These articles are stupid.
We're in that dead time of year where camp hasn't started yet, but the start of the season is tantalizingly close. There isn't much to talk about, but there is a desire for something - ANYTHING! - to read, so pieces like this get written and devoured. All the better that it comes with charts and "advanced statistics" and such, giving it the veneer of accurate analysis (note: I'm 100% in favor of advanced statistics in measuring and detecting things in a team that often escape the "eye test").
What makes articles like this stupid are that they, by definition, cannot account for improvements and developmental gains in the off season. This is not the NFL, where players are closer to finished products (but by no means actual finished products). We're talking about incoming true freshman (more and more of whom are ready to contribute year 1 due to early enrollment and more demanding high school regimens). Young men 18-22 are still growing and maturing - physically and mentally - such that massive gains are possible year to year. The game slows down for guys. Units gain cohesion with continuity. Coaching turnover (not just head coach, but position coaches), or lack thereof, is a major factor in teaching and absorbing schemes.
This doesn't even touch the task of separating out talent from scheme (i.e. will schools, with the benefit of an entire offseason, be able to better defend BC's run game, which came out of nowhere midseason).
A tried and true seasoned talent evaluater would be extremely hard pressed to sort out and rank individual units on all 14 ACC teams. For a journalist to take it on, with the expectation that it is at all meaningful, is folly.
GIGO - garbage in, garbage out. It isn't a knock on Hale, it's just a recognition that there are simply too many unknown and unmeasurable variables to undertake such an evaluation with the hope that it has any worthwhile conclusions.
