2010 ACC Returning Offensive Percentages

NOW: 2010 ACC Returning Offensive Percentages
Tue AM: 2009 ACC Offensive Touchdown Rates
Tue PM: 2009 ACC Defensive Touchdown Rates
Wed AM: 2009 ACC Offensive Turnover Rates
Wed PM: 2009 ACC Defensive Turnover Rates
Thu AM: 2009 ACC Offensive Loss Rates
Thu PM: 2009 ACC Defensive Loss Rates
Fri AM: 2009 ACC Offensive Red Zone Rates
Fri PM: 2009 ACC Defensive Red Zone Rates

We begin Gobbler Country Stats Week with a look at what each ACC team's offense has returning for the 2010 season. This isn't always indicative of how successful an offense will be from year to year, but it will give us an idea of which offense are the most experienced and have potential for growth.

The number on the far left is each team's rank in percentage of returning offense. That ranking and the total percentage (TOT) come from Phil Steele's calculated rankings. The accuracy of these numbers are up for debate, but they are calculated by percentage of returning passing, rushing, receiving and return yards from 2009.

The individual percentage of passing (PASS), rushing (RUSH) and receiving (RECV) yards come from the ACC's spring prospectus. The percentage of offensive line starts returning (OL%) was calculated by me and took forever because some schools (cough, Clemson, cough) don't publish a start chart from 2009.

Above, you see Phil Steele's calculated returning yards for each ACC team. Based on this graph, I may be wrong to dismiss North Carolina's offense entirely. The Tar Heels return the highest percentage of yardage from 2009, but also return T.J. Yates, who was inconsistent at best last season. If he can at least become a reliable quarterback instead of a part-time turnover machine, North Carolina will have a good chance at winning the Coastal.

Clemson and Duke's numbers are skewed by the loss of C.J. Spiller and Thaddeus Lewis, respectively. Without Spiller's return yards, Clemson is of course going to be toward the tail end of this chart. Duke (as well as Wake Forest) lost their starting quarterbacks from last season and will need newcomers to step up in order to improve.

This graph shows while I'm bullish on Duke and Boston College. Duke's offensive line seemed to at least be competent during its spring game and BC's always reliable offensive line only lost one starter. Florida State is two starts away from returning 100 percent of its OL starts from arguably the league's most potent offense a year ago. The graph also shows why I'm down on Wake Forest and NC State. Those two teams have the lowest percentage of OL starts coming back in 2010.

Prohibitive division favorites Florida State and Virginia Tech are the only two teams to be in the Top 4 in both percentage of offensive yards returning and percentage of offensive line starts returning from 2009.

What teams do you think are most likely to benefit from having a high percentage of yards or O-line starts coming back in 2010? What teams do you think will be able to best overcome losses from last season?