Wait a second. Florida State and Miami are supposed to be the two teams to beat in the Atlantic Coast Conference this year? The same two teams that combined for 23 points, nine rushing yards and 282 total net yards Monday night?

Is this the same Miami team ESPN analyst Kirk Herbstreit picked to win the national championship? The same team that mounted a furious 17-yard offensive attack in the entire second half?

The ACC is better than this, right?

I’m not so sure – especially after Week 1. Sadly enough, the Seminoles and Hurricanes might even be the top two teams after all. Let’s quickly run down what happened this week in the conference that used to be such a powerhouse in college football.

Virginia Tech and Clemson did what they were supposed to do: Blow out a bad team at home. The Hokies beat Northeastern 38-0 and the Tigers crushed Florida Atlantic 54-6. And Georgia Tech hung tough with Notre Dame in its 14-10 loss. But other than those three teams, there’s plenty of reason for football purists to be worried about the ACC this year.

Boston College squeaked by those scrappy Central Michigan Chippewas, and if not for a blown trick play, Central Michigan could have sent the game into overtime.

North Carolina – this year’s up and coming team, so the “experts” say – was beat at home by Rutgers.

Like your Terrapins, N.C. State and Duke didn’t have an easy time at home with Division I-AA teams. The Wolfpack beat Appalachian State 23-10, and Duke was shut out 13-0 by Richmond. Even the Blue Devils hadn’t lost to a Division I-AA team since 1978.

Wake Forest – probably not a team to make any noise this year – beat Syracuse, but the most surprising result this week may have come from Pittsburgh, where rival Virginia was stomped by the Panthers 38-13.

So was it just a fluke of a week or is the ACC in for a down year? According to the rankings, it’s the latter. For only the second time since 1989, there wasn’t one ACC team ranked in the top-10 of the Associated Press preseason rankings. Only four were in the top-25. However, it is tough to take anything too seriously in a preseason poll. Quite often, many of the teams ranked in the top-25 don’t end up there by season’s end.

No one in Terp Nation should be complaining, however. A weaker ACC means a better chance to get back to that prized bowl game.

So that brings us back to Florida State and Miami.

Anyone who watched them play Monday night saw an ugly game – something that’s becoming quite normal between the two Sunshine State teams. It seemed like Kyle Wright, Miami’s quarterback, fumbled more times than Joel Statham trying to execute the option pitch. Seriously.

I know what you might be thinking. Poor offense but excellent defense, right? Possibly. But the Seminoles and Hurricanes were just too completely inept on offense to say that the teams’ defenses were excellent.

So if these two teams are the class of the ACC, where does that leave the rest of the pack?

My guess is in the same area as the Terps. Not great, not terrible. I think the true measuring stick to see whether or not the Terps can compete with Florida State and Miami will come next Thursday against West Virginia.

Do I expect the Terps to win? Of course not. Do I expect them to get blown out? Absolutely not. I expect them to stay in the game most of the way. And if they do that, then we can talk about competing with – and maybe beating – the class of the ACC.

But maybe I’m looking too far ahead. Heck, Middle Tennessee is two days away, and so far this year, it looks like anything can happen in the ACC.

Contact sports editor Andrew Zuckerman at sports@dbk.umd.edu