S&P 2019 season projections

[smathis30]

https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...63/2019-college-football-rankings-projections
As everyone knows, Bill Conley posts annual predictions, and his first round of 2019 predictions is up.
GT comes in at 89th and dead last in the ACC, as well as behind every single team that they play.
Before people over react, let’s look at Bills formulas to see why it is that way.
Things that matter: recruiting rankings.
Bill uses the 247 composite. Transfers are still to happen, so these could get better for tech and worse for other teams. Recent classes get more bias than past ones. Tech is rated 52 here, which is pretty fair.
Returning production is the bigger piece. It takes last years production (74th) and uses returning production through a variety of metrics to estimate where next years production would be hard off this years. Offense has a way smaller correlation with returning starters. Defense does not. Although GT returns basically it’s entirety of its secondary (and retuning snaps for DBs and pass break ups are the two single highest predictions of how a defense will do year to year) we lose the entirety of the front 7, which means almost every other statistic (tacked, TFL, sacks, snaps, starts) looks absolutely terrible. Changing schemes won’t reflect in this, so it’s way lower than what it would be at, especially if we shift back to a 4-3 or Nickle/Dime look.
Also takes into effect the previous 5 seasons, which starts in 2014. GT ranks 32nd here.

Other teams of note: team-tank-score
Vs UGA-2-30.7
@Clemson-3-29.9
@Miami-19-13.9
vs VT-30-10.6
@UVA-41-7.9
vs NC State-47-6.3
Vs Pitt-59-3.8
Vs UNC-61-3.2
@Duke-65-2.9
@Temple-66-2.2
Vs USF-71-1.0
Georgia tech-89-(3.5)

Obviously it’s not perfect, and some big flaws (lol UNC), but it’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out
SP also likes consistency and last season at GT, well, consistency is not a word I would use to describe it.
I think we’ll do better than predicted, but it’s always interesting to see how the numbers do

 

[Deleted member 2897]

https://www.sbnation.com/college-fo...63/2019-college-football-rankings-projections
As everyone knows, Bill Conley posts annual predictions, and his first round of 2019 predictions is up.
GT comes in at 89th and dead last in the ACC, as well as behind every single team that they play.
Before people over react, let’s look at Bills formulas to see why it is that way.
Things that matter: recruiting rankings.
Bill uses the 247 composite. Transfers are still to happen, so these could get better for tech and worse for other teams. Recent classes get more bias than past ones. Tech is rated 52 here, which is pretty fair.
Returning production is the bigger piece. It takes last years production (74th) and uses returning production through a variety of metrics to estimate where next years production would be hard off this years. Offense has a way smaller correlation with returning starters. Defense does not. Although GT returns basically it’s entirety of its secondary (and retuning snaps for DBs and pass break ups are the two single highest predictions of how a defense will do year to year) we lose the entirety of the front 7, which means almost every other statistic (tacked, TFL, sacks, snaps, starts) looks absolutely terrible. Changing schemes won’t reflect in this, so it’s way lower than what it would be at, especially if we shift back to a 4-3 or Nickle/Dime look.
Also takes into effect the previous 5 seasons, which starts in 2014. GT ranks 32nd here.

Other teams of note: team-tank-score
Vs UGA-2-30.7
@Clemson-3-29.9
@Miami-19-13.9
vs VT-30-10.6
@UVA-41-7.9
vs NC State-47-6.3
Vs Pitt-59-3.8
Vs UNC-61-3.2
@Duke-65-2.9
@Temple-66-2.2
Vs USF-71-1.0
Georgia tech-89-(3.5)

Obviously it’s not perfect, and some big flaws (lol UNC), but it’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out
SP also likes consistency and last season at GT, well, consistency is not a word I would use to describe it.
I think we’ll do better than predicted, but it’s always interesting to see how the numbers do

Yea typical mindless bullcrap. Anybody who disagrees should go look up our historical seasons. In the last 25 years we've only had 1 season below 0.500 in ACC play, and that was 2015 when we had what felt like 100 injuries. That 25 years crossed over multiple different coaches, offensive coaches, defensive coaches, and schemes. There is really no reason for someone to ever pick us to finish at the bottom of the ACC. I mean, we could finish there, but you couldn't use any logic to get to a prediction like that. We've had 4 Coastal Championships and 2 ACC Championships in the last 25 years. So based on history, you'd have twice the chance of being right for picking us to win the ACC than to finish last.

