First 2024 SP+ Rankings: Where Does Georgia Tech Rank Ahead of Spring Football?

Georgia Tech is hoping to contend in the ACC this season

Spring practice is less than a month away and that will be the first glimpse of what Georgia Tech Football will look like this season. The Yellow Jackets are returning a bulk of their offense, which ranked as one of the best in the ACC, and are looking to start rebuilding the defense with a new staff and new pieces in the front seven. It is going to be an important spring for Brent Key as Georgia Tech hopes to build upon its 7-6 season from a year ago. 

While Georgia Tech does bring a lot of players back from their offense, sportsbooks, and analytics have still not come around on the Yellow Jackets just yet. When FanDuel released its first win totals for the season, Georgia Tech's was set at 5.5, which is on the lower end of ACC teams. 

Today, ESPN's Bill Connelly released his first SP+ rankings for the 2024 college football season. SP+ is one of the most respected power rating systems in the sport and can be a good basis to project teams. 

Georgia Tech comes in at No. 60 in the first edition of the SP+ rankings. SP+ ranks Georgia Tech's offense 35th, defense 101st, and the special teams unit 68th. 

So what exactly is SP+ and what goes into making these rankings? Here is how Connelly formulates his rankings in his own words:

"I base SP+ projections on three primary factors, weighted by their predictiveness:

1. Returning production. The returning production numbers are based on rosters I have updated as much as possible to account for transfers and attrition. The combination of last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on returning production make up about half of the projections formula

2. Recent recruiting. This piece informs us of the caliber of a team's potential replacements (and/or new stars) in the lineup. It is determined by the past few years of recruiting rankings in diminishing order (meaning the most recent class carries the most weight). Beginning this season, I am also incorporating transfers -- both the quality and the volume -- in a different way. After last season's transfer-heavy recruiting shift, I've got a bit more data for how to handle that. This piece makes up about one-third of the projections formula.

3. Recent history. Using a sliver of information from previous seasons (two to four years ago) gives us a good measure of overall program health. It stands to reason that a team that has played well for one year is less likely to duplicate that effort than a team that has been good for years on end (and vice versa), right? This is a minor piece of the puzzle -- only about 15% -- but the projections are better with it than without.

I will update these numbers in May and August, after further transfers and roster changes have come about (and after I've had a bit more time to tinker with handling transfers and other factors). But for now, let's look at what SP+ has to say about the college football landscape.

A reminder on SP+: It's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and, along those same lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date."

Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King / Nathaniel Caudell

I actually think this is a fair ranking based on how Georgia Tech's defense performed last season and the fact that there is not a lot of proven production in the front seven of the defense. I am of the opinion that Georgia Tech made good hires on the defensive side of the ball, but I want to see the improvement before making the argument that Georgia Tech should be higher. 

Here are the rankings of Georgia Tech's 2024 opponents (VMI not included): 

1. Georgia (No. 1 overall)

2. Notre Dame (No. 9)

3. Florida State (No. 12)

4. Miami (21)

5. Louisville (24)

6. NC State (28)

7. Virginia Tech (30)

8. Duke (48)

9. North Carolina (58)

10. Syracuse (61)

11. Georgia State (116)

You can see why Georgia Tech has one of the toughest schedules in the country. All 11 of these teams made bowl games last year and only two have a worse SP+ ranking than the Yellow Jackets and Syracuse is only one spot behind Georgia Tech. They face seven top-30 opponents and only two of those teams (Miami and NC State) are home games. 

Here is how the entire ACC ranked on SP+: 

1. Florida State (No. 12 overall)

2. Clemson (No. 16)

3. Miami (No. 21)

4. Louisville (No. 24)

5. SMU (No. 27)

6. NC State (No. 28)

7. Virginia Tech (No. 30)

8. Duke (No. 48)

9. Cal (No. 49)

10. UNC (58)

11. Georgia Tech (No. 60)

12. Syracuse (No. 61)

13. Pitt (No. 70)

14. Wake Forest (No. 72)

15. Boston College (No. 76)

16. Virginia (No. 81)

17. Stanford (No. 94)

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