I have tried to explain this to people, but most either don't understand or want to live in denial. Yes, we have a talent advantage to win any game against a Coastal opponent on a neutral field, but it's not so great an advantage that we should be marking Ws in pen. When the talent margin is slim, so is the margin of error. And having a marginal to solid talent advantage is not the same as having the sort of talent advantage that comes from stacking top 5 recruiting classes. If you look at preseason FPI (an admittedly poor metric), the difference between Clemson and UM is greater than the difference between UM and UVA.
Here's another way to think of it. Let's assume UM currently has enough of a talent advantage to beat Duke 9 out of 10 times, GT 8 out of 10 times, VT 8 out of 10 times, UVA 7 out of 10 times, and Pitt 7 out of 10 times (which I think is probably over-selling our talent advantage over some of those teams). That still means we have a 28.2% chance of going undefeated against those teams, a 41.4% chance of going 4-1, and a 30.4% chance of losing 2 or more of those games.