Indiana Football Ranked 4th Worst Power 5 Team by ESPN SP+ Metric After Week 1
BLOOMINGTON, Ind. — It's never good when you're only ranked ahead of Boston College, Virginia and Northwestern.
But that's exactly where the Indiana football team and coach Tom Allen find themselves after the first week of the 2023 season.
The Hoosiers lost 23-3 to coach Ryan Day and the previously No. 3 ranked Ohio State Buckeyes. The 20-point margin against a national title contender was rather respectable. The offensive showing IU displayed was not.
What rankings am I referencing though? That's a very fair question that you might be asking.
The rankings of discussion today are the gold standard for an all-in-one advanced metric in college football — SP+.
SP+ was created by college football writer Bill Connelly years ago, then working for SB Nation, now working at ESPN. There's a whole lot of complex math involved that someone smarter than me like Connelly could explain, but it essentially boils down to this paragraph he wrote in 2017.
"SP+ is presented in the form of an adjusted points per game figure," Connelly wrote, though at the time it was called S&P+. "For instance, if Team A's S&P+ rating is plus-19.0, that means it is 19 points better than the average college football team. If Team B's rating is minus-12.0, it is 12 points worse than average."
And put another way — SP+ basically attempts to predict that if all things were even, with both teams playing on a neutral field with neutral conditions, who would be the expected winner.
As you probably could have guessed, Indiana did not rank very favorably in Connelly's week one edition of the SP+ rankings (we'll provide you with Indiana's numbers here, though an ESPN+ subscription is required to view Connelly's numbers for every team in the FBS).
The metric currently has IU at -7.3, or a little more than seven points worse than an average team at the FBS level. That puts the Hoosiers in a three-way tie with Wyoming and UAB as the 85th-best team in the country out of 133 total FBS squads.
Seems less than ideal.
Unsurprisingly, Indiana's defense is viewed more favorably than its offense by SP+. However, the gap between the two units is not as large as you'd think.
The metric has the IU offense ranked 92nd overall nationally, one spot of everyone's favorite Iowa Hawkeyes. For anyone wondering how that's possible given that Indiana only mustered three points during its opening week as opposed to Iowa's 24, it's due to how SP+ is calculated.
It's built to factor in preseason projections and performance from the past year as a safeguard against the wild variation that can happen in a single week of football. So sure, if Iowa continues to hit 20-point totals each game while Indiana struggles to score touchdowns, the Hawkeyes will pass the Hoosiers in offensive SP+ quite soon.
But for now, Connelly's metric factors in that while Indiana's offense was just normal bad in 2022, it wasn't as nearly as dreadful as the 2022 Iowa offense. If you were so bad at scoring points a year ago that it created the funniest coordinator contract in the sport's history, then yeah, SP+ wants you to prove it for a few more weeks before it moves you up.
Thus, since the Indiana defense is coming off a dreadful 2022 campaign, SP+ hasn't fully adjusted for IU adding all these transfers, and likely producing a unit far great in 2023. Likewise, the offense performed slightly better on average in '22 than it did Saturday against Ohio State with two brand new quarterbacks playing, so SP+ isn't fully out on the Hoosiers' scoring unit as of yet.
All this to say — this metric thinks that this Indiana football team is bad.
Again, the only three Power 5 teams behind them each lost in excruciating fashion:
- Boston College — Was trailing Northern Illinois at home by two scores at halftime, rallied to send the game to overtime, but then just lost there too, 27-24.
- Virginia — Understandably lost to No. 9 ranked Tennessee. However, losing 49-13 in that game was not encouraging.
- Northwestern — Made Rutgers look dominant in a 24-7 loss. It's a shame for Allen and Co. that they don't play the Wildcats this year, because Indiana might beat Northwestern by 40.
Making matters worse, Indiana still has to play Michigan, Penn State and Wisconsin later this season, teams that are ranked as the 3rd, 9th and 27th best teams in the country by SP+, respectively.
It's brutal out there, but such is the Indiana football experience.
Related Stories on Indiana Football:
- IU PLAYED 'PITTER-PATTER' TOO LONG: The Indiana football offense let its defense down on Saturday against Ohio State, only scoring 3 points, and with a clear, lacking desire to ever push the ball down field in an attempt to threaten the Buckeyes. Talking to media on Monday, offensive play caller Walt Bell took blame for the conservative offensive approach. CLICK HERE
- BALLHAWK PHILLIP DUNNAM: Indiana safety Phillip Dunnam intercepted Ohio State quarterback Kyle McCord Saturday for the game's only turnover. Coaches Tom Allen and Matt Guerrieri, and other IU defenders, said Dunnam often intercepts passes at practice, and his big play was no surprise. CLICK HERE
- TAKEAWAY BELT: WWE executive chairman Vince McMahon is the grandfather of Indiana football running back Declan McMahon, and for the 2023 season, the family gifted his grandson's team a WWE championship belt that the defense uses to celebrate each and every forced turnover. CLICK HERE
