CBS Sports on Monday published its ACC expert picks for 2022, taking a look at the conference and who their experts see as the most overrated and underrated teams, making bold predictions and conference champion picks, and more.
One CBS Sports writer, Dennis Dodd, thinks Clemson is the most overrated team in the league.
“The Tigers may indeed win the ACC. Maybe last year was a speed bump, but I really need to see it first,” he wrote. “As well as the defense may perform — and it’s good — Uiagalelei will have to live up to his expectations. If not, well, the ACC is too strong now for the Tigers to be able to slog through mediocrity. Watch out for Wake Forest, NC State, Florida State and Miami. It is unwise to grandfather Clemson into the title game just yet.”
CBS Sports’ Barrett Sallee is on the opposite end of the spectrum from Dodd and believes the Tigers are the most underrated team in the ACC.
“I get it. Uiagalelei did not live up to expectations, and last year’s 10-win season was a ‘down year,'” Sallee wrote. “This is a much different setting, though. DJ-U has rededicated himself, gotten in shape and knows that freshman Cade Klubnik is there should he stumble. That’s a healthy quarterback situation, not a shaky one. When you combine it with the best defensive front four in the country and one of the best running backs in the nation in Will Shipley, you have a recipe for national success, not just ACC dominance.”
Several of CBS Sports’ writers mentioned Clemson in their bold predictions, with the aforementioned Sallee writing that the Tigers will not just make it back to the College Football Playoff but be a “legitimate threat” to win it all this season, while Jerry Palm’s bold prediction is that Clemson will not make the playoff for the second year in a row.
In his bold prediction, Chip Patterson opined that the Tigers’ offense “will bounce back to being one of the best in the league,” and Tom Fornelli predicted that Clemson will average at least 34 points per game this season.
Most of CBS Sports’ writers picked Clemson to be the ACC champion this season. The lone writer who did not is Dodd, who went with Miami.
