ACC spotlight: Inside the recruiting numbers

The 2017 college football season may be new, but the current recruiting cycle has been churning for some time. Today, we take a by-the-numbers look at the recruiting landscape in the ACC, which is home to a few interesting trends.

INSIDE THE NUMBERS: SEC | Big Ten

Miami has not hauled in a top-five recruiting class since 2008. It hasn’t been in the top 10 since 2012. Plenty can change between now and Signing Day, sure, but this isn’t just a hot start. It would take an unforeseen event or total collapse of historic proportions for the Hurricanes to fall out of the top 10 at this juncture. With five-star prospects Lorenzo Lingard and Mark Pope leading the way, it seems like the Hurricanes will have a great shot of landing the state of Florida’s top recruiting class for the first time in the Rivals.com era.

The depth behind injured starter Deondre Francois isn’t exactly proven, so the lack of a single commit at the position is interesting. Of course, Florida State's top target, five-star Justin Fields, remains on the board and all is well if the Seminoles land him. Should fields pick Georgia or another team, however, FSU will scramble to find Plan B and may need to look into flipping a prospect committed elsewhere. The situation is certainly one to monitor going forward.

Thanks to Clemson and Miami, the ACC currently holds more five-star commitments than any other conference. To put that in perspective, the Big Ten has three, the SEC has two, and the Pac-12 and Big 12 each have one. Dabo Swinney and his staff have done a remarkable job over the last few years of bringing in top talent and the commitments of No. 1 prospect in the 2018 Rivals100 Trevor Lawrence and No. 5 prospect Xavier Thomas seem to be their crowning achievements on the recruiting trail thus far. Mark Richt’s coaching staffs at Georgia were always good recruiters and it looks like he has assembled a great recruiting staff at Miami as well. Eighth-ranked prospect in the Rivals100 Lorenzo Lingard and No. 26 prospect Mark Pope should continue to help the Canes turn their program around.

That number on it’s own doesn’t reflect much, but compare that with Tennessee’s average number of four-star signees over the last five years (10.6) and we get a better picture of how impressive it was for Georgia Tech to take the Volunteers to double overtime on Monday night. Georgia Tech’s throwback triple-option offense is tough for any team to prepare for, but that’s hardly an excuse for Tennessee to only manage seven points in the first half. Hats off to Paul Johnson and his squad for overachieving and taking Tennessee to the brink.

The Hokies are trending up after last year’s impressive debut with Justin Fuente at the helm. Virginia Tech sits at No. 19 in the Rivals.com Team Recruiting Rankings right now and has 19 total commitments so there are only a few spots left in their class this cycle. Luckily there are some big fish out there still very high on Virginia Tech and the Hokies will need to land some of them if they hope to finish inside the top 20 of the team rankings. Five-star defensive end K.J. Henry, Rivals100 offensive lineman Rasheed Walker, Rivals100 defensive tackle Rick Sandidge, Rivals250 linebacker Dax Hollifield and Rivals250 defensive back Kalon Gervin all have the Hokies among their finalists.