Well for the 'pack to win the ACC, they'd certainly have to finish above 4th place. Which they have not done in at least 10 years, I believe.
They have a nice team, and are certainly capeable of beating just about anyone on any certain day. They have a quality offensive backfield.
But their question marks are many - no top flight receivers, lots of new pieces in their secondary and LB corp.
Lets remember they lost at home last year to an unranked GT (NC St was #9 at the time), as well as on the road to UVA and Maryland. While they did manage to beat ACC champ Fl State (in a game where the qb played so poorly that the head coach received calls from former players stating that the qb threw the game for gambling debts), they also barely beat ACC winless Duke, winning by 2 points.
NC State was as much of a making of their horribly weak schedule last year as anything else. They will travel to Ohio St and play at the Horseshoe their 3rd game of the year, as well as host Texas Tech this year.
IMO, look for Maryland to win the ACC - best staff in the country (even with O'brien
), their underrated backfield returns intact, and they bring a few kids who could be impact players. And their OOC schedule is so weak it is an embarassement - allowing them to "get healthy" for the conference games, if necessary.
NC State may wind up winning the National Championship - who knows, but so far they are the most hyped-team with the least proven on the field I can recall in a long time.
, he starts out the GT paragraph with "something is wrong here"
.