Where is Georgia Tech ranked to start the 2023 season in SP+?
The 2023 college football season is drawing nearer and it won't be long before the week zero games kick off. This week, the first AP Top 25 of the season dropped and while Georgia Tech is not ranked, four of their opponents are.
Not only did the AP Top 25 drop this week, ESPN's Bill Connelly released his final 2023 preseason SP+ projections, which ranks all 133 teams in the FBS.
Connelly's SP+ has Georgia Tech starting the season 75th overall, with the 91st projected offense and the 65th projected defense.
Georgia Tech is the 12th-ranked ACC team, ahead of only Boston College and Virginia.
Georgia Tech is starting the 2023 season 75th in SP+ projections
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."
In the initial release of the 2023 rankings in February, Georgia Tech was 70th.
Here are the rankings for all of Georgia Tech's 2023 opponents, except for South Carolina State.
1. Georgia
7. Clemson
18. Ole Miss
25. North Carolina
37. Miami
40. Louisville
45. Wake Forest
55. Syracuse
78. Boston College
79. Virginia
129. Bowling Green
Georgia has both the highest projected offense (6th overall) and the highest projected defense (2nd) that the Yellow Jackets will face next season.
Playing seven opponents in the top 50 is going to be tough, with half of the games being on the road, but there is a path to a bowl game for the Yellow Jackets. It will require a leap on offense and the defense maintaining its improvement from the second half of the season, despite losing Keion White, Charlie Thomas, Ace Eley, and Zamari Walton.
Georgia Tech kicks off its 2023 season against Louisville on Sept. 1st at 7:30 on ESPN.
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