Friedlander: Biggest takeaways from Week 7 around the ACC
So much for home-field advantage.
The visiting team won 4 of the 5 conference matchups on the ACC’s condensed Week 7 schedule with Clemson, Georgia Tech, Louisville and Syracuse all notching victories away from home, Their success continues a trend that has seen road teams go 10-3 over the past 2 weeks in league games.
That’s not the only recurring theme that played out Saturday.
Four of those 5 conference games were decided by a touchdown or less. With 3 – Georgia Tech-North Carolina, Pitt-Cal and Louisville-Virginia – coming down to decisive plays in the final 2 minutes.
Those kinds of close games have been the norm in the ACC this season. Fourteen of the first 25 conference games that have been decided by 7 or fewer points. Clemson’s 49-14 win at Wake Forest was the only outlier Saturday.
Just one more example of the parity that exists around the league.
But that’s not the only thing we learned about the ACC in Week 7. Here are some of the other big takeaways:
Tar Heels find another new way to lose
You have to give Mack Brown’s team credit for creativity. The Tar Heels’ season might be circling the bowl at a rapid pace, but they still haven’t run out of new ways to lose.
The downward spiral began on Sept. 21 with the 70-burger they allowed against James Madison. Then came the 2nd half meltdown in which they squandered a 20-0 lead against rival Duke, followed by another close loss to Pittsburgh punctuated by Brown’s unsuccessful 4th down gambles.
Saturday’s 41-34 setback to Georgia Tech may have been the most devastating yet.
UNC put itself in a position to earn a season-saving victory by rallying from a 10-point deficit in the final 3½ minutes. But in the process of celebrating Noah Burnette’s tying field goal with 44 seconds remaining, the Tar Heels forgot to play defense.
Instead of going to overtime against an opponent whose starting quarterback was sidelined with an injury – and who appeared to be satisfied with running out the clock in regulation – UNC watched Jamal Haynes break free for a 68-yard run for the winning touchdown.
And that wasn’t even the worst thing that happened to the Tar Heels on Saturday. After the game, they received the news that teammate Tylee Craft had lost his battle with cancer. Craft was honored in a moving ceremony between the 1st and 2nd quarters that saw Brown reduced to tears as he hugged his ailing player’s mother.
The emotional toll of Craft’s death, combined with the 4-game losing streak, has only intensified speculation about Brown’s future at UNC after this season.
Orange back in the end zone
Clemson’s red-zone struggles last week at Florida State were the cause of at least some minor angst among Tigers fans.
Not to worry.
It took a full quarter to remember how to get there. But after settling for 7 field goal attempts in the 29-13 win against the Seminoles and getting shut out for the first 15 minutes at Wake Forest, Cade Klubnik and his offense finally found their way back into the end zone Saturday.
Klubnik hit Antonio Williams from 22 yards out for the first of his 3 touchdown passes, sparking a 28-point 2nd period that got the 10th-ranked Tigers rolling again. Williams also threw a touchdown pass while Phil Mafah ran for a pair of scores to help Clemson earn its 5th straight win – all by at least 2-score margins – since its opening week loss to Georgia.
The Tigers rolled up 566 total yards (343 passing and 223 rushing) while playing a clean game without a turnover.
“We’re just resilient in everything we do,” Klubnik said after the game. “Just to finish the way we did was awesome.”
There’s still a ‘D’ in Narduzzi’s Pitt Panthers
Pitt’s newly energized offensive attack got the Panthers into the national rankings for the first time since winning the ACC 3 seasons ago. Saturday, it was an old-school Pat Narduzzi defense that will likely help them stay in the polls for at least another week.
Quarterback Eli Holstein was intercepted twice and admittedly played like a freshman for the first time this season as the 22nd-ranked Panthers managed only 277 total yards – 72 of which came on a 2nd-quarter touchdown run – and were shut out in the 2nd half. But that turned out to be good enough to get by thanks to a defense that sacked Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza 6 times, recorded 11 TFLs, came up big on a potential game-tying 2-point conversion attempt and got a little lucky in the final 2 minutes.
The 6 sacks, 3.5 of which were by linebacker Jimmy Scott, were half as many as Pitt recorded in its first 5 games combined. And they came at an opportune time. So did Braylan Lovelace’s tackle of Chandler Rogers on a 2-point play early in the 4th quarter that preserved what turned out to be the Panthers’ winning margin.
Although Saturday’s performance was by far its least impressive of the season, the 17-15 win that improves Pitt to 6-0 for the first time since 1983 is significant nonetheless in that it shows the Panthers’ ability to win even when their usually explosive offense isn’t in high gear.
Another close call for Cal
Cal has endeared itself to the rest of the ACC with the way its players, coaches and fans have embraced their new association with the conference. The Bears have also made some new friends by playing just well enough to lose in each of their 1st 3 conference games.
Those losses – to Florida State, Miami and Pitt – have come by a combined 7 points. And in 2 of the 3, they’ve either had the lead or been in a position to score the winning points in the final 2 minutes.
As with the targeting infraction that wasn’t called last week against the Hurricanes, it would be easy to blame Cal’s latest loss on the missed 40-yard field goal by Ryan Coe with 1:55 remaining. While was definitely a difference-maker, the game might not have come down to that decisive kick had Justin Wilcox not outcoached himself by going for 2 – unsuccessfully – after his team’s first touchdown early in the game. Or if the Bears hadn’t given up those 6 sacks and continually hurt themselves by committing 12 penalties for 110 yards.
They’re just another reminder of how thin the margin between winning and losing can be.
“We don’t have the margin to go play bad football from time to time and expect to win against a top-25 team,” coach Justin Wilcox said. “ (We) can’t expect that. So I don’t feel sorry for us. I don’t feel sorry for our players. I don’t feel sorry for anybody. Those are the things we have to fix.”
I can see Cal beating Oregon State, Wake, Stanford, and possibly NC State if the Wolfpack don’t get things on track. Bowl eligibility is a real possibility for them.
UVA put up a good fight but they might only win 1-2 more games with their remaining schedule. Coming into this game with a 4-1 record, they should have had a packed house. At $19/ticket, the fact they still had an empty stadium is embarrassing. They are not at all invested in football.
Pitt looks legit. They still have SMU, Clemson, and Louisville so it’ll be interesting if they can sneak their way into the ACC title game.