Projecting Louisville's 2025 Season Using Final Preseason SP+ Rankings

LOUISVILLE, Ky. - College football in on the verge of making its triumphant return. Week zero's slate of games are just over a week away, while the Louisville football program's season opener vs. Eastern Kentucky on Aug. 30 is in just 15 days.

Year two of the Jeff Brohm era didn't wind up with an appearance in the ACC Championship Game like year one did, but the Cardinals still went 9-4 overall and 5-3 in ACC play. This included a win over Washington in the Sun Bowl, and snapping lengthy losing streaks to both Clemson and Kentucky.

Add in Louisville's momentum both in the winter and spring transfer portal windows, plus out on the high school recruiting trail, how well will they perform in year three of the Jeff Brohm era? Well, we already have some idea thanks to the predictive college football metric SP+,which had their rankings updated yet again on Thursday.

SP+, according to its creator Bill Connelly of ESPN, is a "tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency". He has made several tweaks to it over the years since creating it in 2008 while at Football Outsiders, but the current iteration takes into account three primary factors: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history.

In this most recent update, Louisville's SP+ rating increased, rising from their May offseason mark of 12.1 to 12.3 after starting with a mark of 12.4 back in the initial number in February. Even with this rise, the Cardinals' overall ranking amongst the 134 FBS teams stayed put at No. 24. Louisville was No. 22 in the first SP+ numbers.

Given their success on that side of the line of scrimmage last season, the metric is very high on the offensive side of the ball for the Cardinals. Louisville sports an offensive SP+ rating of 36.7, which ranks 13th in the FBS.

Conversely, SP+ is not as big of a fan of the defensive side of things. Louisville has a defensive SP+ rating of 24.4, which comes in at No. 46 nationally.

Using SP+, we can plug in the rating from each team on Louisville's schedule and take a deep dive into how the 2025 season might transpire. We can figure out the win percentage in each game (accounting for home vs. away), the expected wins mark at the end of the season, as well as the statistical likelihood of every outcome during and concluding the season.

Opponent	Proj. SP+	Off. SP+	Def. SP+
Eastern Kentucky	-20 (N/A)	N/A	N/A
James Madison	2.6 (56th)	29.0 (53rd)	26.4 (58th
Bowling Green	-14.4 (112th)	22.5 (101st)	36.9 (121st)
Pitt	4.7 (51st)	30.6 (44th)	25.9 (52nd)
Virginia	-2.2 (74th)	25.4 (83rd)	27.6 (65th)
Miami	18.1 (14th)	42.7 (1st)	24.6 (49th)
Boston College	1.6 (62nd)	27.5 (65th)	25.9 (53rd)
Virginia Tech	6.9 (42nd)	30.0 (49th)	23.1 (39th)
Cal	1.2 (64th)	26.5 (74th)	25.3 (51st)
Clemson	20.2 (10th)	38.4 (6th)	18.2 (20th)
SMU	14.6 (19th)	38.0 (9th)	23.5 (42nd)
Kentucky	6.5 (44th)	26.4 (76th)	19.9 (27th)

Louisville's Updated 2025 SP+ Chart | Matthew McGavic - Louisville Cardinals On SI

SP+ is pretty high on Louisville. That being said, it's also bullish on the majority of the Cardinals' opponents for the 2025 season.

Louisville will play just three teams that boast a higher SP+ rating, and have a win probability of over 50.0 percent in nine of their 12 regular season games. However, Louisville is a decisive underdog in their road game at Miami and SMU, plus their home game vs. Clemson.

Louisville has an expected wins mark of 8.06, and they have a 27.00 percent chance to finish the season with eight wins, the highest out of any other win mark. For all intents and purposes, as of right now, SP+ is projecting the Cardinals to go 8-4 in 2025.

A lot can happen between now and Aug. 30 when Louisville hosts Eastern Kentucky to kick off the season. But for the time being, it seems that SP+ is projecting the Cards to have a slightly underwhelming third season under head coach Jeff Brohm.

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