Tag: ESPN FPI

ESPN projects Ohio State’s offense to be the best in the country in 2020

According to ESPN FPI metrics, the Ohio State football offense is expected to be the best in the country in 2020.

The Ohio State football team may have lost one of its best running backs in the history of the program when J.K. Dobbins decided to forgo his senior season for the NFL, but that doesn’t mean there is a lack of weapons coming back.

For starters, Heisman finalist Justin Fields is back under center and will have another year of seasoning under his belt. He should also be healthier than what he was while he was nursing an injury at the tail end of 2019. To go along with a Heisman hopeful, there’s also a deep and talented wide-receiver corps, a veteran offensive line, and a graduate transfer running back in Trey Sermon, that’ll push and compete with a bruising Master Teague.

It is quite possible that the offense will be even more explosive than the one we saw last year. One that ended the season as the No. 3 unit in the nation. And now, it appears ESPN agrees.

According to ESPN’s FPI, it expects the Ohio State offense to be the best in the country in 2020 using the expected points added metric. But what is Expected Points Added, or EPA?

You may be wondering what Expected Points Added, or EPA is. According to ESPN’s website, EPA is “a measure of success/failure that takes into account yards, turnovers, red zone efficiency and more to determine how many points each unit is contributing to the team’s scoring margin. For example, if a team wins by an average of 10 points per game, it could be that plus-seven of that is offense, plus-four is defense and minus-one is special teams.”

The other offenses projected to be the top five in the country behind OSU include Alabama (2), Clemson (3), Louisville (4), and Oklahoma (5).

Now, I don’t have to tell you that these models are often wrong, but the fact that the metrics predict this type of performance from Ohio State’s offense — one that’s over four points better than second-place Alabama — could be a precursor for what the computers will think of the Buckeyes out of the gate.

And yes, that is completely different than what we saw last season when the computers severely underestimated Ohio State. Now, all that needs to happen is to see these projections play out on the field.

 

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ESPN’s Football Power Index predicts Michigan State to go 4-8 in 2020

ESPN’s advanced college football metric thinks Mel Tucker is in for a long first year

Mel Tucker’s first year at Michigan State–if it even happens–is looking like it could be a rough one; at least according to ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI).

Michigan State is slotted 67th in the latest preseason FPI rankings. That ranking, combined with their tough schedule, has Michigan State finishing a projected 4-8 in Tucker’s first season. FPI gives the Spartans a 0.0% chance of winning the Big Ten.

ESPN’s FPI also projects the percent chance a team has of winning a specific game. There are only three games on Michigan State’s entire schedule in which FPI gives them a better than 50% chance of winning: vs. Toledo, vs. Miami, and vs. Rutgers.

Let’s see what FPI has to say about each Michigan State opponent in 2020.

Week 1 vs. Northwestern – 26.2%

Gone are the Friday night specials getting to beat up on lower-level group of five teams. Michigan State starts the season at home against what looks to be a pretty good Northwestern team.

Week 2 @ BYU – 39.8%

BYU might just be the common denominator for truly terrible Michigan State seasons. The Spartans lost to the Cougars at home in 2016 and now have to travel all the way to Provo, Utah in week two.

Week 3 vs. Toledo – 78.8%

Even this game is far from a gimme. Toledo has had some really nice football teams the last decade and could easily put a scare into a young Michigan State team.

Week 4 vs. Miami – 50.9%

I’m always surprised when I see MSU is projected to beat Miami. I think it says more about just how bad the ACC is going to be this year.

Week 5 @ Iowa – 14.2%

Winning on the road at Iowa is hard enough with a really good team.

Week 6 vs. Michigan – 21.8%

It might be a couple years before Tucker is able to swing the Michigan State vs. UofM rivalry back around.

Week 7 vs. Ohio State – 3.4%

Ohio State is going to absolutely bludgeon every single team they play this year en route to the College Football Playoff and probably a national title.

Week 8 @ Indiana – 14.9%

Indiana was good last year and is going to be better this year so long as Mike Penix Jr. stays healthy. Winning in their place is going to be really tough.

Week 9 vs. Minnesota – 31.1%

Even Minnesota is up right now. PJ Feck has the Golden Gophers cruising towards back-to-back double-digit win seasons. Good thing he’s going to bolt from there real soon.

Week 10 @ Penn State – 4.6%

Same analysis as the Iowa game. Although MSU certainly has had some weird upsets over Penn State the last few years.