 

[smathis30]

Yea typical mindless bullcrap. Anybody who disagrees should go look up our historical seasons. In the last 25 years we've only had 1 season below 0.500 in ACC play, and that was 2015 when we had what felt like 100 injuries. That 25 years crossed over multiple different coaches, offensive coaches, defensive coaches, and schemes. There is really no reason for someone to ever pick us to finish at the bottom of the ACC. I mean, we could finish there, but you couldn't use any logic to get to a prediction like that. We've had 4 Coastal Championships and 2 ACC Championships in the last 25 years. So based on history, you'd have twice the chance of being right for picking us to win the ACC than to finish last.

Not saying i disagree, but his rankings do only account the last 5 years, which do take into account that 3-9 season, 9-4.5-6, and 7-6 seasons. They obviously get better with more data, and UNC gets their coastal title, as does VT, Miami, and Pitt. GT does not get their last one in there. Largest factor it looks at is returning snaps, and with GT losing almost the entirety of its production on defense, it doesnt like it. With a new scheme and new coach, it’s reasonable to expect steps back on O and huge steps forward on D, so it should be a fun season. Post re-alignment has opened up the doors for the coastal as well, as no team has won the division more than once since then. Obviously, I think we stand a chance against both G5 teams, UNC, Virginia Tech, anda Finley less NC state and the citadel as wins, I don’t think we’ll get a third straight year of UNC with something like 8 starters out and they should be a lot better this year. Sucks we get a lot of teams we beat last year on the road this year.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

Not saying i disagree, but his rankings do only account the last 5 years, which do take into account that 3-9 season, 9-4.5-6, and 7-6 seasons. They obviously get better with more data, and UNC gets their coastal title, as does VT, Miami, and Pitt. GT does not get their last one in there. Largest factor it looks at is returning snaps, and with GT losing almost the entirety of its production on defense, it doesnt like it. With a new scheme and new coach, it’s reasonable to expect steps back on O and huge steps forward on D, so it should be a fun season. Post re-alignment has opened up the doors for the coastal as well, as no team has won the division more than once since then. Obviously, I think we stand a chance against both G5 teams, UNC, Virginia Tech, anda Finley less NC state and the citadel as wins, I don’t think we’ll get a third straight year of UNC with something like 8 starters out and they should be a lot better this year. Sucks we get a lot of teams we beat last year on the road this year.

I mean so what. We finished 4th in the ACC last year, won the Coastal in 2014 and went to the ACCCG, 2016 we were like 5th or something. 2017 we were middle of the pack. We’re never even close to last place.

 

[smokey_wasp]

No one is going to know how to predict us this year and most are going to err on the low side. I have come to terms with it.

 

[Deleted member 2897]

No one is going to know how to predict us this year and most are going to err on the low side. I have come to terms with it.

Yep. We were predicted like 10th last year and finished 4th. Happens almost every year. The disrespect is real and constant. Very few All-ACC awards, and no combine invites. We beat tons of people out of luck I suppose.

 

[Gtbowhunter90]

Best thing this team could do is not focus on what the pundits say and just execute like we know they can. I dont think of the first game to be the litmus test. It would be nice to punch Clemson in their stupid face, but the main goal is to win the Coastal and put this team back on the radar nationally

 

[GTJake]

Bulletin Board material ...

 

[stech81]

What were the predictions on CPJ first year , about the same, this is a good coaching staff and a good group of players I'm not worried.

 

[iceeater1969]

Our old scheme was money against the rotating cross division opponents - 100% win.
W change of staff our recruiting on offensive side quickly improved but that could take a few years to be a major impact .
We wont have loserville, but NC state looks weaker than normal.


Assuming the highly competent initial efforts continue into devlopment, scheme, game day, health the rah rah at end of year could be unpresidented for a gt coaching change.

We have several games that will be extra special. They are
usf - revenge
Temple - we stole their coach
Duke - can we breat the curse
Vt - they want revenge for brain dead defensive performance
NC st - we drop loserville and we get to play ncst we got thier top rb pick and they have 3 rb on team.

After spring we can see how teams are shaking out. Now I am 3 -8 wins w no clue. Do we have a qb is key question.

Right now the prognosticators are dogging our new coaches and old players ability to effectively transition to new system .

 

[Oldgoldandwhite]

High School Defense this time?

 

[sc jacket 22]

How about we use this as an opportunity to temper expectations for next season. I've seen some of you say that there's no reason we shouldn't win 6 or 7 games, and I'm afraid you're going to come crashing down to earth by mid - late October. I love the CGC hype but this is a big ship and I expect a slow turn.

