Thursday, October 5th
NC State 24 Florida State 20
Amazing what finding a good QB will do for you. And having watched FSU from their ACC debut I am fairly shocked at how mortal they look now. Daniel Evans continues to show poise amid pressure and throws some extremely accurate passes in the clutch to move the NC State offense. Andre Brown is as big and fast a RB as I can recall seeing. The fact he was turning the corner on very fast FSU defenders speaks volumes for his talent. State is developing very good balance on offense and the defense is beginning to step-up. The only problem I forsee for NC State is getting up to play Wake Forest, UVa, and Maryland. Any letdown will result in another Akron-like loss. As for FSU, two losses in the ACC given the parity we are seeing will make it very tough for them to win the Atlantic division.
Saturday, October 7th
Miami(FL) 27 North Carolina 7
850 the Buzz called this the "Please Beat Me" Bowl on the blog. Larry Coker finds some safety by effectively beating a team they were expected to beat. He needs a marquee win of some sort because beating UNC will only carry so far.
Clemson 27 Wake Forest 17
This game was decided by one bad snap on a Wake field goal attempt. Clemson was down 17-3 when the Wake holder miffed the snap and the kicker was unable to get the kick off, the ball was fumbled and Clemson ran it back for a touchdown. It was all downhill from there for the Demon Deacons. Had they simply fallen on the ball and not given up the points it may have gone differently. Clemson found its offense in the fourth quarter and Wake committed four turnovers which essentially did them in. It was an unfortunate way for Wake's win streak to end with special teams self destructing and too many turnovers. At the same time, Wake is the real deal. There were questions about that before, not now. They acquitted themselves well and the Wolfpack are forewarned about facing them next week. Clemson needed to stay at one loss and pulled it out despite being down 14 points in the fourth quarter.
Georgia Tech 27 Maryland 23
Trap game. Maryland's offense had been very lackluster coming in so it was a bit of a surprise they were able to function so well against a Yellow Jacket defense that had posted some fine efforts this season. GT got a balanced attack with Tashard Choice running for 138 yards and another 100+ yard game for Calvin Johnson. It also helps Reggie Ball is playing mistake free football. The Yellow Jackets keep control of their place in the standings and avoid the unnecessary loss.
East Carolina 31 Virginia 21
The upside UVa scored 21 points which means the 37 points was not just a result of playing Duke, The bad news for the Cavs is their defense went out to lunch and ECU got a big win.
Alabama 30 Duke 14
Alabama should be ashamed of themselves. Not only did they give up two touchdowns to Duke but they trailed at halftime! I imagine that someone in the SEC commissioner's office called Alabama at halftime and threatened to throw them out of the conference unless they got their act together. Duke actually had 275 yards of total offense, 202 of that on the ground. Were it not for three turnovers they might have done more. The Crimson Tide should be utterly embarassed to have allow a team as bad as Duke to score 14 points and rack up that many yards on offense.
In other words it was a very weird day in the ACC.
This Week: 6-1
Season: 36-12