Week 11 vs. Rutgers – 66.7%

Hooray for Rutgers! (Please don’t lose to Rutgers)

Week 12 @ Maryland – 45.7%

Another toss-up game. Mike Locksley might have things turned around a bit in College Park, but the Terps are still a ways away from being a quality team.

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Schedule Breakdown: Utah State Football

USU’s 2020 football schedule is out. Aggies have a tough road ahead of them.

Contact/Follow @SamMcConkie & @MWCwire

The Schedule is out for USU football: Let’s break it down.

The Mountain West recently put out its full football schedule for the 2020 season. Outside of the non-conference games, USU finally knows which order it’s going to play its opponents in.

Here’s a quick look at strength of schedule using ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI):

#54 Washington State

FCS Southern Utah

#29 at Washington

#62 at BYU

#88 San Diego State

#51 at Boise State

#124 New Mexico

#98 at Nevada

#77 at Wyoming

#93 Fresno State

#96 at Colorado State

#76 Air Force

Tough road to start

Aggies are going to start out the season with a solid non-conference slate. Newly staffed Washington State will roll into town with head coach Nick Rolovich leading the charge. Though Wazzou is likely to take a step back with the loss of their star passer Anthony Gordon, Rolovich has a strong reputation for pass heavy offenses. He’ll throw everything including the kitchen sink at a youthful Aggie defense.

After playing the Southern Utah Thunderbirds in the teams’ first meeting since 2015, Aggies will take on the Washington Huskies in Seattle. Even with Chris Petersen stepping down, the Huskies are in great hands with defensive guru Jimmy Lake. Aggies haven’t won a road game against a P5 opponent since the Nixon administration, so it will no doubt be tough sledding against an elite Husky defense.

Aggies will get a bye week before facing the BYU down in Provo. Though I generally am not a fan of early-season bye weeks, this one comes at a great time. Sandwiching strong Pac-12 teams around SUU should set the Aggies up to be both battle-tested and rested before they look for revenge against the Cougars in October.

Bonus fact: Aggies are 2-0 against BYU when coming off a bye.

Lighter load down the stretch against new coaches

With the exception of the defending Mountain West champs Boise State, the rest of the opponents are quite manageable for the Aggies. San Diego State and Fresno State both come to Logan, and both teams have new head coaches in charge. The Aggies will close out the regular season at home with a likely rebuilding Falcon squad as well.

Road tilts at Wyoming and Nevada are difficult, but winnable. The Wolf Pack’s QB situation is completely up in the air, and Wyoming appears to be toying with the idea of a two-QB system. As strong as the defensive culture has become in Laramie, their offensive prowess still leaves much to be desired.

On the very light end of the schedule, Aggies will face New Mexico in Logan and Colorado State in Fort Collins. The Lobos were an absolute disaster last season and the storyline will only improve as much as Rocky Long is able to coach up their defense. Last season, the Lobos ranked dead last in the FBS in pass yards allowed. They can only improve, but there will be plenty of growing pains along the way.

And let’s be real: nobody knows why Steve Addazio ended up with the Rams. He has virtually no ties to the west and he had plenty of baggage at Boston College. Time will tell if he’s a good fit for the pass-heavy Rams.

Final Thoughts

There are only a handful of what could be considered “easy games” on this schedule. It starts out as genuinely challenging but lightens considerably after the mid-October date with the Broncos.

One nice variable the Aggies have going in their favor is they’ll be facing six teams who all have new head coaches. Whether at home or on the road, taking advantage of another team’s growing pains and variable chemistry can open some prime opportunities for wins.

The Aggies themselves are transitioning back to a 3-4 “attacking” defense they had in 2018. With Stacy Collins and Frank Maile taking command of the defense, the transition will likely have fewer issues than it would have otherwise. If the unit can get near where it was in 2018, USU will have a puncher’s chance in most of their games.

Projected record: 7-5

“Body bag” games (Sure loss): at Washington, at Boise State

Difficult games (can win, but likely loss): Wazzou, at Wyoming

Toss-up games: at BYU, San Diego State, Air Force

Should win: New Mexico, at Nevada, at Colorado State, Fresno State

Raja’s Tomato-can variety: Southern Utah

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ESPN’s FPI ranks Georgia, LSU football lower than expected

The Georgia Bulldogs made the FPI’s preseason top ten once again, but the Dawgs and Tigers are rated too lowly by ESPN’s FPI.

The Georgia Bulldogs made the FPI’s preseason top ten once again. The Dawgs check in tenth in the rankings. LSU comes in at twelfth. Here’s a description of ESPN’s FPI:

The Football Power Index (FPI) is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule. Ratings and projections update daily.

