ACC Football Predictions: Week 1

Welcome to the Tar Heel Blog’s first week of ACC football predictions. Each week our staff will take a look at each game in the conference and try to get as many outcomes correct as possible. Some winners will be picked after analyzing what each team has done, how they’re doing it, and how they match up with their opponents. Other times, well, let’s just say that sometimes history repeats itself and that analytics aren’t all that necessary. Tar Heel fans are of the highest intelligence, so I’m sure you know what I’m talking about.

As the season progresses, we will also post a leaderboard each week to see who is the most enlightened (or lucky) member on our staff. Additionally, you will be getting the full window into the picks that are made — you will probably see our fun, weird, and maybe even way-too-accurate nicknames for several teams throughout the football season. I personally promise to fit in #IsTheUBack at some point this season.

As one would expect during week one, there aren’t many disagreements on the staff about the winners this week. Aside from a few power five matchups, we can expect the ones that didn’t manage to get such a game scheduled to have a good shot starting the season 1-0. We do have some disagreement on how the Duke vs. Army game will play out, which could be because it’s hard to gage what kind of start the Blue Devils will come out to this year. The same applies to UNC, of course, as they travel out west to face off against Cal. While some of our writers think that the Heels will be able to end this horrendous week one losing streak that they have been on, others (like myself) believe that Larry Fedora’s teams are destined to feel pain to open the season.

Below are this week’s selections. We encourage you to play along with us in the comments below, and let us know which teams will come away from each week as the winner.