Kentucky lands inside top 25 in ESPN's preseason SP+ rankings

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Mark Stoops — (Photo courtesy of Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

There won’t be a college football or NFL game that counts played until Week Zero arrives at the end of August. We have entered the longest offseason in sports. But the countdown is sometimes the best part.

As we begin our march towards another football season, the offseason will be littered with preseason rankings. The AP poll won’t arrive until late in the summer but we’ve already seen some early preseason top 25 rankings after Georgia throttled TCU in the national championship. More will come after spring practice wraps up in April. But perhaps the best one dropped on Monday.

ESPN’s Bill Connelly is the creator of the SP+ rankings system which is defined as “a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency”. Using three primary factors — returning production, recent recruiting, and recent history — Connelly’s algorithm has crunched the numbers and spit out a ranking for us college football consumers.

SP+ ranks every team from No. 1 to No. 133 with Jacksonville State (Hello, Rich Rodriguez) and Sam Houston making the leap from the FCS this season. Let’s check in on the preseason top 25 with offense and defense ranks included.

Georgia (6 offense/2 defense)
Ohio State (1/10)
Michigan (8/4)
Alabama (5/9)
Penn State (21/5)
Tennessee (2/32)
LSU (10/14)
Oregon (4/38)
Texas (14/16)
USC (3/46)
Florida State (26/8)
Clemson (28/12)
Utah (12/25)
Oklahoma (9/36)
Notre Dame (25/15)
Washington (7/40)
Texas A&M (51/3)
Ole Miss (18/33)
TCU (27/27)
Florida (22/34)
UCLA (11/55)
Kansas State (29/28)
Mississippi State (23/35)
Kentucky (59/6)
Wisconsin (46/11)

Defense gives Kentucky a high floor

Mark Stoops is now in his 11th season at Kentucky and the former Florida State defensive coordinator has absolutely raised both the ceiling and floor in Lexington. The Cats have a pair of AP Top 25 finishes under Stoops to go along with a long bowl appearance streak. Kentucky football is in a much better place.

Stoops has accomplished this with a very inconsistent offense.

UK has only one top-25 offensive finish per SP+ in the Stoops era and that occurred with Liam Coen holding the play call sheet in 2021. The Wildcats have quite often won games with defense. After a top-five defensive finish in 2022, the bar is high again.

Since defensive coordinator Brad White arrived, Kentucky has finished inside the top-40 each year on defense to give the Wildcats a high floor on this side of the ball. With a pair of potential stars in the front seven — Deone Walker and Trevin Wallace — to go along with a very experienced secondary, this could be Kentucky’s most talented defense yet. The Wildcats will once again be very good on this side of the ball as long as injuries do not pile up.

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If the offense can return top-25 form, Kentucky should have a shot at doing some real damage in the SEC this fall.

Projected betting spreads include numerous toss-up games

Another great thing about SP+ is that it is easy to project betting spread thanks to the numbers provided for each team. Using a two-point addition for home field advantage and some rounding, we now have some projected spreads for all 11 of Kentucky’s FBS games.

Let’s take a look.

Sept. 2: Ball State at Kentucky (-34)
Sept. 9: Eastern Kentucky at Kentucky (N/A)
Sept. 16: Akron at Kentucky (-39.5)
Sept. 23: Kentucky (-15.5) at Vanderbilt
Sept. 30: Florida at Kentucky (-1.5)
Oct. 7: Kentucky (+19) at Georgia
Oct. 14: Missouri at Kentucky (-4.5)
Oct. 28: Tennessee at Kentucky (+7.5)
Nov. 4: Kentucky (+2.5) at Mississippi State
Nov. 11: Alabama at Kentucky (+11)
Nov. 18: Kentucky (-1) at South Carolina
Nov. 25: Kentucky (-2) at Louisville

Kentucky enters the season as a projected favorite in eight games and an underdog in four games. The Cats will be a heavy favorite against Akron, Ball State, EKU, and Vandy. However, UK will be catching double digits against national title contenders Alabama and Georgia.

Once again, the toss-up games will determine the season in Lexington.

The Kentucky football program finds itself as a one-possession dog or favorite in six games this season and each of them occur in the last eight games of the season. A hot start will be needed for the Wildcats, but the season should start after a 4-0 start when Florida head coach Billy Napier makes his first trip to the Bluegrass to end September.

There is a clear path to 8-4 and a good bowl bid if Kentucky can finish 4-2 in the toss-up games. However, we’ve seen Mark Stoops’ squads in Lexington typically rise up once and pull a big upset. If that happens in 2022, the home games with Tennessee and Alabama will be the spots to watch.

Football is coming.