Adjusted Pythagorean Record: ACC

Last week we looked at how ACC teams fared in terms of yards per play. This week, we turn our attention to how the season played out in terms of the Adjusted Pythagorean Record, or APR. For an in-depth look at APR, click here. If you didn’t feel like clicking, here is the Reader’s Digest version. APR looks at how well a team scores and prevents touchdowns. Non-offensive touchdowns, field goals, extra points, and safeties are excluded. The ratio of offensive touchdowns to touchdowns allowed is converted into a winning percentage. Pretty simple actually.

Once again, here are the 2025 ACC standings.

And here are the APR standings with conference rank in offensive touchdowns, touchdowns allowed, and APR in parentheses. This includes conference games only with the championship game excluded.

Finally, ACC teams are sorted by the difference between their actual number of wins and their expected number of wins according to APR.

I use a game and a half as a somewhat arbitrary standard to determine if a team over or underachieved relative to their APR. By that standard, Georgia Tech and Pittsburgh overachieved while Clemson and Florida State underachieved. Georgia Tech also overachieved relative to their expected record based on YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. Pittsburgh was not lucky in close games (1-1 ACC record in one-score games), but they did score four non-offensive touchdowns in ACC play that skewed their APR somewhat. For the underachievers, Florida State also failed to live up to their decent performance based on YPP and we went over some reasons for that last week. Meanwhile, Clemson was somewhat unlucky in one-score ACC games, finishing 1-2. However, the biggest reason for their underachievement were the glimpses we got of the Clemson of five years ago. The Tigers bludgeoned North Carolina and Boston College on the road in back to back weeks in early October, winning by a combined score of 79-20. They scored ten offensive touchdowns in those games while allowing just two. That means in their other six ACC games, they scored 19 offensive touchdowns while allowing 18, which was more indicative of their overall conference record. 

Four or More

The 2025 ACC Championship Game was a thrilling affair. Trailing for much of the game, Virginia staged a fourth quarter rally to force overtime, only to lose after a Blue Devil touchdown and a turnover on their first offensive play in the extra frame. The loss cost Virginia an appearance in the College Football Playoff, and despite their victory, the Blue Devils did not make it either. This was mostly due to the fact that they entered the conference title game with five losses. How was this possible? For starters, Duke played poorly in the non-conference, losing to two non-Power teams (Connecticut and Tulane), while also being pounded at home by Illinois. In ACC play, they won both their one-score games and won a five-way tiebreaker against four other teams that were probably all better than them (at least on paper). Learning nothing from their past mistakes, the ACC is moving forward with a conference schedule that has teams playing an unequal number of league games. Surely no additional tiebreaker drama will result from that oversight! But I digress. How shocking was Duke's victory? How have other power conference teams that entered their respective conference title games with at least four losses fared? Read on to find out!

Including Duke's appearance in 2025, fourteen power conference teams have entered a conference title game with at least four losses. Those teams have not fared especially well, finishing 5-9 overall, but a respectable 7-7 ATS. I will note that all fourteen teams entered as either underdogs or with an even point spread with nine coming into the game catching double digits. Oh well, nothing to see here. No trend or actionable betting angle to gleam, right? I dug a little deeper and it seems that five of those teams that entered with at least four losses happened to be ranked in the preseason AP Poll. Longtime readers of this blog know we hold the preseason AP Poll in high regard when it comes to making postseason bets on both college football and college basketball. Those five teams that were ranked in the preseason AP Poll, but underachieved in the regular season season went 4-1 both straight up and ATS in their conference title games. Those five teams are listed below along with their preseason rank and title game result. 

The sample size is admittedly small, but two of these five teams pulled off two of the bigger upsets in conference title game history and three of the five won their title games by double digits. Plus if you do the math, you can deduce the other nine teams that entered with at least four losses and were not ranked in the preseason AP Poll went a collective 1-8 straight up and 3-6 ATS in the conference title games. The one winner? Duke. So yes, Duke's victory over Virginia, despite the relatively short point spread was shocking and unprecedented.