Tudor's Take: What we learned Saturday

It’s not so much parity as mediocrity again this season in ACC football.

With Saturday’s road losses by Virginia Tech at Boston College, North Carolina at Virginia and Wake Forest at Maryland, the odds are against the league producing a national top-15 team. In fact, cracking the top 20 in the final polls will be difficult enough.

Here’s why: There are three one-loss teams left — Georgia Tech, Florida State and Boston College, all at 5-1 overall. All three have at least one game against the other two. Florida State has two — at Georgia Tech (Nov. 1) and against BC (Nov. 15).

But that’s only part of the problem. Outside the league, FSU has to face Florida (Nov. 29), BC hosts Notre Dame (Nov. 8) and GT winds up at Georgia (Nov. 29). The Eagles could possibly be favored against Notre Dame, but FSU and GT almost certainly will be underdogs.

It’s hardly a stretch to predict that two teams with 6-2 league records and 9-3 overall marks will meet for the conference championship game on Dec. 6 in Tampa. If so, national interest would be so minimal that television ratings might resemble a soccer score.

The biggest problem in the league hasn’t changed a lot, either. It’s mundane offensive strategies, magnified by average quarterbacking. With the exception of BC, which has no business whatsoever being 2-1 and 5-1, every team in the league is playing not to lose on offense. The Eagles’ Jeff Jagodzinski — with Steve Logan calling plays — has emerged as the only consistently aggressive head coach in the conference.

Even with Hakeem Nicks on the field, Carolina’s Butch Davis on Saturday all but shut down his offensive attack during the final few minutes of regulation and in the end got out-Al Grohed by Al Groh. The two offensive units could have switched uniforms, and hardly anyone would have noticed the difference.

At Wake Forest, the injury to kicker Sam Swank and the offensive line’s inability to create running room for Josh Adams has led to near complete offensive impotency. It’s a real mess.

Hope could be on the way, however.

Clemson’s top two targets for Tommy Bowden’s replacement are Texas Tech’s Mike Leach and South Florida’s Jim Leavitt, both of whom are cutting-edge offensive thinkers.

There are others on Tiger AD Terry Don Phillips’ list, but Leach and Leavitt are the top two if you automatically rule out likely unapproachable dream hire Mack Brown of Texas. Should the Mackster somehow pull off another national championship, he’d get a salary bump that would rival a banking bailout figure.

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With Carolina’s Brandon Tate out of the running, who is your current favorite for ACC player of the year?

Nicks, maybe? FSU running back Antone Smith? BC quarterback Chris Crane? A GT offensive lineman, perhaps Andrew Gardner? An interior offensive lineman hasn’t won it but once — Duke’s Mike McGee in 1959. In fall fairness, McGee was essentially a two-way player during the one-platoon era. But if ever the stage is set ...

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Groh probably has won his way out trouble at Virginia by sweeping  the three straight high-priority home games against Maryland, ECU and Carolina.

The posse hasn’t completely disbanded and there are road games ahead at GT, Wake and Virginia Tech. But if he can finish 6-6 and sophomore QB Marc Verica continues to improve, that’ll likely be good enough. A loss to Carolina in Charlottesville would have left him in the stew, however.

Some UVa hard hitters still have eyes for UCLA offensive coordinator Norm Chow, and there’ll always be a degree of Jim Grobe talk. But Groh can no longer be described as a gone coach walking.