New Coaches Highlight ACC’s Coastal Division

Miami’s Mark Richt, Virginia Tech’s Justin Fuente and Virginia’s Bronco Mendenhall made their ACC media day debuts Thursday, representing three of the four new coaches in the ACC this season.

“Coach Fuente’s been awesome”, said Virginia Tech Fullback Sam Rogers.

“I don’t feel any urgency to do anything with it”, Fuente said. “More teams. I think the league is much deeper and tougher top to bottom than when I remember leaving it”.

Richt succeeds Al Golden with the Hurricanes.

“When you learn a new system, whether you’re a transfer who just came in or a player on offense for us, you’re going to go through a learning curve”. He also knows, just like I do that all of this stuff is really meaningless. “I’ll just throw out things like, yeah, Dadi can do this really well and Corey does this really well, they’ll get double-teamed and I’ll get left one-on-one.’ That was cool about it. Now, I get a little bit more attention than I usually get, so it should be interesting going into the fall”.

There’s plenty to fix at Virginia and Virginia Tech as well. “The fact that we lost the biggest game of our career leaves a big enough chip on our shoulder to last the whole season”. “They actually believe now that they are capable”. It’s the biggest difference we’ve been facing with the coaching changes.

Virginia Tech coach Justin Fuente takes over after the retirement of legendary Frank Beamer, who was the winningest active Division I coach when he stepped away.

Fuente said it’s important to understand and embrace the foundation that Beamer established, but that building on that is the best way to show the proper respect for it.

“We go as far as our offensive line goes”, Rogers said. He was starting with that foundation.

That’s been Fuente’s motto for his players, and it’s similar to what he was doing to help rebuild Memphis’ program.

North Carolina won the ACC Coastal in 2015 and finished the year with an impressive 11-3 SU and 8-6 ATS record.

Coaches and players from the league’s Atlantic Division ran through radio, television and print interviews throughout the day.

“Certainly he brings some credibility to their program and to the conference”, Johnson said.

NEXT UP FOR TAR HEELS DEFENSE: North Carolina’s defense last year – leading the ACC in turnovers forced and ranked third in passing defense – has only raised expectations under second-year defensive coordinator Gene Chizik. “His commitment, his buy-in, his confidence is at a level it’s never been”.

“Speaking for me personally, I don’t care”. We need to able to run the ball and it starts with the guys up front and if we can do that and protect the quarterback and protect the ball, I think we’ll have a good chance to win a lot of games.

Clemson experienced unprecedented success with 14 wins last season, but it is the one loss – a 45-40 national championship defeat to Alabama – that has motivated the Tigers through this offseason. They have won the past five ACC championship games.

SIRK BOUNCES BACK: Recovering from a torn Achilles has been taxing for Duke quarterback Thomas Sirk.

“These past five months haven’t been fun”. I see him moving with more confidence.

“I thought coach Canada did a really good job for us, but it was about being different more than anything”. “We have unfinished goals as a senior class”.

Since losing the national title to Alabama, head coach Dabo Swinney and his staff has worked on replacing seven defensive starters, including top-flight defensive linemen Shaq Lawson and Kevin Dodd and cornerback Mackenzie Alexander.