by Bill Connelly

We have survived another offseason. Granted, there were some casualties along the way -- now-former Arkansas coach Bobby Petrino, now-former LSU defensive back Tyrann Mathieu, now-former Tennessee receiver Da'Rick Rogers, etc. -- but we made it. On Thursday night, the 2012 football season kicked off, and today, it's time to get our F/+ house in order.

Below you will find the full slate of FO projections for the 2012 season: my S&P+ projections, Brian Fremeau's FEI projections (as he showed you on Tuesday), the combined F/+ projections and breakouts for both offense and defense. The numbers have been updated slightly from those found in the Football Outsiders Almanac 2012, but not enough to justify running a new set of win projections. Nobody's ranking has changed significantly since July, not even LSU's.

Before I get to that enormous table, however, I wanted to do a little self-sharing. As you might know, I started work full-time at SB Nation about a year ago, and when not writing about tennis (miss you, Andy Roddick), I was plodding through my second-annual team-by-team preview series. For each team, I wrote a lengthy preview and released a statistical profile with both advanced and customary stats, charts, etc. If you haven't checked it out yet, it's not too late!

Here are some of my favorite SBN pieces from the offseason, 2012 previews and otherwise:

• 100 Steps To Learning To Love College Football (All Over Again)
• 2012 Alabama Football Preview: Acceptance
• 2012 Boise State Football Preview: Massaging Math And Reloading
• 2012 BYU Football Preview: Year 2
• 2012 Florida State Football Preview: The Greatness Drought
• 2012 LSU Football Preview: Precious Les And 1 More Win
• 2012 Notre Dame Football Preview: Hot Sports Opinions!
• 2012 Ohio State Football Preview: A Redshirt Year
• 2012 Oklahoma Football Preview: Landmines And Rebounds
• 2012 Oregon Football Preview: A Ruling Class Résumé
• 2012 Texas A&M Football Preview: I'm Not Saying, I'm Just Saying
• 2012 Washington State Football Preview: Welcome Back
• 2012 West Virginia Football Preview: Winnipeg, Lubbock And Kindred Spirits
• Dorial Green-Beckham Signs With Missouri, And Springfield Gives Away Its Star
• Relegation Simulation: Rewriting College Football History

SBN also let me hire two interns! This season, their primary focus is on game-charting and analysis. Hopefully we can get a more robust game-charting project going again next year.

Anyway, to the rankings!

In May at Football Study Hall, I took a look at the congealing conventional wisdom and how it compared to our initial projections. Not much has changed since then.

Potentially Overrated Teams

Kansas State (AP Rank: 22nd | Coaches' Rank: 21st | F/+ Projection: 47th). Man, do I hate writing this. Kansas State was one of college football's most fun stories in 2011, going 7-1 in one-possession games and winning 10 games overall despite incredibly mediocre statistics. With quarterback Collin Klein and head coach/Geppetto Bill Snyder returning, it could happen all over again in 2012. But the Wildcats had no margin for error last year, and they'll have none again this year. And the schedule is probably more difficult, too.

Louisville (AP Rank: 25th | F/+ Projection: 41st). Louisville was a surprise addition at the bottom of the AP poll, but it brought to the forefront the simple fact that a lot of people think Louisville is going to be a bit of a national sleeper this year. The Cardinals were incredibly freshman-laden last year but still won five of six to end the regular season. Those freshmen are now sophomores, but it is probably safe to assume they are still a year away from true top 25 residence.

Michigan State (AP Rank: 13th | Coaches' Rank: 13th | F/+ Projection: 24th). I actually like Michigan State a decent amount this year. Their defense is potentially spectacular, and their run game should at least be sufficient. But in replacing quarterback Kirk Cousins and their top three receivers ( B.J. Cunningham, Keshawn Martin, Keith Nichol), the Spartans are building their passing game from scratch. They have former stud recruits at both quarterback (Andrew Maxwell) and receiver (DeAnthony Arnett, tight end Dion Sims), but until potential turns into production, they are a bit of a mystery.

West Virginia (AP Rank: 11th | Coaches' Rank: 11th | F/+ Projection: 20th). The Mountaineers looked so incredible in their Orange Bowl shellacking of Clemson that they got a pretty solid offseason bump. But looking just at the Orange Bowl ignores that WVU was rather mediocre through most of November. They're going to be good, especially with quarterback Geno Smith and receiver Tavon Austin each moving into their second season with Holgorsen, but the defense could hold them back.

