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Georgia football atop ESPN SP+ rankings for 2023

On3 imageby:Jake Rowe•02/14/23•

JakeMRowe

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ATLANTA, GEORGIA - DECEMBER 03: Head coach Kirby Smart of the Georgia Bulldogs reacts against the LSU Tigers during the second quarter in the SEC Championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium on December 03, 2022 in Atlanta, Georgia. (Photo by Todd Kirkland/Getty Images)

ESPN continues to shower love and respect on Georgia after its second National Championship in as many seasons. The Bulldogs were No. 1 in the Way-Too-Early Top25 rankings last month and they’re also atop Bill Connelly’s SP+ rankings.

The Bulldogs are followed by Ohio State, Michigan, Alabama, and Penn State in that order. Tennessee, LSU, Oregon, Texas, and USC round out the top ten, also in that order. Connelly goes in depth when describing how he comes to these rankngs.

  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.

    Here are the full rankings, now featuring 133 teams with the additions of Jacksonville State and Sam Houston. The No. 1 team should surprise absolutely no one.

Georgia brings back a large portion of it’s 2023 National Championship team, but not veteran quarterback Stetson Bennett or do-it-all running back Kenny McIntosh. The Bulldogs bring back well over 60 starts on the offensive line amongst four players and almost all of its non-running back receiving production from 2022.

The defense should be loaded as it has to replace just four starters from the National Championship game vs. TCU. Picking up where guys like Chris Smith, Kelee Ringo, Nolan Smith, and Jalen Carter left off, however, is no easy task.

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