Here’s the rankings of the top 25 SEC teams:

Should Georgia be ranked higher? I think so. The Dawgs return so many studs on defense that they deserve to be a few spots higher than Texas and Texas A&M.

Both Georgia and LSU should be ranked above Texas A&M. It’s rare to take the side of the Tigers, but they’re defending national champions and return lots of talent.

FPI, to put it simply, is not an extremely accurate measure of the college football universe. For instance, who was first in FPI after last season? You’d think 15-0 LSU would be, but they’re third behind first-rated Ohio State and second-rated Clemson.

In last season’s preseason FPI rankings, Georgia was rated third. It did correctly pick two of the four playoff teams (LSU and Clemson), but it missed on numerous teams like Michigan (5th), UCLA (20th), Tennessee (15th), and South Carolina (18th).

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Texas Longhorns Rank In Top 10 of ESPN’s Preseason FPI

ESPN has released their preseason FPI rankings for the upcoming 2020 season, the Texas Longhorns come in the top 10.

The preseason FPI rankings have been released for the 2020 college football season. The FPI (Football Power Index) is a way to measure the strength of a team with how they are projected to finish the season. The Longhorns come in ranked in the top 10.

The Football Power Index (FPI) is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule. Ratings and projections update daily.

The Longhorns come in ahead of the defending National Champions, LSU Tigers. Texas has revamped their staff in hopes of making a run at the Big 12 Championship in 2020. The Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners are the only Big 12 teams in the top 10.

FPI Top 10 Conference Breakdown:

  • ACC (1)
  • Big Ten (3)
  • Big 12 (2)
  • Independent (1)
  • SEC (3)

Ohio State’s season is over, but it’s still ranked No. 1 in the ESPN FPI Ratings

Despite losing to Clemson in the Fiesta Bowl to end its season, Ohio State football is still ranked No. 1 in the latest ESPN FPI ratings.

If you believe Ohio State was the better team in the desert on the night of December 28, you have some company. Clemson won the game and made the plays it had to down the stretch, but the Buckeyes dominated for large portions of the game, missed out on a slew of breaks and opportunities and lost a close one.

But that didn’t stop the ESPN Football Power Index from keeping the Buckeyes at the No. 1 spot, ahead of both Clemson (who just knocked off OSU) and LSU. Both of those teams are preparing to play for a national championship in the Big Easy while Ohio State focuses on recruiting and preparations for the 2020 season.

According to ESPN’s explanation of how the FPI is calculated, The Football Power Index (FPI) is a measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season. FPI represents how many points above or below average a team is. Projected results are based on 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season using FPI, results to date, and the remaining schedule. Ratings and projections update daily.

It didn’t predict the defeat at the hands of Clemson very well, so there’s that.

Here’s the rest of the top ten according to the FPI.

Note that there are five SEC teams in the top ten compared to just three Big Ten teams. The ACC (Clemson) and Pac-12 (Oregon) has one team apiece.

 

Ohio State football sets new all-time high in ESPN FPI metric

Ohio State has been dominant in 2019, and one metric used to track such things by the ESPN FPI has been broken by the Buckeyes.

Ohio State continues to dominate in 2019. Not one single team has been able to provide anything resembling a challenge against the Buckeyes. So far, the season’s opponents have been like a wet paper towel against a freight train.

Now, if we rewind all the way back to the beginning of the year before all the games began, the ESPN Football Power Index had little faith in Ohio State being this dominant. In fact, it was on the fringe of not even appearing on any of the graphics projecting the top teams for the season.

My how things have now changed. Not only has Ohio State been the No. 1 team for a few weeks now in the FPI ratings, just this past week it shattered the all-time high measurement in the points above average rating per Brad Edwards of ESPN.

The Buckeyes points above average in layman terms means that Ohio State is 34.7 points better than your average college football team.  Lookout well-below average Rutgers, you have been put on notice.

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Now, ESPN only began collecting these data sets in 2004, but that’s better than 2005 Texas (national champs), 2005 USC (Pete Carroll dynasty), and 2013 Florida State (Jameis Winston national champs).

That’s quite the achievement, especially since it is only November and there’s still plenty of time to improve the rating. If we are then to forecast where this team will land, well — if history is any indication — it should be in the College Football Playoff and have a great chance of winning the whole ball of wax.

Now, the games have to be played, but this is as telling of a stat when it comes to domination as one can get. If, that is, you put much stock in ESPN’s FPI.

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