Front Porch FootballESPN’s FPI Rankings
by Chris Paschal
Last week, ESPN came out with their early FPI rankings for the 2019 season. For those of you who have no idea what the heck the FPI is, here is a quick breakdown given by ESPN:
FPI ratings are determined through four factors:
Team performance over the past four seasons (most emphasis on last season)
Returning starters at quarterback, on offense overall and on defense
Whether a team has a returning head coach
Recruiting rankings over the past four seasons
Seth Walder, ESPN Analytics
SEC is King
According to the FPI rankings, the SEC is yet again the cream of the crop in college football. If you look at the rankings, it is mind blowing how deep the SEC is and how talented of a conference it has become. When given a closer look to the rankings, a few things are staggering. The most striking part of these rankings to me are that the two toughest divisions in college football are the SEC West and the SEC East. The fact that the SEC West is still at the top is not surprising seeing as the Crimson Tide is the most dominant football program this past decade, Auburn and LSU have both won SEC Titles within the past decade, and Mississippi State and Texas A&M are playing really well as of late.
What is surprising, however, is that the SEC East was listed as the second toughest division in college football. For years, the SEC East had one or two strong programs and then a bunch of losers. But now Georgia is contending with Alabama as top dog in the SEC. Florida is bouncing back quickly and reloading on the recruiting trail. Then with hard nosed coaches and recruiters at Tennessee, Kentucky, and South Carolina, the East has quickly whipped itself into shape.
The Significance of FPI
Now, before you Clemson/Big Ten folks start freaking out about how this metric doesn’t mean anything, let me address that point. You’re right… it doesn’t mean anything. This poll/computer metric does not determine where teams are ranked and who wins games.
What it does show, however, is that based on computer metrics and generations, the SEC is a pretty tough league. When the “10th-best SEC team (Missouri) is better than the second-best ACC team (Florida State) and the second-best Big 12 team (Texas),” you know that the SEC is a deep conference.
I want to quickly address three FPI rankings that caught my eye. FPI ranks not only an overall team’s overall talent, but it also breaks down each team’s offensive and defensive talent.
LSU Ranked as the 8th Best Offense in the Country
Yeah, y’all read that right. The FPI put the LSU Tigers as one of the ten best offenses in college football. LSU came in at 69th in offensive yards per game last season. Further, Nick Brossette, LSU’s leading rusher is gone from last year’s squad. This ranking is indicative of two things. First, Joe Burrow returning at quarterback is a huge boost for the Bayou Bengals.
For the first time in forever, it feels like LSU has a quarterback that can go out there and win them ball games. It may not be pretty (Auburn game comes to mind), but he gets the job done. The second thing this ranking shows is how good of spot LSU is in recruiting. The skill positions are loaded, and the Tigers have always had great offensive line play. LSU may not finish the season as the eighth best offense in the country, but talent-wise, that projection may not be too far off.
Alabama is Ranked Seventh on Special Teams…What??
Is this a sick joke? Alabama’s special teams has been handicapped by their field goal kicking for years now. Last year, some absurd stat surfaced that Alabama had missed more extra points in three games than Auburn had in over a decade. (I tried to find it, but couldn’t, my apologies.) Alabama was able to sign Will Reichard in this year’s recruiting cycle, and he has already enrolled at Alabama. Reichard was considered one of the top kicking prospects in the country, but I won’t believe it until I see it.
South Carolina Ranked 19th Overall
The Gamecocks are coming off a 7-6 record with a bowl loss to Virginia. The FPI ranked South Carolina has a top 20 team heading into 2019. I think South Carolina will finish 2019 with a similar win-loss record as 2018, but this ranking should signify to South Carolina fans that the program is moving in the right direction. There is a lot of talent returning from last year, and recruiting continues to get better.
The FPI ranked this 2019 South Carolina team as one of the top 15 best offenses in the country. I believe it, but consistency is the key. The offense that put up 600 plus yards on Clemson is good enough to keep South Carolina in most games. The offense that was shut out by Virginia is bad enough for Carolina to miss postseason play for the first time in Will Muschamp’s tenure in Columbia. 2020 is the season that I think Muschamp should be judged by, but 2019 will be interesting to follow. Will these young, talented prospects and players compete against the best the SEC has to offer, or will it be a long, disheartening season for the Gamecocks? I think the former, but we will have to wait and see.
