How Utah is viewed by college football analytics rankings going into 2026 season

Given the amount of change the Utah football program endured in January and February, it remains to be seen what the Utes will look like in the first year of the Morgan Scalley era.

Obviously, there are several factors that can help shape the perception of a team going into the new season; from roster turnover to coaching changes and recruiting class rankings to transfer portal additions.

In a way, all of the above apply to the Utes, making it difficult to forecast how their 12-game regular season slate will play out at this point in March.

Fortunately, ESPN's Bill Connelly has attempted to make sense of everything that not only went down in Salt Lake City, but the whole country over the past few months, with his first SP+ rankings for the 2026 campaign. The SP+ rankings are a tempo-and opponent-adjusted efficiency model that's predictive and designed to measure sustainable performance, rather than just résumé like some other rankings utilize.

The suboptimal part of Connell's model — at least for Utah fans — is where it ranks the Utes going into the new season: No. 25, which is 17 spots behind where they finished last season (No. 8). Utah is expected to take a step back in both offensive efficiency (No. 18) and defensive efficiency (No. 34) after coming in at No. 6 and No. 17 in those categories, respectively, in 2025.

Using some of the model's logic, as well as the events of the Utes' offseason, let's figure out why the computer might be lower on Scalley's group compared to where Utah ended last season.

Utah's Returning Production Doesn't Rank Highly

One of the main components of a team's SP+ ranking is its returning production from the season prior. Connelly has actually sorted all 138 Division I squads based on the talent they brought back in the offseason already.

Utah doesn't rank very highly in that category; the Utes return 55% of their roster output from 2025, which checks in at No. 54 in the country and No. 9 among Big 12 teams according to Connelly's model. Utah retains 55% of its offense (No. 64 nationally) and 55% of its defense (No. 53). Meanwhile, it loses a couple of key contributors on both sides of the ball, like All-American pass rusher John Henry and budding star JJ Buchanan on offense.

Now, the number of returners a team has going into a new season doesn't always equate to success on the field. In fact, last season's Utah team is a perfect example of that: The Utes were No. 41 in the country in returning production (61% from the 2024 squad) yet managed to finish the 2025 campaign at No. 8 in the SP+ rankings with an 11-2 record and bowl game win over Nebraska.

In general, ESPN's analytics were low on Utah following its disastrous 2024 season. With that in mind, starting at No. 25 for the 2026 campaign isn't as bad as it seems.

Utes' Recruiting Classes Dipped in Recent Years

Recruiting doesn't impact the SP+ rankings like it once did, though it still carries some weight in the 2026 edition. And while Utah hasn't necessarily struggled to bring in fresh talent, its recent high school and transfer portal classes haven't been at the tip-top of the sport, either.

Since bringing in 247Sports' No. 19-ranked high school class in 2023, Utah's last three classes ranked No. 60, No. 34 and No. 31. In that same span, the team's transfer portal classes checked in at No. 32, No. 37 and No. 47 in the recruiting service's database.

Again, hovering around the top 50 in recruiting on a year-to-year basis is far from the end of the world for the Utes; not to mention, the rankings themselves don't always reflect the kind of talent coming through the program's doors. Some prospects outperform their star rating, while others falter.

The bottom line: From a pure numbers perspective, the caliber of player Utah brings in via the portal or high school level isn't up to the level of the some schools in the SEC and Big Ten, and that's why the Utes' SP+ ranking doesn't always reflect the team's success on the field.

Coaching Changes

The real wildcard that's impacting Utah's SP+ ranking: the brand-new coaching staff Scalley assembled for his first season as the Utes' head coach.

A few faces from the 2025 staff are back in the fold — Colton Swan (defensive coordinator/linebackers), Sharrieff Shah (associate head coach/cornerbacks/special teams coordinator) and Mark Atuaia (running backs) among them. For the most part, though, the coaches who helped guide last season's 11-win squad are up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with Kyle Whittingham.

As such, trying to forecast what a team that's had the same head coach for the past two decades will look under new leadership from a quantitative perspective is probably a challenge; especially if the analytics model doesn't take into account the person grabbing the wheel has helped build the program's culture from his role as a coordinator for several years now.