We all think that we know what is going to happen in the 2023 college football season. Whether it be for the team that you root for or the football landscape at large, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a fan out there who won’t tell you with confidence what they think will happen when games get going six months from now.
Some fans may tell you that the Oregon Ducks are a shoo-in for the College Football Playoff in 2023 and that they will be the first team in the history of the Pac-12 to run the table in the conference with a perfect 9-0 record. Others will look at the defense from last year, the lack of returners on the offensive line, and the level of talent in the conference and say that Oregon would be fortunate to make a bowl game.
I think that the end result will be somewhere in between the two, with a heavy lean toward optimism.
For the most part, a lot of people are going to end up being wrong, as is usually the case. The college game is at times so volatile and unpredictable that even the most knowledgeable experts end up missing the mark more often than not, and old takes usually end up getting exposed.
That’s why it’s often helpful to broaden predictions in the form of ceilings and floors. How good can the team be if everything goes reasonably well? How bad could things get if some tough breaks occur? That’s a better way to try and predict what’s going to happen, giving a wider array of outcomes and not locking yourself into an exact record projection that will more likely than not end up being incorrect.
ESPN recently went through this exercise and projected the ceiling and floor for the top 25 teams in the nation this preseason. So where do they think the Ducks will land? Let’s take a look.