 

[RonJohn]

Obviously it’s not perfect, and some big flaws (lol UNC), but it’ll be interesting to see how it shakes out
SP also likes consistency and last season at GT, well, consistency is not a word I would use to describe it.
I think we’ll do better than predicted, but it’s always interesting to see how the numbers do

I have several issues with the methodology:

• I don't have much faith in recruiting rankings, especially the further you get away from the top 10-15 teams.
• The ranking uses both recruiting and "returning production". If a highly ranked recruiting class is going to improve the team, then it has to be based on displacing the production from last year. That could be from graduations or leaving for the draft, but this ranking doesn't include whether the recruiting class fills needs or not. You could sign five four-and-five star quarterbacks(I know very unlikely), but only one would be on the field at a time. This ranking method doesn't factor whether the recruiting class fills immediate needs or not.
• As I understand the factors, things such as offensive production is weighted to "what winning teams do". If more teams tend to pass, then receivers are factored higher than running backs. So a team that runs a lot is automatically ranked lower. Not saying this as a TO fan, just pointing out that being just like everyone else doesn't mean you are great(North Texas) and being different doesn't mean you are awful(Army).
• The previous 5 years doesn't mean anything if: there were a large number of injuries, there was a huge scandal(Penn State, Baylor, Miss), or the coaches left.

These things seam to be more of an indication of consistency than of how good the teams are projected to be next year.

I understand that the sports sites want page views and it is a down time of the year for college football. I also understand that people want moneyball type of computer analysis. However, big data analysis requires lots and lots of data. This analysis isn't even ranking football plays, but football teams per season. There are many times more baseball plays per year than football, so any big data analysis of football is going to be much less accurate than baseball. In comparison to even both of those, the data required for this team ranking analysis would fit on a floppy disk. Not enough data to actually make any predictions, except for click-baits to sell ads.

 

[slugboy]

I can see, especially as a fan, objecting to this forecast and thinking he's out to get us. But, over 128 teams and ~12 games each, he has plenty of data to be accurate overall, even if he misses on a team or two. I'm sure he expects a lot of teams to do better and some to do worse.

If I were in his shoes, I wouldn't even worry about differences caused by coaching changes unless I had an easy way to plug them into the model. I don't think it's click-bait, because I don't think he makes enough money on the article for that to be worth it. I think he's just getting a pretty good estimate for the year for all 128 teams overall.

Overlooking the coaching change, we graduated our starting QB, our leading rusher (Taquan Marshall, our QB, was our leading rusher), and our three leading receivers, too (Searcy and Stewart and Lynch). We also lost some starting linemen. The last 5 years are
2014: 11-3
2015: 3-9
2016: 9-4
2017: 5-6
2018: 7-6

We ended last season at #74 overall. The bowl game didn't help our stats. With the production we lost, unless the last three years of recruiting are gangbusters, you would think there'd be some drop off. This year's recruiting class helped, but not enough in his stats to offset the production we lost. If you're not projecting from a rooting interest, and you see a team losing key starters on a decent but not amazing offense (for 2018), and key starters off a statistically bad defense, what are you going to forecast?

As it was, we're dropping from 74th last year to 89th in his forecast this year.

If underclassmen had won starting positions away from the graduating seniors, we'd be forecast for a better season. That didn't happen.

If Collins and his crew coach up the defense and the offensive line, and find players to step up at QB and receiver, then we could see an equal or better season this year than last, but I think it'll take some impressive coaching out of those guys. Good seasons for us usually have upperclassmen in key positions, or a special find here and there. We're looking for the special find in 2019.

 

[Animal02]

Yep. We were predicted like 10th last year and finished 4th. Happens almost every year. The disrespect is real and constant. Very few All-ACC awards, and no combine invites. We beat tons of people out of luck I suppose.

Well, according to several posters here.....yes, our wins over good opponents were all luck and are loses were because we were just bad. No luck involved by the other teams.

 

[RonJohn]

I can see, especially as a fan, objecting to this forecast and thinking he's out to get us. But, over 128 teams and ~12 games each, he has plenty of data to be accurate overall, even if he misses on a team or two. I'm sure he expects a lot of teams to do better and some to do worse.

I don't really care where GT is ranked in such a ranking. My objections aren't based on hurt feelings. I just object to people believing that such projections are "scientifically" based. The recruiting rankings use human based input. The factors assigned to specific areas(RB vs WR vs OL) are based on human decisions to assign more or less importance to that position. Such projections and rankings are fine for discussion starters, but they are not based on any hard science or scientific data analysis. They are simply off-season filler material.

