Now that the final signing period has seen the majority of prospects make their decisions, it really is time to turn the page on the 2020 college football season and look ahead to 2021.
ESPN’s Bill Connelly looked ahead and used the SP+ projections to rank every school (insider).
Their method needs some introduction, as SP+ isn’t very transparent about what it is. Three major components are used to formulate SP+: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history.
Taking that into account, the Irish placed inside the top 25, barely. Remember, these rankings will be significantly different than many others we will see heading into the season, so being 25th isn’t something you should get discouraged about.
Connelly breaks down Notre Dame’s ranking, 10 spots behind Mark Schlabach’s, by explaining “SP+ utterly hated their performances against Clemson and Alabama to finish 2020, dropping them from fourth in early December to 16th.” That explains a portion of the lower than normal ranking, the final two games left a sour taste in everyone’s mouth.
What about future performance?
“They (Notre Dame) lost more production than almost anyone in the country.” Connelly noted just four schools are behind the Irish in that category.
How about some good news heading into the 2021 campaign? Connelly does “still assume they (the Irish) will play at a top-20 level,” outperforming their SP+ projected rank. It wasn’t all good however, as “this does suggest that their floor might temporarily be lower than we’ve seen in recent years.”
If the floor is winning more than 10 games and competing in a high-level bowl game, I think we’ll all take that. With the aforementioned big personnel losses such as quarterback Ian Book, offensive lineman Liam Eichenberg and linebacker Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah, there will be some drop-off in production.
However, with Brian Kelly’s recent run of very solid recruiting classes, there is still talent in South Bend. The 2021 team will need to get some of the inexperienced players’ feet wet, and the Irish should enjoy another successful season this year.