ACC Football Week 9: THB Staff Predictions

Raise your hand if you saw Georgia Tech’s upset of Miami coming. Now put your hand back down, liars. Between that and our staff’s unabashed homerism, last week didn’t go great for your esteemed staff: even the most successful of us had two misses to our five hits (including yours truly, not to brag). Boston College’s win over NCSU and Pittsburgh’s triumph over Syracuse also helped mess some of our writers’ predictions.

With that came some turbulence in the rankings: Chad Floyd, our multiple-week leader, saw his previously 3-game lead shrink to one over Evan, thanks to a 3-4 week by the former and a 5-2 week by the latter. Chad leads the field with a 55-17 record, followed by 54-18 for Evan, 53-19 for myself, and Tanya is hot on our tails with a 52-20 record. Here’s the full list, including records and our picks for this week:

Chad’s getting a little flustered after seeing his lead dissipate, clearly. Not only did he go against both Vegas AND our unspoken code of homerism wherever even slightly reasonable, he picked Syracuse against Florida State and Miami against Pittsburgh, both picks going against the grain: he’s joined by just one other writer in the former prediction and four others in the latter. He could rise well above the rest of us or lose his lead completely; there’s not a ton of wiggle room here. But as that shows, we’re clearly not expecting an extremely exciting weekend outside the Heels in the ACC: The Pitt-Miami matchup is the most contentious here, with an 8-5 balance, but overall, we’re pretty much in agreement. Clemson, predictably, has unanimous expectation to win, and while that is the only unanimous pick on the slate, again, there isn’t anything extremely disagreed on. A note: Georgia Tech, N.C. State, Virginia Tech, and Wake Forest are off this week, which is why there are fewer games on the ACC schedule than there were last week.

Agree with our predictions? Think there’s something missing? Sound off below!