Cal Sports Report

ACC Football Review: Oddities Dominate the Weekend

Receptions that aren’t receptions. Pick-sixes galore. TD passes from unexpected sources. Turnover paradox. Moving backward without moving. Home is not where the heart is

Jake Curtis

Miami quarterback Cam Ward had no TD passes this week
Miami quarterback Cam Ward had no TD passes this week / Sam Navarro-Imagn Images
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Oddities ruled the weekend in the ACC.

--Reception deception: Cal quarterback Fernando Mendoza had a receiving touchdown on a pass that he threw in the Bears’ 44-7 victory over Oregon State, but that oddity does not match the strange statistical line it produced.

Receiving stats for Mendoza for that game read as follows:

Receptions: 0. Receiving yards: 15. Receiving touchdowns: 1.

The final oddity is that the play was recorded as a 15-yard touchdown reception even though the play started at the 9-yard line.

Cal oddity footnote: Cal outscored its opponents by 28 points over its past five games combined, but went 1-4 in those five games.

--Idle Hands: Clemson did not play this weekend, but the Tigers saw their College Football Playoff chances take a hit anyway.  Ranked No. 9 in the AP poll last week, Clemson dropped to a tie for No. 11 in the rankings released on Sunday.

While Clemson was relaxing and watching games on TV in their street clothes on Saturday, Notre Dame posted a big win over Navy and BYU stayed unbeaten with a win over UCF.  The Irish and Cougars both jumped over Clemson, which was ranked ahead of Iowa State last week but somehow dropped into a tie for the 11th spot with the Cyclones this week even though Iowa State did not play this week either.

Of course, the AP poll is not the ranking used to select the 12 teams that will participate in the College Football Playoff, but the CFP rankings typically parallel the AP rankings closely.

The first CFP rankings will be released on Tuesday, November 5, after next week’s game. Clemson hosts Louisville on Saturday.

--Pick-Six Picnic: Pitt’s offense scored just one touchdown in the first half, yet the Panthers led Syracuse 31-0 at halftime. Orange quarterback Kyle McCord threw five interceptions in that game, and three of those picks were returned for Pitt touchdowns in the first half.

The FBS record for most interceptions returned for touchdowns in a game is four, set by Houston against Texas in 1987.  But three of those Houston pick-sixes were in the second half, so Pitt holds the record for interceptions returned for touchdowns in the first half, if that counts for anything.

Pitt travels to SMU next week, and Mustangs quarterback Kevin Jennings threw three interceptions on Saturday, although none was returned for a touchdown.

--Turnover Tantrum: SMU committed six turnovers in its game against Duke, and the Blue Devils committed none.  Yet SMU still won the game 28-27 in overtime despite that minus-6 turnover margin and even though Duke entered the game with a 6-1 record and was playing at home.

Duke scored 27 points, but it did not score a single point off the Mustangs’ six turnovers.  And the Blue Devils should have won the game on the final play of the fourth quarter, but SMU’s Jahfari Harvey blocked Todd Pelino’s 30-yard field goal attempt on the final play of regulation to send the game into overtime.

“We should’ve lost that game five different times late," SMU coach Rhett Lashlee said. "We should have. And if we played it 100 times, we’re probably losing 99 of them the way the game unfolded. This just happened to be the one time”

No. 20 SMU is 7-1 overall and 4-0 in the ACC, and it hosts Nop. 18 Pitt next week.

--TD Pass the Buck: Miami’s Cam Ward entered the weekend tied for the national lead in touchdown passes with 24, but he did not even lead his own team in TD passes on Saturday. 

Ward had had at least two touchdown passes in every game before Saturday’s 36-14 victory over Florida State, but he did not have any against the Seminoles.   Tight end Elijah Arroyo threw a touchdown pass to Ward, which gave Ward a receiving touchdown and gave the Hurricanes their only touchdown pass of the day.

Miami moved up one spot in the rankings this week to No. 5

--Comeback Cardinal: Louisville fell behind Boston College 20-0 in the second quarter on Saturday, and the Cardinals trailed by 17 points late in the third quarter. 

However, Louisville scored the final 21 points of the game to eke out a 31-27 victory.

Boston College quarterback Thomas Castellanos started the game 10-for-17 with three touchdown passes, but he completed just three of his final 11 passes with no touchdowns.

--Caution, Road Work: Road teams continued their unusual run of success in ACC games this season. Four of the seven conference games this week were won by the road teams, and road teams now have a 20-17 record in ACC games.

The main practitioners of this unlikely trend are Wake Forest and North Carolina. 

With its 27-24 win at Stanford on Saturday, the Demon Deacons are now 3-0 in road games and 1-4 at home.  And that one home win was against North Carolina A&T, an FCS team that is 0-4 in the Colonial Athletic Conference.

North Carolina (4-4) had its best game of the season in its 41-14 victory at Virginia on Saturday, and the Tar Heels are 2-1 in road games overall. The one road loss was against Duke, when UNC outplayed the Blue Devils for nearly three quarters, building a 20-0 lead before losing 21-20.

North Carolina is 0-2 in ACC home games.

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ACC Player of the Year Standings

--1. Quarterback Cam Ward, Miami – 24 TD passes, 5 interceptions for the No. 5 team.

--2. Quarterback Cade Klubnik, Clemson – The third-best TD-to-interception margin in the country at plus-17 (20 TDs, 3 picks).

--3. Quarterback Eli Holstein, Pitt – He left Saturday’s game against Syracuse with an injury but he’s expected to play this week’s game at SMU.

--4. Wide receiver Ja’Corey Brooks, Louisville – Eighth in the nation in receiving yards (799) and sixth in TD catches (8).

 --5. Running back Omarion Hampton, North Carolina – Yes, I know North Carolina is just 4-4, but the guy is fourth in the country in rushing with 1,006 yards.

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Top Five ACC Teams

(We rank based on which teams have had the best results, not which teams we believe are the best teams)

--1. Miami (8-0, 4-0 ACC) – Hurricanes have won three one-score games but they are still unbeaten.

--2. Pittsburgh (7-0, 3-0 ACC) – Big game at SMU on Saturday.

--3. Clemson (6-1, 5-0 ACC) – The Tigers took the week off, but they still look like the best team in the conference.

--4. SMU (7-1, 4-0) – The only loss was to No. 9 BYU by three points.

--5. Virginia Tech (5-3, 3-1 ACC) – Tempted to leave this spot blank because of the sizable gap between No. 4 SMU and the rest of the ACC.

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Jake Curtis
JAKE CURTIS

Jake Curtis worked in the San Francisco Chronicle sports department for 27 years, covering virtually every sport, including numerous Final Fours, several college football national championship games, an NBA Finals, world championship boxing matches and a World Cup. He was a Cal beat writer for many of those years, and won awards for his feature stories.

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