EDIT: I don't think the author is out to get anyone in particular. I think that if you put: Alabama, Clemson, mutts, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Michigan: in your top 10 for any "computerized" or pundit rankings, people tend to consider your rankings credible. I think people overlook how credible or scientific such things are. Things such as S&P and FEI can be used for analysis and comparisons, but they aren't scientific prediction tools.

 

[Animal02]

I don't really care where GT is ranked in such a ranking. My objections aren't based on hurt feelings. I just object to people believing that such projections are "scientifically" based. The recruiting rankings use human based input. The factors assigned to specific areas(RB vs WR vs OL) are based on human decisions to assign more or less importance to that position. Such projections and rankings are fine for discussion starters, but they are not based on any hard science or scientific data analysis. They are simply off-season filler material.

EDIT: I don't think the author is out to get anyone in particular. I think that if you put: Alabama, Clemson, mutts, Oklahoma, Ohio State, and Michigan: in your top 10 for any "computerized" or pundit rankings, people tend to consider your rankings credible. I think people overlook how credible or scientific such things are. Things such as S&P and FEI can be used for analysis and comparisons, but they aren't scientific prediction tools.

Well, since Bama, Clemp, OSU, and OU have been ranked in the final top 25 poll 75% of the last 20 years....it is a no brainier.

 

[smathis30]

I have several issues with the methodology:

• I don't have much faith in recruiting rankings, especially the further you get away from the top 10-15 teams.
• The ranking uses both recruiting and "returning production". If a highly ranked recruiting class is going to improve the team, then it has to be based on displacing the production from last year. That could be from graduations or leaving for the draft, but this ranking doesn't include whether the recruiting class fills needs or not. You could sign five four-and-five star quarterbacks(I know very unlikely), but only one would be on the field at a time. This ranking method doesn't factor whether the recruiting class fills immediate needs or not.
• As I understand the factors, things such as offensive production is weighted to "what winning teams do". If more teams tend to pass, then receivers are factored higher than running backs. So a team that runs a lot is automatically ranked lower. Not saying this as a TO fan, just pointing out that being just like everyone else doesn't mean you are great(North Texas) and being different doesn't mean you are awful(Army).
• The previous 5 years doesn't mean anything if: there were a large number of injuries, there was a huge scandal(Penn State, Baylor, Miss), or the coaches left.

These things seam to be more of an indication of consistency than of how good the teams are projected to be next year.

I understand that the sports sites want page views and it is a down time of the year for college football. I also understand that people want moneyball type of computer analysis. However, big data analysis requires lots and lots of data. This analysis isn't even ranking football plays, but football teams per season. There are many times more baseball plays per year than football, so any big data analysis of football is going to be much less accurate than baseball. In comparison to even both of those, the data required for this team ranking analysis would fit on a floppy disk. Not enough data to actually make any predictions, except for click-baits to sell ads.

Agree about rankings getting blurry the further away from the top. The weighting of recent recruiting classes is his attempt to show that needs filling. Returning production is far and out the highest predictor, and it effect defense way more than it does offense. Losing 8 starters on defense hurts way more than the few we are losing but on offense. Schedule isn really taken into effect yet. Only as a standardization for games already played. Because it’s for the 2019 season, it only counts 2015 onward, with 2018 having the largest impact and that diminishing over time with 2019 taking over with more data. It also uses every single play and was last the year the highest accuracy against the spread vs the 75 other models tracked on predictiontracker, so it’s not likes it’s a terrible model. At the end of the day it’s still a model. Preseason stuff is still usually pretty wild

 

[TechBurn]

So Toledo, Appy State, GA Southern, Troy, etc., etc., are better than us????
No way, Jose!!! (Or is it Hosea!?!?)

 

[RamblinCharger]

I wouldn't expect us to lose to all of those teams, because it's rare for GT to be worse than 6-6, but I do expect our offense to take a big step back. Our defense can only get better, and the same can be said about ST, but overall I expect us to win 4 games at the floor or 7 at the ceiling, which would be a great season in the first year of a new coach. Our past scheme gave us a big advantage going into the 08/09 season and we had some special talent on those teams on both sides of the ball. Not sure I see Dwyer, Nesbit, Bebe, Morgan, Johnson etc on this team. There are some special players like Juane, but not sure we have the schematic advantage or quite as many NFL type guys on the roster right now. Time will tell though.