It’s been 221 days since Indiana won the College Football Playoff National Championship, with just one remaining until the start of the 2026 FBS season.
On Saturday, Bill Belichick and North Carolina open against TCU in Dublin – one of five games involving an ACC team, on a weekend where the conference takes centre stage.
Last year, the conference made headlines for all the wrong reasons, unable to crown a champion worthy of competing in the College Football Playoff.
Miami did everything it could in the postseason to redeem the ACC, knocking off Texas A&M, Ohio State and Ole Miss in December and January before pushing the Hoosiers to the limit in the title game – falling one possession short in a 27-21 loss.
The U is back, but is the rest of the conference?
Clemson will attempt to make its claim after a lost 2025 season, though it will start the year outside the Top 25 in the AP Poll – its first time unranked in the preseason since 2011. Aside from the Hurricanes, Louisville was the only team from the ACC to crack the initial list, coming in at 24.
It’s still another week until Miami opens on the road against Stanford, but it’s by far the ACC program with the most buzz with the new year about to kick off.
A look at five storylines in the conference this season:
The Hurricanes are ready to storm back
What do you do when you get to the brink of winning the National Championship, then lose your left tackle and two star edge rushers in the first round of the NFL Draft? If you’re Mario Cristobal, you reload and get arguably stronger in the trenches.
The Hurricanes brought in defensive end Damon Wilson II, who finished third in the SEC with nine sacks last year at Missouri, to help fill the void left by Rueben Bain and Canadian Akheem Mesidor — drafted 15th and 26th, by the Buccaneers and Chargers, respectively — and Cristobal replenished the left side of his offensive line with incoming five-star guard Jackson Cantwell, who steps in in place of Francis Mauigoa, who went 10th overall to the Giants.
Miami also added depth on both fronts and returns a pair of defensive standouts in Ahmad Moten Jr. and Justin Scott, both of which could be amongst the first interior linemen off the board next April.
But the prize of the Hurricanes’ portal haul is quarterback Darian Mensah, who was a steadying factor in a topsy-turvy season at Duke that featured five losses and still concluded with an ACC championship.
Mensah threw 34 touchdowns with just six interceptions, and should be an upgrade over Carson Beck, who strung together a collection of performances that ranged from outstanding to back-breaking last year. Beck threw a combined six interceptions in Miami’s two conference losses last year and threw the pick in the final minute of its National Championship loss to Indiana in January.
Miami also retained its two best skill players on offence in running back Mark Fletcher Jr., who rushed for 507 yards in four playoff games last season, and do-it-all receiver Malachi Toney, who set program records with 109 catches and 1,211 as a true freshman in 2025. And if they’re not enough for opposing defences to deal with, the Hurricanes also added Cooper Barkate via the portal, after a 72-catch, 1,106-yard season as Mensah’s favourite target at Duke.
Malachi Toney is only going to get better
Toney’s initial breakout came as an unknown, behind six catches, 82 receiving yards and a touchdown in Miami’s season-opening win over Notre Dame last August – the head-to-head result that ultimately got the Hurricanes into the playoffs and helped leave the Irish on the outside-looking-in.
By January he was one of the most recognizable names in college football, the most electrifying receiver outside of Ohio State’s Jeremiah Smith.
Toney had 18 catches in three games before even turning 18 years old last season and got better as the year went on.
He had 107 receiving yards and two touchdowns in a prime-time win over then-undefeated Florida State in Week 6 and had a season-high 13 catches in a 38-7 season-ending win over Pitt that finally won the favour of the selection committee and flipped the Hurricanes’ fate. He scored the game’s only touchdown in the fourth quarter of Miami’s playoff win over Texas A&M, added another in the semifinal against Ole Miss and had 10 catches, 122 yards and a touchdown in that narrow loss to Indiana in the National Championship.
Statistically, Toney’s body of work was staggering. His 109 receptions were an ACC record for a true freshman and just five short of Rondale Moore’s FBS record at Purdue in 2018. He led the nation in Yards After Catch, in part because of his versatility, which allows him to attack defences at different levels. Toney caught 40 screen passes last year, but was equally effective in the slot and as a downfield receiver, finishing with five games of 100 receiving yards or more. A part-time quarterback in high school, he was even involved in some late-season trickery, throwing touchdown passes – including one to Beck – in two of Miami’s four wins in November.
With Mensah at quarterback, Toney could have even more opportunities to stretch the field. Mensah finished in the top 10 in the FBS with 32 completions of 20-plus air yards, and finished second amongst all passers with 3,973 yards.
Can Dabo Swinney get Clemson back on track?
This time last year, Clemson was a trendy national championship pick. And though it did meet Penn State in late-December in the Pinstripe Bowl at Yankee Stadium, it wasn’t exactly the postseason game that many people had those two programs pencilled (or even written in permanent marker) to play in.
