Georgia Tech rises 12 spots in latest SP+ rankings following win

Georgia Tech travels to Ole Miss this Saturday

Author:
Jackson Caudell
Publish date:
Sep 13, 2023 3:27 PM EDT

In this story:

Georgia Tech secured its first win of the season on Saturday against FCS foe South Carolina State and it was a huge performance on the offensive side of the ball for the Yellow Jackets. Haynes King led a versatile attack that dominated on the ground and the air and Georgia Tech looked impressive ahead of their big road trip to Ole Miss.

The impressive performance was enough to move Georgia Tech from 80th to 68th in ESPN's Bill Connelly's SP+ rankings. He has Georgia Tech with the 69th best offense, the 69th best defense, and the 81st-ranked special teams. Georgia Tech is currently the 12th-ranked team in the ACC, ahead of only Boston College and Virginia.

So what exactly is SP+ and what goes into making these rankings? Here is how Connelly formulates his rankings in his own words:

"I base SP+ projections on three primary factors, weighted by their predictiveness:

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.

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."