Jimmyshivers Week 1 ACC Football Thread

Hello everyone & welcome back for another exciting (and likely incredibly confusing) season of ACC Football. In this year’s game of ACC roulette, we see the conference lose original member Maryland but add Louisville. Adding to the confusion is the partial addition of Notre Dame, who will only play 5 ACC games a year for the foreseeable future. If any conference could get away with adding half a team, it had to be the ACC.

In these weekly threads I will only focus on games involving ACC teams. As a big fan of all of college football I do like to wager on games outside of the conference, but those plays will be confined to my twitter feed. Last season was easily my worst ever in college football, so I spent a good deal of time in the off season perfecting my methodology for both creating my numbers and evaluating match-ups. Let’s bounce back!

Record: 0-0

Wake Forest – UL Monroe Under 45.5 (-105) 1 Unit W

Wake Forest Team Total Under 21.5 (-110) 0.5 Units W

There was a ton of line value on Louisiana-Monroe over the last couple of weeks as the Warhawks were getting anywhere between 7 & 2.5 points, but much of that value has dried up this week as ULM has now become a small favorite. So for me it’s difficult to look to lay the points in a game that I figure to be low scoring. What does still appeal to me is both the game under & the team total on Wake Forest, which is attractively priced just above 21 points.

The name of the game this year in Winston Salem is change; not only is long time coach Jim Grobe gone, but the Deacons lost a league-leading 12 starters off of last years 4-8 team. The offense was hit pretty hard as they lose their top passer and each of their top 2 rushers and receivers. In particular the loss of Michael Campanaro is a huge one as he was a do-everything type who was a huge headache to gameplan for.

New coach Dave Clawson wants his Deacons to run no-huddle for the entire game, and while that sounds like bad news for an under it is not designed to necessarily be an up-tempo offense. Wake will be starting a true freshman tonight in John Wolford, who ran a very similar offense in high school. Here is Clawson on his offense:

“We’re not Baylor, in that you’re always playing 100-miles an hour. At times we’ve played really fast. At times it allows you to play slower. The years we were better on defense at Bowling Green, we purposely slowed the game down. The years we were better on offense, we played faster.”

My takeaway from that is that this no-huddle offense will likely play at a very slow tempo tonight. The problem for me isn’t that Wolford is a true freshman, it’s that he is on an offense that is absolutely devoid of experienced playmakers. While Wake Forest is a high major program, their recruiting profile closely resembles that of a mid major team. Wake had one of the worst offenses in the country last season and now has lost a ton of experience and is transitioning into an all new scheme. That is usually a recipe for an offense that will struggle in their early games.

Adding to that struggle is a Warhawk defense that returns 9 starters and 22 defensive lettermen. As I said before I consider the talent gap very low between the two teams so at this point in the season I consider the experience & continuity edge for ULM to be a big one. ULM dominated a more experienced Wake last season (+99 yard edge in a 21-19 win at Wake) so I expect that Monroe will approach this match-up with a lot of confidence. I actually think that ULM matches up very favorable in the defensive trenches here, and their is more than enough talent + experience to win the 1v1 match-ups on the edges.

I also expect that the Wake Forest Defense is a little better than expected, the Deacons only return 5 starters on that side of the ball but they match-up well with a ULM offense that struggled at times last season and is also bringing a new QB in tonight. While journeyman Pete Thomas is experienced, he was awful last season at NC State (4-9 TD-INT ratio) and was awful against in a loss to them last year (5.9 yards per attempt, picked off twice).

Wolford may wind up being a good quarterback and this offense may wind up being much better than the unimpressive units that Grobe fielded over the last few years, but everything that we know about the game tonight points to an offense that is in prime position to struggle out of the gate. I look for a very conservative offensive mindset from Dave Clawson tonight, and a tightly played game by both teams.

Virginia Cavaliers +21 (-108) 1 Unit

Their is a lot to like about UVA in this spot, UCLA has been showwered with hype all offseason only to open the season by traveling across the country to play a team that everyone expects them to clobber. Virginia was just awful last season, but they do have a decently talented roster (they rate around mid 30’s nationally in recruiting over last 5 years) and they do return 17 starters. Keep in mind that this same UVA team knocked off a really good BYU team (albiet in awful weather) in the opener last year before things duck tailed and they lost their remaining 10 FBS games. They are starting a new QB in Greyson Lambert who should be a solid upgrade over the returning David Watford and while Mike London hasn’t proven to be a good coach he has surrounded himself with good coaching talent (Jon Tenuta, Tom O’Brien, Steve Fairchild). I made this line UCLA -17 so I think were getting a little bit of line value here in a decent spot for UVA to start well and prove that 2014 will not be a continuation of 2013.

North Carolina State Wolfpack -20.5 (-105) 1 Unit

This is simply a play-on spot for me with NCSU, and were getting them under 3 TD’s against a GSU team who is making the jump to FBS this year and is facing some pretty serious attrition. The Wolfpack were awful on both sides of the ball last season but should be much improved in the 2nd year of Dave Doeren’s schemes. Doeren spent a lot of time in the 2nd half of last season getting some of the younger guys on the roster playing time and the result should be a group that is a little more cohesive on the field. Doeren is quietly excited about this season with former Florida QB Jacoby Brissett now taking snaps; even before last season started the coach was very clear that Brissett was the best quarterback on the team. As we saw in this offense at Northern Illinois, when they have the right guy operating the system this offense is very difficult to contain, particularly when they are winning the battle at the LOS (which State should consistently do here). It’s a good spot to lay the points with the Wolfpack here as Doeren wants to shake off the doldrums of last year and impress the home crowd. He will run up the score if he can.

Boston College – UMASS Under 48 (-115) 1 Unit

Very simple logic on this one, BC should dominate an awful Massachusetts offense here but will struggle early this year with their offensive attrition (Williams, Rettig & Amidon all gone). BC should get the W here and may even cover, but for me the under makes alot more sense as BC will likely still be a run-first team and should look to keep it conservative as they look to break in Florida transfer (another one!) Tyler Murphy gently in this game on the road.

Georgia Bulldogs -7.5 (-105) 1 Unit

Hope to get some thoughts up on this soon, but getting the more seasoned replacement quarterback in an extremely hostile environment for Clemson is a huge positive. Sanford is a very difficult place to make a first start. Both defenses should be much improved with so many returning starters but overall UGA has much better depth and should be able to win the war of attrition. I give UGA an advantage at the LOS and it will be difficutl for Clemson to replace the loss of so many explosive playmakers.