Christopher Helling - WF almost choked this game away, leading 23-13 and letting Purdue back in the game with bad offensive play calling (burned 14 seconds late in the 4th quarter throwing 3 straight times with 3 minutes left in the game with the lead, not even making Purdue burn timeouts). WF was getting pressure on 4-man rushes and gave QB Ryan Browne a hard time for most of the game, but the defense was worn down by the end and RB Fame Ijeboi kept having success on the ground as WF struggled to tackle him, and Purdue went from 23-13 to tie the game 23-23 to send the game to OT. QB Gio Lopez came in with some clutch runs in OT to will his team to victory, 38-36 WF.

Nick Kranz - A 23-23 tie at the end of regulation feels about right for this kind of game. Wake was able to escape by running Gio Lopez a ton, but it’s hard seeing this offense doing much against more credible opposition.

UCF - Pitt (Pitt wins 12-7)

Piotr T Le - On the surface the score is disappointing for the Pitt Panthers after last week, however, they did play in conditions equivalent to playing in a Monsoon in Vietnam, so I will give them a pass here.

Callie Wake - The other game where neither team wanted to win.

Nick Kranz - I was laughing at Pitt 59 points to 12 (including a safety) but I guess this game was wacky due to weather and Pitt’s pretty reliant on Mason Heintschel’s arm, so let’s wait until Thursday’s game against Syracuse before making any assumptions about what Pitt can do against ACC competition.

Duke - Illinois (Duke wins 31-27)

Piotr T Le - ACC > Big 10, many people are saying this. Nate Sheppard is a dude.

Nick Kranz - Duke was decimated in the portal and probably isn’t very talented . . . but the schedule stacks up such that they could easily be 6-0 before a trip to Virginia in late October.

Georgia Southern - Clemson (Clemson wins 22--7)

Piotr T Le - Dabo is not having a great time, the game was much closer than the score indicates.

Callie Wake - Don’t let the score fool you, Clemson had a 9 point lead going into the 4th quarter. I swear I thought Dabo was having a stroke because of how mad he was. Ga Sou played really well for a sun belt team, keeping the score very close with crucial defensive stops all night. The only problem was Clemson’s defense was just good enough to keep GaSou away from scoring. Clemson looks beatable, especially with their starting QB going down during the game. Hopefully their freshman backup isn’t Caleb Williams.

Christopher Helling - QB Tait Reynolds started to get more snaps as a potential starter. GS had no rush offense, and while QB Max Johnson could pass well, they couldn’t complete passes when they mattered most. Neither team ran the ball well, but Clemson shut down the GS offense better.

Nick Kranz - Georgia Southern isn’t, like, the *worst* non-power program out there, but scoring just one touchdown and failing to put the game away until the 4th quarter says nothing positive about Clemson - and the backup QB who had to come in after starter Tait Reynolds went down was 4-7 with just 19 yards, so monitor that situation closely.

UC Davis - 17 SMU (SMU wins 56-10)

Callie Wake - NO AGGIES NO!!!! NOT LIKE THIS!!!!! My boys, they massacred my boys!!!! lol. Yeah that wasn’t a good game for Davis but it was within expectations. We scored more points than I thought we would, which is something promising. SMU on the other hand, won as expected, and maintain their status as the top Mustang.

Any other thoughts on the teams?

Piotr T Le - ACC is Miami and Virginia look to be the best two teams in the conference. Former due the weight of talent, latter due to the literal weight and heft of their OL.

Nick Kranz - The ACC has played 8 games against FCS competition and won all eight by an average margin of 51 points. Sadly, I think this says much more about the growing gap between levels of football than it does about the relative quality of the ACC. There’s just nothing interesting to say about these kinds of games any more.