The Clemson football program has absolutely dominated the ACC for more than the last half-decade.
The Tigers are currently on a streak of winning six-straight ACC Championships and nothing seems to be slowing them down. Clemson has proven to be ‘plug-and-play’ over the course of the last few seasons and the Tigers will now be turning to a new quarterback in D.J. Uiagalelei, who might have the most potential of any starter in Clemson football program history.
Despite all the reasons to believe that Clemson football will continue to dominate the conference as the Tigers have in the past, there are a few analysts who are going out on the limb with the hopes that the gap between the Tigers and everyone else is closing.
One of those is ACC Network Analyst EJ Manuel, the former Florida State quarterback. During a discussion as part of the ACC Football Kickoff, Manuel said that the Miami Hurricanes weren’t just good enough to compete with Clemson, but they were good enough to be National Title contenders.
EJ Manuel just said that this is a Miami football team that can compete not just with Clemson for the ACC title, but also in the country for the title. There are just some statements which require no response.
— Walt Deptula (@deptulahasrage) July 21, 2021
Miami would have trouble beating the second-string unit for Clemson football
The truth of the matter is that there’s just no validity to Manuel’s statement in any way, shape or form.
As WCCP radio host Walt Deptula pointed out, Miami played two teams who were top-12 worth last season- Clemson and North Carolina- and do you know what happened in both of those games? They were beaten by a combined score of 104-43. That’s an average of 30.5 points.
Oh, and anyone that watched the 42-17 blowout that the Hurricanes suffered at the hands of Clemson knows that it wasn’t even that close.
Every year we hear about the Miami hype and how the Hurricanes are going to be a legitimate threat and then what happens? They fold as soon as they play a team of consequence.
D’Eriq King is a talented player, but what does he have around him? How is he going to compete with programs who have 4-stars and 5-stars all over the field? Miami has lost pieces on their defense- in particular their talented defensive ends- and yet we somehow expect that they’re going to take a major step forward and compete with Clemson- and potentially become a National Championship contender?
It doesn’t make any sense.
If you want to try and make the argument that North Carolina is going to compete with Clemson this year- though that still seems far-fetched- we’ll allow it to some degree. But let’s stop with the Miami hype.