Michigan football: ESPN updates FPI projections, bowl predictions
Michigan football kept its season rolling last Saturday against the Hawai’i Warriors, blowing them out 56-10. They are hoping is another toward a second-straight Big Ten Championship and beyond. With most of the data updated after the second full weekend of games, the Wolverines are still the No. 5 team in the country, per ESPN’s Football Power Index (FPI).
Alabama, Ohio State, Georgia and Clemson round out the top 5 ahead of Michigan.
FPI has Michigan finishing with a 9.9-2.3 record on the season. These numbers are down from last week, so it appears the computers were not a fan of calling the dogs off at halftime on Saturday night.
So what exactly is FPI?
“FPI is a predictive rating system designed to measure team strength and project performance going forward,” ESPN explains. “The ultimate goal of FPI is not to rank teams 1 through 128; rather, it is to correctly predict games and season outcomes. If Vegas ever published the power rankings it uses to set its lines, they would likely look quite a lot like FPI.”
Other FPI percentages on Michigan’s resume include:
Win Out: 3.2%
Six Wins or More: 100%
Win Big Ten East: 16.3%
Win Big Ten: 12.5%
College Football Playoff: 26%
Make National Title Game: 9.3%
Win National Title: 3.2%
Each week, we will update Michigan’s resume and also take a look ahead to the rest of the 2022 schedule. Here is how it breaks down ahead of Week 3.
Michigan football’s FPI outlook
Sept. 3 vs. Colorado State: 51-7 W (1-0)
Sept. 10 vs. Hawaii: 56-10 W (2-0)
Sept. 17 vs. UConn: 99.3% chance of victory
Sept. 24 vs. Maryland: 82% chance of victory
Oct. 1 at Iowa: 82.7% chance of victory
Oct. 8 at Indiana: 90.2% chance of victory
Oct. 15 vs. Penn State: 68.2% chance of victory
Oct. 29 vs. Michigan State: 68.3% chance of victory
Nov. 5 at Rutgers: 85.6% chance of victory
Nov. 12 vs. Nebraska: 91.9% chance of victory
Nov. 19 vs. Illinois: 90.9% chance of victory
Nov. 26 at Ohio State: 20.5% chance of victory
Bowl projections and what’s next
ESPN also put out its latest batch of bowl projections with both Kyle Bonagura and Mark Schlabach predicting a Rose Bowl appearance for Michigan. Bonagura has them taking on Utah, while Schlabach predicts they will see USC. Time will tell as the season rolls along who winds up where.
Michigan hosts UConn this weekend in a 12 p.m. ET kickoff set for ABC. Sophomore quarterback J.J. McCarthy was named the starter coming out of the performance against Hawai’i and it is expected to remain that way moving forward.
