Projecting Louisville's 2021 Schedule Using Updated SP+ Rankings

The 2021 college football season is just around the corner, and we have some idea of how it will pan out for the Cardinals thanks to the SP+ metric.

(Photo via University of Louisville Athletics)

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Following yet another long and torturous offseason, college football is now roughly three weeks away from making its triumphant return.

After going 8-5 in 2019 in his first year at the helm, including a bowl win, head coach Scott Satterfield and the rest of the Louisville football program saw a drastic difference in the win column during year two. Powered primarily by their horrific turnover margin, the Cardinals finished just 4-7 in 2020, including 3-6 in Atlantic Coast Conference play.

But how well will Louisville perform in year three of the Satterfield era? Well, we already have some idea thanks to the predictive college football metric SP+, which recently had their rankings updated ahead of the 2021 season.

SP+, according to its creator Bill Connelly of ESPN, is a "tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency". He has made several tweaks to it over the years since creating it in 2008 while at Football Outsiders, but the current iteration takes into account three primary factors: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history.

While Louisville's SP+ rating did increase to 8.2 from their February offseason mark of 7.6, their overall ranking amongst the 130 FBS teams actually fell one spot from No. 41 to No. 42.

SP+ still likes the offensive side of the ball for the Cardinals despite the turnovers and losing its top three options, giving it a rating of 38.2 or 18th in FBS. Conversely, the metric is oddly bearish on the defensive side of things after a noticeable uptick in production, giving it a rating of 30.0 or 95th in FBS.

Using SP+, we can plug in the rating from each team on Louisville's schedule and take a deep dive into how the 2021 season might transpire. We can figure out the win percentage in each game (accounting for home vs. away), the expected wins mark at the end of the season, as well as the statistical likelihood of every outcome during and concluding the season.

Louisville's 2021 Preseason SP+ Chart

All things considered, SP+ is pretty high on Louisville. The Cardinals have a win probably of over 50.0% in seven of their games currently on the schedule, and are underdogs against Ole Miss (34.24%) in the season-opener, vs. UCF (48.12%), at FSU (47.65%), at NC State (45.08%) and vs. (14.62%).

By regular season's end, Louisville has an expected wins mark of 6.97, and they have a 25.46% chance to finish the season with seven wins, the highest out of any other win mark. For all intents and purposes, as of right now, SP+ is projecting the Cardinals to go 7-5 in 2021.

Some other notable stats:

• 83.18% chance of going bowling.
• 67.25% chance of finishing in the 6-8 win range.
• 57.88% chance of finishing in the 7-9 win range.

A lot can happen over the course of the 2021 season. But for the time being, it seems that Louisville could be in good shape to have a bounce back year after their disappointing 2020 campaign.

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