By the numbers: A look at All-ACC quarterback voting

Virginia put seven players on the All-ACC football team released on Tuesday. The Hoos placed two on the first team, three on the second team and three more on the third team—plus offensive lineman Bobby Haskins, who received honorable mention.

Scroll down the list of UVa’s honorees and they seem to make sense. Dontayvion Wicks finished third in the league in both receiving yards (setting a new school single-season record in the process) and touchdown catches; Jelani Woods led all ACC tight ends in both categories. First team sounds right.

Linebacker Nick Jackson led the league in tackles while playing on a defense that struggled all season. ‘Football player’ Keytaon Thompson led the Hoos in catches and is just 10 yards shy of joining Wicks in the 1,000-yard club; he also ran for nearly 250 yards and scored four times. And according to PFF College, Olu Oluwatimi has been one of the league’s best centers all season. All worthy second-team picks.

And on third team, receiver Billy Kemp finished the regular season top-five in the ACC in both catches and TD receptions, while quarterback Brennan Armstrong led the league in both passing yards and total offense, setting new school records in both as well as touchdown passes and ranking among the nation’s leaders in all three statistics.

Wait, what?

Armstrong’s seeming snub by a panel of voters that included select media members plus the league’s head coaches raised eyebrows of more than a few UVa fans. With 68 votes, the redshirt junior lefty finished a distant third in the voting, with Pitt’s Kenny Pickett (181 votes) named to the first team and Wake Forest’s Sam Hartman (80 votes) on the second team. Two other quarterbacks—North Carolina’s Sam Howell (19 votes) and NC State’s Devin Leary (18 votes)—received honorable mention.

Did those voters get it wrong? Did Armstrong deserve more credit for his historic season?

To answer those questions, the league’s top six quarterbacks (the five who received votes plus Louisville’s Malik Cunningham, who quietly had his own stellar season; apologies to Miami’s Tyler Van Dyke, who surged down the stretch) were ranked in 10 categories, ranging from stats to PFF grades to team performance. Those rankings were then tabulated (6 points for ranking first in a category, 5 points for ranking second, and so on…) to determine objectively which ACC quarterback had the best regular season.

The results:

Armstrong has obliterated the UVa’s single-season passing record book this season. It took him nine games to break Bryce Perkins’s single-season passing record. He passed Matt Schaub to become the single-season leader in touchdown passes at Pitt. He’s the first 4,000-yard passer in program history, and has logged five of the eight 400-yard days in program history.

His 4,449 passing yards not only lead the ACC but rank second nationally. That total ranks fourth on the league’s single-season passing list, just 144 yards behind the 4,593 that Deshaun Watson posted in 15 games for Clemson in 2016. The other two QBs ahead of Armstrong on that list? Matt Ryan (4,507 yards for Boston College in 2007) and Philip Rivers (4,491 yards for NC State in 2003).

Pickett is the league’s other 4,000-yard passer. With 4,066 yards, he’s seventh on the ACC single-season list—and with Saturday’s ACC title game and then a bowl game still on the schedule, he still has two games left to gain more ground. Pickett also leads he league in passing efficiency (166.7) and TD passes (40). Those 40 touchdown passes are tied for second-most in the country; that efficiency ranks eighth.

Among the six quarterbacks under consideration, Armstrong and Hartman are tied for the most interceptions with 10. Leary threw the fewest (five), followed by Cunningham (six) and Pickett (seven).

Cunningham surged into the conversation with his performance as a runner. With 968 yards, he was the only quarterback to finish among the top 50 rushers in the country during the regular season. His 19 rushing scores, the third-most all-time by an ACC quarterback, rank fourth in the country.

Howell, the league’s preseason player of the year, also gained ground with his performance as as a rusher. He ran for with 825 yards and 11 TDs in 11 games, with five 100-yard games and two more with 98.

Armstrong’s rushing numbers were limited by the knee injury he suffered early in the season against Illinois. His two biggest games on the ground were against Georgia Tech (99 yards) and then the next week at BYU (94 yards), where he suffered a late rib injury that kept him out of UVa’s loss to Notre Dame and again limited what he could do as a runner in the Hoos’ final two games. He finished the regular season with 251 rushing yards and nine scores.

Despite missing the Notre Dame game, Armstrong led the league during the regular season with an even 4,700 total yards. With a bowl game to go, that total ranks fifth all-time in the ACC, behind the 5,261 total yards posted by Lamar Jackson at Louisville in 2017. Jackson averaged a league-record 404.7 total yards/game that season; Armstrong’s per-game average this year has been 427.3.

The lefty was one of three quarterbacks in the conference to break 4,000 total yards during the regular season. Pickett’s 4,287 total yards currently sits 10th on the league’s single-season list. Hartman put up 4,053. They’ve each got two more games left to pad those stats.

Those three totals all rank among the top five in the country, with Armstrong at No. 2, Pickett fourth and Hartman fifth.

The PFF College leaderboard at quarterback provides further proof that it has been a tremendous year in the ACC at that pivotal position. Among quarterbacks with at least 350 drop-backs this season, four of the six best overall grades, five of the top 15 and six of the top 21 come from the conference.

Pickett’s 92.2 overall grade is second nationally behind Alabama’s Bryce Young. With a 91.9, Armstrong is tied for third with Ohio State’s CJ Stroud. Cunningham (91.8) sits fifth, followed by Hartman (91.5) in sixth. Scroll down just slightly and there’s Howell (90.1) at 14th and Leary (84.6) at No. 21.

The SEC, with four, and the Big Ten and American, with three apiece, are the other conferences with multiple quarterbacks among those top 21.

Pickett and Hartman each led teams that finished 10-2 overall and 7-1 in the conference. Pitt and Wake will meet on Saturday in the ACC Championship.

Leary won nine games as NC State’s starter this season. UVa and UNC each finished 6-6 overall, but Armstrong and Howell each missed a game. Without Armstrong, the Hoos lost to Notre Dame; Carolina beat Wofford without Howell. Louisville also finished 6-6 overall and, like UVa, 4-4 in the ACC.

In terms of head-to-head among the league’s half-dozen best quarterbacks, Pickett beat both Armstrong and Howell to finish 2-0. Hartman won three games, but his winning percentage is dinged by a loss to Howell and the Tar Heels. Leary finished 2-1, with that loss coming against Hartman and the Deacs.

Howell also beat Armstrong to finish 2-2. Armstrong’s lone win (1-3) came courtesy of a furious fourth-quarter comeback at Louisville to beat Cunningham, who finished 0-3.

After crunching the numbers, it appears ACC voters got it right at quarterback.

Pickett finished with at least a share of the No. 1 spot in half of the 10 categories. The gap between him at No. 1 and Hartman at No. 2 was almost four times as wide as the gap between Hartman and Armstrong. The rankings did reveal that perhaps Cunningham should have garnered a little more All-ACC consideration, though his snub—just like Armstrong falling to the third team—is simply a product of the historic seasons of some of the league’s other quarterbacks.

The ACC individual awards will be announced Wednesday morning. If we learned anything from this exercise, it's that Pickett is likely to run away with that voting too.

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