College football FPI release: Leading tiers, conference races and playoff

Ohio State’s 2022 ended in remarkable heartbreak in the College Football Playoff, but instant redemption might be on the horizon. The Buckeyes are the best team in the country and the favorites to win the national championship, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index and the Allstate Playoff Predictor.The Buckeyes have a 37%opportunity to win the title– well ahead of Alabama at 20 %and protecting champion Georgia at 19%– according to the models.Before we dive too far into the Buckeyes, other title contenders and the rest of the forecasted college football landscape, a fast refresher: What is FPI, and how do we project the season and College Football Playoff race?FPI is our season-long scores and projections system. In the preseason it depends on previous performance on offense and defense, returning and transfer production and previous recruiting data for players on the lineup to form a score. We then use those rankings to replicate the season 20,000 times, leading to our projections.Full FPI ratings and forecasts can be discovered here.Top groups in the Football Power Index Rank Team Score 1 Ohio State 31.5 2 Alabama 28.2 3 Georgia 27.4 4 LSU 22.1 5 Texas 21.9 6 Michigan 21.4 7

USC 19.9 8 Clemson 19.4 9 Notre Dame 18.4 10 Penn

State 17.5	11 Oklahoma 16.9 12 Tennessee 15.2
T-13 Oregon 15.0 T-13 Florida State 15.0 15 Utah 14.9 16	Ole Miss 13.4 17 TCU 13.0 T-18 Florida 12.7
T-18 Texas A&M 12.7 20 Wisconsin 12.3 21 Washington 11.8 22	Texas Tech 10.8 23 Baylor
10.7 24	Oregon State 10.5 25 North Carolina 10.2 In addition, the Allstate Playoff Predictor
utilizes those simulations to anticipate the playoff	committee’s choice process, based upon
the committee’s previous behavior. All of which combined enables us	to anticipate	a group’s forecasted win overall	, possibility to win its conference,
reach the CFP and win the	nationwide championship.Let’s break down some of the top	stories emerging out of FPI’s numbers ahead of the 2023 season.A three-team leading tier So	what
makes the Buckeyes so unsafe in 2023
, even relative to SEC powerhouses Alabama and Georgia	? For beginners, the best non-QB offensive returning production	in the nation. That’s
most	significant in	the getting game, where the Buckeyes return Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka– who	recorded 1,263 and 1,151 receiving backyards in	2022, respectively– in addition to tight end Cade Stover.The model ranks Ohio	State No. 1 in offensive performance in current seasons( it ranked No. 1 in offending performance in	2022) and second in offensive talent

(based on cumulative recruiting ranks on that side of the ball). Quarterback aside(we’ll get to that), we can see why FPI makes the Buckeyes the very best offense in the country by a decent margin. Defensively, the Buckeyes rank 3rd– they do not rather boast the talent levels that FPI sees in Georgia or Alabama– but the margin is smaller sized and hence the

Buckeyes are the very best team in general. Georgia’s defense ranks No. 1 in FPI rating, driven

more by the historical efficiency of the unit than anything else.What’s also interesting here is simply how far behind everybody else is from the leading three. More than five points per game separates Georgia(No. 3)from LSU (No. 4) in FPI’s rankings. Each of the top three groups has at least a 19 %possibility to win the national championship, while no other team is over 6%. And there is a cumulative 76 %chance– in April!– that a person of the three wins

the national title.In addition, there is a 26 %opportunity that all 3 of the Buckeyes, Crimson Tide and Bulldogs make the playoff, and the top 6 more than likely mixes feature all three of those teams.Rank Group Chance 1 Ohio State 37% 2 Alabama 20%3 Georgia 19% 4 Texas 6%5 LSU 4%6 Michigan 4%7 Clemson 3% 8 USC 3% 9 Notre Dame 2%10 Penn State In other words: It’s a crystal-clear top tier. And what’s somewhat amazing is this is occurring in a year when none of the three are returning their beginning quarterbacks. C.J. Stroud, Bryce Young and Stetson Bennett are all NFL-bound, and yet the design still has confidence in these squads.It indicates that the model has less confidence in each of their QBs than it does for, say, USC with Caleb Williams.

Though when it comes to Ohio State, for instance, the fact that Kyle McCord( the most likely starter, in the model’s mind)had an 87 grade as a recruit offers the design some confidence in him regardless of the absence of track record.A QB with a performance history of success is perfect, but as evidenced by FPI’s rankings for Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia, it’s not a prerequisite.Our yearly’Texas is back(or is it?)’conversation Sitting at No. 5 in FPI’s rankings and No.

4 in terms of opportunity to win the championship game: Texas. It’s a rather familiar location for the design, though. FPI was bullish on the Longhorns beginning last year(rank: No. 7)and it completed bullish on them, too (rank:

No. 7	). Now it’s truly in on them, with a 34
%	opportunity to reach the playoff and its very first top-5 preseason FPI rank since 2012. They
‘ve got	strong talent	, based upon
recruiting grades, on both sides of the ball(fourth on offense, sixth on defense
)	. And, despite losing running back
Bijan Robinson to the NFL,	the Longhorns
return	a fair bit of production on offense, led by pass receiver Xavier Worthy.Quinn Ewers, the
incumbent at quarterback dealing with competition

from Arch Manning and Maalik Murphy, didn’t have a terrific season last year( 65.6 QBR, which ranked 50th )but does have a year of experience. And, as we saw with the teams at the top, a great situation around a quarterback can yield a high FPI score. Quinn Ewers is back for another season under center for Steve Sarkisian at Texas. Image by Adam Davis/Icon Sportswire The Longhorns likewise take advantage of their conference: There are fewer tough foes and no divisions in the Huge 12, and that causes a more straightforward path to a conference title than they will have in the SEC next season( Texas’54 %possibility to win the Big 12 is higher than Georgia’s 49%or Alabama’s 41% chance to win the SEC).

