Projecting Louisville's 2022 Season Using SP+

Kickoff might be seven months away, but we have some idea of how the 2022 college football season will pan out for the Cardinals thanks to the SP+ metric.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - In a college football season which saw a return to normalcy after being heavily influenced by COVID-19 the year prior, Louisville fell a little short of expectations.

Thanks primarily to an inability to close out in the second half and fourth quarter, the Cardinals finished just 6-7 in 2021, including 4-4 in Atlantic Coast Conference play and a 31-28 loss to Air Force in the First Responder Bowl.

But with Louisville retaining so many key pieces from last season, namely Malik Cunningham, how well will Louisville perform in year four of the Scott Satterfield era? It is a little early to tell, considering spring practice is still roughly two weeks away, but we already have some idea thanks to the predictive college football metric SP+.

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.

On Wednesday, Connelly released his early 2022 preseason SP+ projections. With a rating of 12.7, Louisville is ranked No. 29 out of 131 FBS teams.

Unsurprisingly, the metric is extremely high on the offensive side of the ball for the Cardinals, giving it a rating of 38.6, or eighth in FBS. Conversely, SP+ is not a huge fan of the defensive side of things, giving it a rating of 25.9, or 67th 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 2022 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.

Opponent	Proj. SP+	Offensive SP+	Defensive SP+
Syracuse	4.5 (58th)	27.8 (70th)	23.3 (46th)
UCF	11.0 (37th)	31.2 (46th)	20.2 (25th)
Florida State	13.4 (24th)	31.2 (47th)	17.8 (13th)
USF	-5.4 (94th)	27.4 (71st)	32.8 (110th)
Boston College	0.0 (76th)	25.5 (84th)	25.5 (63rd)
Virginia	3.3 (63rd)	38.6 (7th)	35.3 (116th)
Pitt	16.2 (13th)	37.3 (15th)	21.1 (31st)
Wake Forest	7.4 (47th)	38.1 (9th)	30.8 (97th)
James Madison	-4.2 (90th)	24.4 (88th)	28.7 (84th)
Clemson	21.0 (5th)	32.1 (41st)	11.1 (1st)
NC State	16.0 (15th)	31.8 (43rd)	15.8 (8th)
Kentucky	14.5 (21st)	34.6 (29th)	20.2 (24th)

Louisville's 2022 SP+ Chart

SP+ is higher on Louisville than it has been in the past few years, but finds themselves at the mercy of a tough schedule. The Cardinals play five teams in the SP+ Top 25, including the last three games of the season.

They have a win probably of over 50.0 percent in seven of their games, and are underdogs vs. UCF, Pitt, at Clemson, vs. NC State and at Kentucky.

Louisville will have an expected wins mark of 7.10, and they have a 24.61 percent 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 2022.

A lot can happen between now and Sept. 6 when Louisville travels up to Syracuse to kick off the season. But for the time being, it seems that Louisville will have plenty of tests in 2022.

(Photo of Cardinal Stadium: University of Louisville Athletics)

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