Syracuse football: Orange tied for 12th in ESPN’s ACC power rankings

Last week, the Syracuse Orange quickly jumped up to no. 11 in ESPN’s ACC Power Rankings. As you might have imagined, the increased standing did not last long for SU following a 62-28 drubbing at the hands of Louisville.

This week, Syracuse comes in tied for 12th with NC State. Virginia, the conference’s only winless team is 14th. The blog had this to say about SU:

“Louisville had its way with the Orange offensively, but Cuse's offense wasn't too shabby itself against one of the ACC's top defenses. Still, a 34-point home loss is a 34-point home loss.”

The ranking is fair enough. But I’d actually beg to differ on the final point. Quality opponent is obviously a factor and Louisville is a very good team. If you lose to a peer program by 34, I get i, that punishable. But a top-15 team? It’s tough to see those things the same at all, especially just two weeks into new schemes on both sides of the ball.

As we’ve mentioned before, though, the rankings here don’t matter much. And if you look down the full list from no. 9 on down, these are virtually interchangeable, except for Virginia. Wake Forest, who looked terrible in a 7-3 win over Tulane in week one, looked much better in a 10-point win over Duke. Boston College and the Blue Devils are tied for 10th, and both are 1-1. BC lost to Georgia Tech in week one, then put away UMass in the second half this week. Duke won big in week one, then suffered a fall for the loss to Wake.

NC State is tied with Syracuse because they lost to East Carolina again. These seems more damning than losing to Louisville, but I guess not.

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We could dive far deeper into the “perception vs. reality” nonsense, especially when it comes to Wake and BC. But ultimately, the answer for Syracuse (and all of these teams) is just win. The only standings or rankings that matter are at the ones at the end of the season. And even then, they only matter until the start of the next season. Then we start all over again.

Still have complaints? Feel free to voice them below.