That doesn’t suggest Texas has an easy schedule, however. With

a roadway game at Alabama on Texas ‘slate, the Longhorns have the hardest schedule of any of the FPI’s top 10 teams.USC leads a Pac-12 with an opportunity A year ago at this time, FPI offered the Pac-12 a simple 8 %possibility to put a group into the playoff. We were synthetically short on USC– the Lincoln Riley impact wasn’t fully represented– but the point remained: The Pac-12 was a long shot. That wound up panning out, as the conference did not put a group in the playoff.But the conference boasts the seventh-best team in the country in USC, according to FPI. The Trojans alone have a 25 %chance at the playoff, and the conference has a 34% chance in general at putting a minimum of one group in the playoff thanks primarily to Oregon(5% )and Utah(4 %).(This may be bittersweet for the conference, knowing it will soon lose USC to the Huge Ten, but that’s a next-year problem for the Pac-12 ). Editor’s Picks 2 Related With Williams– who ended up fifth in QBR last season and is a possible No. 1 general pick in 2024– blazing a trail, USC enters the season with clearly the very best quarterback room in the nation, according to FPI. That they have Williams back after he led the Trojans to a No. 3 rank in offending effectiveness only reinforces the design’s confidence, and becomes part of why it thinks about USC to be the second-best offense

going into the year only behind Ohio State.The difference between USC and the leading competitors mentioned previously: The Trojans are elite only on one side of the ball. FPI sees them as the 36th-best defense, which is actually a huge forecasted improvement. The defensive unit ranked 82nd in defensive efficiency last season.All of this gives USC a strong possibility– 50%, a real coin flip– to win the Pac-12. And with a much easier however not too easy schedule, a 1-in-4 shot at the playoff.Rank Team Opportunity 1 Ohio State 82%2 Georgia 63%3 Alabama 62 %4 Texas 34%5 Michigan 26%6 USC 25%7 Clemson 24% 8 LSU 24 %9 Notre Dame

16 %10 Penn State 11%11 Oklahoma 11 %12 Oregon 5% 13 Florida State 4%14 Utah 4%15 Tennessee 2% 16 TCU 1%17 Wisconsin 1%18 Ole Miss 19 Oregon State 20 Washington Slight pump of the brakes on Florida State After finishing 10-3 with strong quarterback play from Jordan Travis(QBR: 85.3, which ranked seventh), the Seminoles are getting some heavy buzz. FPI likes Florida State … but possibly not as much as everyone else. The Seminoles rank 14th in FPI, though they are just two-tenths of a point away from 12th. Florida State has high hopes in the 2023 season due to the return of quarterback Jordan Travis. AP Photo/Karl B DeBlaker The design is primarily purchasing the offense (rank: No. 10 )but is less confident in the

defense, which

it ranks 26th. In basic, Florida State has lower talent rankings( based on the recruiting ranks of players on the roster) than the teams above it in FPI. The Seminoles rank 17th in offending skill and 24th in defensive talent. There’s a lot to like here– simply not rather as a top-10 group yet.It’s in part due to the skill gap that FPI still likes Clemson (FPI rank: eighth )more in the ACC. The Tigers, who have greater skill scores on both sides of the ball, have a 45%

chance to win the ACC, while the design gives Florida State simply a 17%chance.FPI not buying Colorado right now Thinking about the hype around Colorado with Deion Sanders now the Buffaloes’ head coach, in addition to a multitude of transfers in to play for him, it’s a little bit of a shock to see Colorado all the method down

at … 95th in FPI’s rankings– the lowest-ranked Power 5 team.The model has somewhat of a handle on the transfers. They’re acknowledged in Colorado’s “talent”and returning production

parts of the estimation, and the Buffaloes do

have higher skill ratings on both offense and defense than essentially all of the groups around them in the total rankings. From the model’s viewpoint , though, that isn’t enough to overcome the recent bad play. The Buffaloes ranked fourth worst and 11th worst in offending and defensive performance last season. So FPI in fact is anticipating a

decent step up this year.That being said, 95th is still rough. It’s most likely reasonable to think this is an

unusual scenario of roster turnover– one-win groups do n’t normally transfer in high-end players — that FPI might not have the ability to perfectly capture.Conference playoff race The SEC and Big Ten are

each very most likely (97%and 94 %, respectively )to put a group in the playoff. But what about two groups, like the Big 10 had last year?The SEC is the favorite to manage that

maneuver in 2023 with a 51% chance to put numerous teams in the playoff, while the Big 10 is at 25%( every other conference is under 1%). Conference Possibility of a Playoff Teams Possibility of Several Playoff Teams SEC 97%51 %Big Ten 94 %25%Huge 12 46% Pac-12 34 %ACC 29 %FBS Independents 16%The SEC has two significant things going all out: – While Ohio State is the best group in the country, FPI thinksthe SEC boasts teams Nos. 2, 3 and 4 in Alabama, Georgia and LSU. By contrast, Michigan and Penn State– the Big 10’s next-best teams– been available in at No. 6 and No. 10. – The conference’s leading two teams are in different divisions and aren’t scheduled to play each other. That means Alabama and Georgia will not beat up on each other till the conference championship game at the current, while just one of Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State can reach the Big Ten championship game.Lauren Poe and Mitchell Wesson added to this article.