I did purposely draw this with the skew, and with the mean between 7 and 8. I think the team has a higher maximum upside than maximum downside, just because returning production is so valuable to college football teams, and VT is top 5 in the country in this respect (and that returning production finished the season 6-3, i.e. on pace for 8-4, so it's not chopped liver). Then you get into all the other factors, VT's average margin in their wins, the fact that their 3 ACC losses came to teams a combined 32-9, how there's probably only 1 team (Clemson) who's a definite favorite over VT and the others are tossups (Rutgers, GT, BC, Syracuse, Duke, Miami), how of those tossups VT easily beat 2 of them last year and 1 just lost their coach, etc. Essentially, if the team handles the psychological aspect that you note, and they don't suffer any injuries to the most critical of players, there's a favorable environment to see a path where VT doesn't need as many lucky breaks as you might think to win a lot of games this year. But, it's like a hot humid day in the summer, the conditions are there for a severe thunderstorm, it doesn't mean one will definitely happen on top of you, but the ingredients are there and it's more likely than if the temperature was 20 degrees colder.