ACC football on the upswing and it couldn't come at a better time | D'Angelo

The long-term future of the ACC may not be trending in a positive direction, but the immediate future of football could be a bright spot.

This is not to say that Charlie Ward and Lawrence Taylor have walked through that door, or the ACC is ready to put three teams in the College Football Playoff. But at a time when the league needs an infusion of good news, it could come in the form of the 2022 football season.

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The league placed five teams in the USA Today/coaches preseason poll — No. 4 Clemson, No. 13 North Carolina State, No. 16 Pittsburgh, No. 17 Miami and No. 19 Wake Forest — second only to the SEC with six. This is the same SEC that will tell you its only rival is the NFL.

And the ACC is the lone conference with five teams in the top 20.

The Associated Press poll will be released Monday. The league did suffer a setback when it was learned Wake Forest will be without quarterback Sam Hartman for an extended time. The 2021 second-team All-Conference QB had a medical procedure Tuesday.

Still, the strength of the league is in its quarterback class.

Ten of the 14 teams return at least one quarterback with starting experience and two others have brought in a transfer who started at his previous school. Phil Steele ranks six ACC teams — Miami, Louisville, NC State, Wake, Virginia and Boston College — among the top 12 quarterback rooms in the country.

"I have never seen it," NC State coach Dave Doeren said when asked about the depth at the position. "I think you're going to see a slugfest.

"If you are playing a team whose quarterback is not savvy and doesn't have experience and yours is, you have a great advantage. We don't have that in any game as far as playing against a nonstarter."

Van Dyke leads QBs in pro potential

Hartman may or not be among that elite group at the end of the season depending on his health. But expect the Hurricanes' Tyler Van Dyke, NC State's Devin Leary, Virginia's Brennan Armstrong and Boston College's Phil Jurkovec to lead the QB parade.

The 6-foot-4, 224-pound Van Dyke has the most pro potential of the group.

And do not sleep on Clemson's DJ Uiagalelei, still dripping with talent after an unexpected rough 2021, Pitt's Kedon Slovis and Louisville's Malik Cunningham.

"I feel like every single team has a well-known great quarterback," Uiagalelei said.

Clemson, the league's lone bright spot over the past decade, still appears to be the non-SEC or Big Ten team with the best shot at the playoffs. The Tigers have been so dominant that a 10-win season in 2021 was viewed as a major slide. The program did take a step back — it had a streak of six consecutive ACC titles snapped — but it finished 14th in the AP poll and will start the season in the top five of most polls.

So the question is: Is Clemson coming back to the pack or is the ACC showing signs of catching up to its most dominant program?

My guess is the latter.

Most win totals have seven programs at an over-under of 7.5. A year ago, just four teams — ACC champion Pitt, Wake, Clemson and NC State — won more than seven games. Besides Clemson, the program receiving the most love from the polls and projections is NC State, which had the second-most votes to win the conference.

A clear line is drawn after the top two and then again after Miami, Pitt and Wake Forest (before the Hartman news), with North Carolina and Virginia in the next tier.

And the league's reputation may be tied to Miami more than any other program. If the Hurricanes finally can pull their weight, exceed expectations and somehow find their way to Charlotte in early December, having that team, that brand, in the national conversation would give the league momentum.

That may be asking a lot of Mario Cristobal in his first season as the man in charge at his alma mater, but it's the reality when it comes to a league that has become irrelevant, with the exception of one program, in recent years.

The past five years have not been kind to ACC football. That's not to say it's all on Miami. Florida State has as much to do with the league's sullied reputation as UM recently, along with a decline at Virginia Tech, a North Carolina program that has consistently underachieved and inconsistency in such places as Pitt, Virginia and Louisville.

ACC football could be on an upswing. Let's hope so because the league needs a boost after being left behind in expansion talks.

Tom D'Angelo is a journalist at The Palm Beach Post. You can reach him at tdangelo@pbpost.com. 

This article originally appeared on Palm Beach Post: ACC football on the upswing thanks to stout quarterback class