Everything went wrong for Dabo Swinney and the Tigers in 2025. It started with a tight Week 1 loss to LSU in Baton Rouge, escalated with a walk-off loss on the road against Georgia Tech in Week 3 and spiralled out of control with an embarrassing blowout loss at home to Syracuse seven days later.
Following the loss to the Yellow Jackets, Swinney stood defiantly in front of the media, daring the program to fire him, suggesting that if it was “tired of winning”, it could “send [him] on their way”. Clemson didn’t, and proceeded to lose three more games, eventually finishing 7-6 – its worst season since Swinney’s year as head coach in 2010.
For all its shortcomings, Clemson still managed to match a program record by having nine players drafted this past April, including two in each of the first two rounds. And Swinney has gradually adapted to the new era of college football, having dipped into the portal to add 11 players after adding just three last year and none in 2024.
Clemson’s main upgrades addressed depth on the defensive line and in the secondary, but not quarterback, after Cade Klubnik’s move to the NFL. As it stands, junior Christopher Vizzina is still in competition with four-star true freshman Tait Reynolds for the starting position.
Clemson does return plenty of skill and has a pair of possible first-round picks on defence in safety Ashton Hampton and edge rusher Will Hecht, who finished third in the ACC with 7.5 sacks last year. It also boasts one of the conference’s best one-two punches at wide receiver in Bryant Wesco Jr. and TJ Moore, each of whom should have expanded roles after Antonio Williams was drafted this past April.
We won’t have to wait long to get a good idea of what the Tigers are made of – for the second straight season, they’ll open in Week 1 against LSU, this time at their own Death Valley.
Could things get worse for Bill Belichick at North Carolina?
In a way, they already have.
UNC general manager and longtime Belichick aide Mike Lombardi was placed on administrative leave in July following a human resources complaint, leaving him on an island with 60 new players following a disastrous first season where the Tar Heels won just four games, and only two in the ACC. And Belichick’s son, Steve, who serves as UNC’s defensive coordinator, was placed on medical leave earlier this month and reportedly won’t be in Dublin this weekend.
Last year’s issues weren’t limited to the playing field. Ongoing reports of a divided locker room and complaints from parents of players to a local news station about the toxic and unstructured environment – criticisms directed at Belichick and Lombardi, as well as other staff – only added to UNC’s travelling circus, which premiered in a 34-point loss in Chapel Hill to TCU on primetime television in Week 1 and made road stops as far west as California and as far south as Florida.
In all, the Tar Heels’ eight losses against Power Four opponents came by an average of 15.8 points, and their lone wins came against Syracuse and Stanford, which combined to go 7-17 in 2025.
For the second straight fall, Belichick enters the season with an overhauled roster of mostly unknowns, albeit with less than intrigue than in the previous year, with the notion of him of being able to up-coach less-talented players, at least at the college level, to have already been debunked. This past April marked the first NFL Draft in 10 years where not a single UNC player was selected.
Belichick did add some seasoning to his staff with the addition of some offensive coordinator Bobby Petrino, though he comes to UNC with his own decorated history of off-the-field controversy. He’ll help oversee a group led by transfer quarterback Billy Edwards Jr., who went 4-7 as a starter at Maryland in 2024 before missing all but two quarters of last season after a knee injury in Wisconsin’s season opener.
The Tar Heels do have a genuine perimeter threat in all-ACC wide receiver Jordan Shipp, who caught 60 passes in 2025 and projects as their best NFL prospect, and do have a breakout candidate in the backfield in Demon June, who had 464 rushing yards last year as a true freshman.
Nate Sheppard is becoming a household name at Duke
Duke may have lost Mensah in the portal, but it did retain its standout running back. Nate Sheppard returns after a true freshman season where he rushed for 1,132 yards and 11 touchdown and could fast-track into the first round of the 2028 NFL Draft with another huge year in Durham.
You could replay last season 1,000 times, and it’s unlikely you’d be able to replicate how things shook out for the Blue Devils. They lost to Illinois, Tulane and UConn, but went 6-2 in the ACC and emerged with a tiebreak from the jumble atop the standings, nabbing a spot in the championship game and beating Virginia for one of the unlikeliest conference titles the sport has ever seen. Though it wasn’t enough to sway the committee come selection time, its first ACC title in football since 1989 still served as a feather in Duke’s cap.
Sheppard had just 15 rushing attempts in the Blue Devils’ first three games but was a workhorse from that point forward. He rushed for a season-high 170 yards in Duke’s Sun Bowl win over Arizona State and finished as the ACC-leader in yards from scrimmage with 1,418 – more than even Toney.
Other backs could challenge for the conference rushing title – particularly Fletcher Jr., after his torrid playoff run with Miami, and Louisville lightning bolt Isaac Brown – but Sheppard may stand the best chance, especially as the focal point of Duke’s offence after Mensah’s move to Coral Gables. If he’s not a household name yet, he should be by the end of this season.
