Cardinal Canopy Podcast: Predicting the ACC with Savanah Tujague

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In this episode of The Cardinal Canopy on Spotify, YouTube, and Apple Podcasts, I am joined by Twitter legend, College Football content creator, and 49ers Roundtable correspondent Savanah Tujague for a full preview of the 2026 ACC football season.

We go team-by-team through the conference, starting with preseason favorite Miami and working all the way down to Stanford, while giving our predictions for what should be another unpredictable year in the ACC.

We start by discussing whether the Miami Hurricanes are clearly the team to beat. With Darian Mensah at quarterback and playmakers like Malachi Toney and Mark Fletcher Jr. around him, Miami has one of the most talented rosters in the country.

We discuss whether anything short of an ACC Championship would be a disappointment and if this team can legitimately compete for a national title.

From there, we get into the rest of the contenders. Savanah gives her thoughts on Kevin Jennings and SMU, Jeff Brohm and Louisville, and whether Clemson can bounce back after a disappointing season.

We also talk about some of the teams that could make the ACC race much more interesting, including Virginia, NC State, Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, and Pitt.

One of the biggest themes of the conversation is figuring out which teams we think the preseason poll has wrong. Duke enters the year as the defending ACC champion but was picked tenth after losing Mensah to Miami.

Florida State remains one of the biggest wild cards in the conference, while Cal, Wake Forest, Syracuse, North Carolina, and Boston College all enter the season with plenty of questions.

And, of course, we spend a lot of time on Stanford.

The Cardinal were picked last in the ACC preseason poll, and Savanah and I discuss whether that is actually a fair assessment of this team. We get into Tavita Pritchard taking over the program, Davis Warren at quarterback, the offensive line, Stanford’s defensive front, and what needs to happen for the Cardinal to outperform expectations and potentially make a run at bowl eligibility.

We finish by putting our predictions on the record: ACC champion, championship matchup, Player of the Year, breakout teams, overrated and underrated teams, Stanford’s record, and how many ACC teams ultimately make the College Football Playoff.

There are plenty of disagreements, predictions that could look terrible by November, and teams that we think the national conversation might be overlooking.

The ACC is always unpredictable, and 2026 should be no different.

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