Connelly’s SP+ has the U at #23

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Sounds about right to me:

Each offseason, after the recruiting season has been finalized and the first major wave of transfer portal entries has come and gone, I publish preliminary SP+ ratings for the coming season. I base these projections on three primary factors, weighted by their predictiveness:

1. Returning production. Last week we published my initial returning production rankings for 2020, based on players graduating, leaving for the pros, transferring, etc. Estimating improvement or regression based on these percentages and applying it to last year's SP+ ratings accounts for more than 50% of the overall numbers below.

2. Recent recruiting. After determining how much of last year's team is being brought back, the next step is to determine the caliber of the players who will be filling in the missing returning production. To do that, I use a weighted mix of recent recruiting rankings. They primarily pull from the past two recruiting classes, but I have begun to incorporate older classes as well, to a lesser degree. No matter what the "stars don't matter" crowd will tell you, recruiting rankings are extremely predictive, and these projections are more effective because of them.

3. Recent history. While last year's SP+ ratings are taken into account with the returning production estimates above, I've found that involving previous years' performances as well gives us a nice way of estimating 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? Recent history accounts for less than 10% of the overall projections; it is a minor factor, but the projections are better with it than without.


No. 23 Miami

Schlabach ranking: NR

SP+ seemed to have a strange crush on Manny Diaz's Hurricanes last year, continuing to rank them in the top 30 no matter how many unlikely ways they found to lose football games. A combination of bad breaks and bad offense led to a 6-7 finish, and while Diaz can't do much about the former, he addressed the latter by bringing in not only a new offensive coordinator (Rhett Lashlee) but also Houston quarterback D'Eriq King.

The U also brings back five of its top seven receivers and basically every offensive lineman. The defensive front seven will need a lot of new contributors to step up (the addition of star Temple end Quincy Roche will help), but the secondary is seasoned, at least, and there aren't usually many reasons to doubt a Diaz defense.
 
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Is the Husker fanbase finally going to turn against CoRch Forst if he misses a bowl again this year?
 
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