ACC Football News & Notes: Conference Play Gets Underway

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As the first month of the college football season wraps up this weekend, conference action in the Atlantic Coast Conference is starting to take over. Some teams are finishing up their non-conference portion of their schedules, while others are beginning to focus on league play. Soon, everyone will be deep into ACC football, with a chance to set themselves up for a shot at a spot in the conference championship game in December. Let’s take a look at how things went in the ACC last weekend.

As has been the case since this year got started, there was good and bad news for the league last weekend. The bad is that two members of the Top-25 poll suffered defeats last weekend. Both Miami (1-2) and Virginia Tech (2-1) took one on the chin. Both losses were at home and to Power-5 conference foes. In Miami’s case, it was a loss to Michigan State. For Virginia Tech it was to West Virginia. They both will have one more shot at non-league play before the real season gets underway. The Hurricanes will welcome Central Connecticut State to the sunshine state. It will be the first meeting between the two programs. The Hokies will welcome the Richmond Spiders to town. These two have not been on the football field facing one another since 1986 when Virginia Tech walked away with a 17-10 victory. The Hokies hold a 37-10-4 all-time record against the Spiders.

If you are a fan of offenses that like to throw the football, then Saturday was your lucky day. Three quarterbacks threw for over 300 yards last Saturday with one adding over 100 yards rushing as well. UNC Sam Howell had quite a day for himself in their win over Virginia. Howell was named ACC QB of the Week as he threw for 307 yards and five touchdowns while gaining a career-high 112 yards on the ground. He has now thrown two or more TD’s in 23 of 28 games, three or more in 16 of 28 four or more six times, five or more three times.

Pittsburgh’s Kenny Pickett threw for 382 yards in Pitt’s loss to Western Michigan 44-41. He now finds himself second on the Panthers’ all-time passing yards list trailing only Alex Van Pelt. Heading into their non-conference game with New Hampshire, Pickett has 8,923 yards through the air. Van Pelt finished his career at Pittsburgh with 11,267 (1989-1992). The third member of this group is Miami signal-caller D’Eriq King who passed for 388 yards in his team’s loss to Michigan State 38-17. His favorite target in that game was Charleston Rambo who caught 12 balls in the afternoon. Rambo became just the third receiver in program history to have a dozen catches in one game.

The Syracuse (2-1) defense has been playing at a high level in the first month of the season. They ranked third in the country in tackles for losses per game. The Orangemen have averaged 10.7 per game so far, and for the season to date, they have registered 32 tackles for loss in three games. It should come as no surprise that the defensive unit is ranked #1 in the league. This week is a bit of a revenge game for Syracuse, as they will host Liberty for the second straight year. Last year Liberty came away with a 38-21 win. In that win, the Flames use a ground attack as their path to success in winning their first-ever game vs an ACC opponent. They ran through Syracuse’s defense to the tune of 338 yards.

In Virginia’s (2-1) loss to UNC, 59-39, quarterback Brennan Armstrong had the best day of them all throwing the football. He went for 554 yards in the loss and broke the single-game passing record which was set back in 2017 vs UConn by Kurt Benkert who threw for 455 yards on that day. Armstrong is the first Cavalier QB to throw for 500 yards in a single game.

Next week we will have more from the Atlantic Coast Conference.