ACC Football Staff Predictions: Week 6

After a couple of weeks of controversy in terms of picking, mostly from Jake, this week we get to focus on the things that actually matter: football games.

We’ve hit the time of year where conference matchups dominate and teams start taking bye weeks, so after weeks of having to sift between ten to fourteen games, we now only have a few to have to focus on. Surely this is helping Carolina for getting these nice 3:30 start times for the next couple of weeks, but it makes it tough for us to start to separate from each other.

First, in case you didn’t pay attention last week, the ongoing saga with Jake and his picks have been solved. His lateness was as a result not of spite, but of the fact that he’s doing this odd thing called “serving our country” or something. He realized on Wednesday he had forgotten to make picks, and asked nicely if I would update everything. Seeing as how I didn’t want to remind him before I published because he was likely asleep, I relented.

It’s a good thing he made some picks, here’s how we all did:

It shows how little regard we all had for FSU in that the vast majority of us took Syracuse thinking it would be an “upset” pick, meanwhile Evan, Brandon, and Tanya almost nailed the upset of BC against Clemson.

Also, Miami. Look, I know that UNC is going to be listed as a disappointment for the way this season has gone. I even wrote a nice long post about how disappointing this season was compared to expectations. This week has calmed that down a bit, and despite the fact that the Tar Heels will mostly fade to irrelevance this season they still have a shot at an unthinkably good season compared to three years ago. At the southern end of the conference, though, the Hurricanes are looking more like tropical waves.

Weather humor, get it?

Miami started the season ranked 14th, just four spots behind the Tar Heels, with a lot of hope pinned on the return of D’Eriq King. It hasn’t panned out that way, perhaps the most embarrassing of the losses being the one to the Wahoos last week. After watching UVa, a lot of us thought Miami would thump the Cavs, but instead Miami got their ACC schedule kicked off with a loss, are staring at 2-3, and have to nurse on that loss this week before they come up to Chapel Hill. There’s still time for them to turn it around as well, but as a squad that was expected to fight for a spot in Charlotte, the calls to fire Manny Diaz are loud right now.

Our standings stay tight, although some of the results led to a bit of turbulence. Max now leads all by himself, and in second are...yours truly! Some other guys are there, too (Ok, Jake and Joe are in a tie for second with me), while Micheal is in last place, but at 26-13, it’s pretty easy for him to jump right back up. With small slates for the next few weeks, it’s unlikely we’ll see much more in the separation. Especially when you look at the slate this week:

Only five games, and there is only one game where we disagree. So, there’s a real shot that someone will go 5-0 this week, and it’s also possible a lot of us go 0-5. Either way it won’t change the standings that much. Still it’s fun to keep track.

See y’all at 3:30 in Kenan on Saturday!