For some off-season football reading, we already looked at the ACC’s 5 best Out of Conference wins of the 2020s. Unfortunately, that was an unimpressive list, especially with the lack of OOC games in the first year of the decade. 2021 was better, but there were still too many cringe-worthy losses.
The narrative doesn’t just get set with a lack of quality wins though, ugly OOC losses set you significantly back as well.
With just 2 seasons in for the 2020s, there are already some real black eyes on the ACC’s football resume.
For the previous decade, we ranked the ACC’s 50 biggest OOC wins of the 2010s.
They were some great wins there. That’s for sure.
1. Florida State 17 Jacksonville State 20 – September 11, 2021
It doesn’t get any worse than for Florida State and the ACC. Florida State lost to an FCS school that ended up with a 5-6 record. Jacksonville State threw a game-winning 59-yard pass as time ran out for the stunning victory. It was a nightmare of a loss in every sense of the word for Florida State. The decade has 8 more years, but what are the sports betting odds you’ll see a worse loss for an ACC school this decade? I don’t think we’ll see one.
2. Pittsburgh 41 Western Michigan 44 – September 18, 2021
Pittsburgh won the ACC and won 11 games, but this was an ugly loss. You can’t have your conference champion losing to a team that finished 4th in the MAC. It’s a really bad look. The Pitt defense gave up over 500 yards on defense, and you felt like Pittsburgh didn’t build off the win at Tennessee the week before. The Panthers recovered after this loss, but the ACC’s better teams need to avoid losses like this in the future.
3. Virginia Tech 35 Liberty 38 – November 7, 2020
Liberty turned out to be a pretty good team finishing the season with just 1 loss and ranked, but under any circumstances should Virginia Tech be losing at home to the Flames? Being a loss to an in-state school compounded the issues with this one. A debacle of a finish with Justin Fuente’s timeout giving Liberty’s kicker another chance to win the game cost the Hokies dearly and sent Virginia Tech fans into an irate frenzy.
4. Duke 28 UNC-Charlotte 31 – September 3, 2021
UNC-Charlotte won just 5 games in 2021 and went 3-5 in Conference USA, but one of those 5 wins was against a dreadful Duke team that went winless in the ACC. This loss was just the first indication of how truly bad Duke was going to be. Early in the season losses like create a hole for the ACC perceptions that’s hard to dig out of.
5. Georgia Tech 21 Northern Illinois 22 – September 4, 2021
Georgia Tech needed a positive start to the 2021 season to restore confidence in Geoff Collins’s plan in Atlanta. The season was derailed after a disastrous opening game. Northern Illinois was coming off a winless 2020, was an 18 1/2 underdog, and had only won 5 games the previous 2 years. The Jackets looked terrible in this game and turned out to be a terrible team.
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3 pings
Hokie Mark says:
May 8, 2022 at 8:10 pm (UTC -5)
Sadly, the worst losses are more significant that the best wins lately.
Jfann says:
May 8, 2022 at 8:30 pm (UTC -5)
100% agree on that
CK1 says:
May 9, 2022 at 7:25 am (UTC -5)
The NIU game was strange because even with all the defensive lapses, GT had been moving the ball very effectively. I never really felt like we would lose, even when down 1, as we had the ball last if I recall. They had all kinds of difficulty with Gibbs, so I figured we would get to mid-field and he would bust through and push us over the hump. That play never arrived.