Texas listed at No. 9 in ESPN's preseason SP+ rankings
Despite an up-and-down, 8-4 regular season that ended with a loss to Washington in the Valero Alamo Bowl, the 2022 Texas Longhorns were a darling in the eyes of several analytical rankings. ESPN’s Football Power Index described the Longhorns as the No. 8 team in the land when the season was all said and done. FEI, a system put together by Football Outsiders, had Texas as the No. 6 team in its rankings. SP+, a system created by ESPN’s Bill Connelly, split the difference and labeled the Longhorns as the No. 7 team by its standards.
[Get Inside Texas Plus until the start of the 2023 season for $29.99!]
Steve Sarkisian’s program once again is the apple of SP+’s eye. In 2023 preseason projections released on Tuesday, SP+ ranked Texas as the No. 9 team. The offense received a No. 14 ranking, while the defense was No. 16 according to the forward-facing metric.
SP+ has several components. First is returning production including transfers, where the Longhorns rank well. That makes up half of the equation. Next is recent recruiting rankings, also including transfers, with heavier weight given to more recent classes. About one-third of SP+ is tabulated via those criteria. The third aspect is recent history, which makes up just under one-fifth of the equation.
In Connelly’s words, SP+ is “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.”
Connelly listed the Longhorns as a team to buy.
Here we go again. Texas seemingly gamed the computers last season, finishing seventh in both SP+ and FPI. The Longhorns’ ceiling was extremely high, but they went 2-5 in one-score games to finish just 8-5. While teams do have control over how they perform in close games, they have only so much control, and teams that were particularly good or poor in this regard tend to regress (or progress) toward the mean the next season. Combine that progression with a top-20 returning production ranking, and you’ve got a UT team with massive potential. Maybe they live up to it this time? Possibly?
Texas has good reason to be near the top in SP+. It is No. 19 in terms of returning production, second in the Big 12 behind Kansas. The most recent recruiting class was No. 3 in ESPN’s rankings, and the 2023 class is weighed more heavily than others. Plus, it was No. 7 in the final SP+ rankings last year, giving the Horns good footing for this year’s projections.
On a conference scale, the Big 12 is third in average SP+ rating, just behind the second-place Big 10. The SEC leads comfortably in that metric.
Here’s how the Longhorns stack up versus the rest of the Big 12.
9. Texas
14. Oklahoma
19. TCU
22. Kansas State
34. Oklahoma State
35. Texas Tech
38. Baylor
39. UCF
43. Cincinnati
45. Iowa State
50. West Virginia
51. Houston
57. Kansas
62. BYU
What about within the state of Texas?
9. Texas
17. Texas A&M
19. TCU
35. Texas Tech
38. Baylor
51. Houston
55. SMU
60. UTSA
84. North Texas
111. Rice
116. Texas State
117. UTEP
124. Sam Houston State
On the Longhorns’ schedule in addition to the No. 111 Owls, Alabama was No. 4, and Wyoming was No. 101.
Connelly will update the the rankings in May and August. But for now, Texas is a team with high expectations both to human eyes and mathematical formulas.