Michigan (AP Rank: eighth | Coaches' Rank: eighth | F/+ Projection: 16th). I love the program Brady Hoke is building in Ann Arbor, and I don't think it will take him long to get the Wolverines back to a top-10 level, but I don't think it happens in 2012. Whether Michigan fans want to hear it or not, UM got awfully lucky last year (+4.0 points of turnovers luck per game, and in a season that saw them win two games by four points or fewer), and a bit of a turnaround in that department could be deadly with trips to Notre Dame, Nebraska and Ohio State on the horizon.

Potentially Underrated Teams

This year's projections are a little awkward because it forces me to defend teams you are tired of hearing people defend.

Florida (AP rank: 23rd | Coaches' Rank: 23rd | F/+ Projection: 10th). On average, a team with Florida's five-year performance, experience, and recruiting rankings will be really, really good. But the numbers wouldn't have thought it possible that Florida's 2011 offense would be so mediocre. This could be a case where the numbers are slow to catch on to regression. That, or Florida is going to surprise a lot of people this year.

Oklahoma State (AP rank: 19th | Coaches' Rank: 19th | F/+ Projection: seventh). Even taking into account the quality of starters lost (or in the case of the projections, the draftability of such players), our projections are still built to overestimate teams like Oklahoma State. They're dealing with the loss of a small number of incredibly important starters (quarterback Brandon Weeden and receiver Justin Blackmon, to name two). They are starting a true freshman at quarterback, which is reason enough to bump them from the top 10, but for those assuming OSU is going to fall apart without its stars, the numbers suggest you are sorely mistaken.

(Side note: why even have different polls? The AP and Coaches Poll agreed on almost everything.)

Notre Dame (Coaches' Rank: 24th | F/+ Projection: 14th). I know, right? It's not very "Outsiders" to tell you the most "insider" team in the world is underrated, but here we are. Notre Dame was victimized horribly by not only turnovers, but drastically influential turnovers. They didn't just throw a pick; they threw a pick in the red zone. They didn't just fumble near the goal line; they fumbled near the goal line, and it was returned for a touchdown in a three-point loss. With turnovers of simply normal costliness, the Irish would have done really well last year. And they should be a top-20 caliber team in 2012. Of course, the schedule is a bear, so the record might not reflect the quality.

Ohio State (AP Rank: 18th | F/+ Projection: 13th). Seriously, I'm sitting here telling you that Florida, Notre Dame and Ohio State are underrated. This isn't fun. Regardless, while the Buckeyes are ineligible for the postseason this year, new coach Urban Meyer inherits a lot of fun toys with which to play. He should have them ready to do some serious damage in 2013.

Stanford (AP Rank: 21st | Coaches' Rank: 21st | F/+ Projection: 11th). See Oklahoma State, only without the true freshman quarterback.

Nerd Fight!

Here are the teams for whom the FEI and S&P+ projections disagreed most severely.

• FEI Favorites: Connecticut (31st in FEI, 86th in S&P+), Navy (50th in FEI, 84th in S&P+), Wake Forest (60th in FEI, 93rd in S&P+), Duke (55th in FEI, 87th in S&P+), Central Michigan (68th in FEI, 100th in S&P+), Boston College (30th in FEI, 58th in S&P+), N.C. State (41st in FEI, 69th in S&P+), Kansas State (34th in FEI, 61st in S&P+), Fresno State (70th in FEI, 97th in S&P+), Pittsburgh (27th in FEI, 53rd in S&P+).
• S&P+ Favorites: SMU (56th in S&P+, 94th in FEI), Toledo (54th in S&P+, 87th in FEI), California (27th in S&P+, 52nd in FEI), Texas A&M (14th in S&P+, 39th in FEI), Hawaii (82nd in S&P+, 106th in FEI), Baylor (33rd in S&P+, 56th in FEI), Arkansas State (66th in S&P+, 88th in FEI), Virginia (41st in S&P+, 63rd in FEI), Houston (31st in S&P+, 53rd in FEI), Washington (45th in S&P+, 66th in FEI).

Honestly, I think the major differences come down to two factors:

1. They are different systems of numbers. We are measuring different things (I measure play-by-play proficiency, Brian measures drive outcomes), and while those approaches will result in similar ratings for a lot of teams (our rankings are within five spots of each other for 47 teams), it will also result in some disagreement. And if our measures disagree, our projections are going to as well.

2. We measure recent history in different ways. We have shown many times over the years that a team's long-term performance is as or more predictive than simply looking at last year's performance. We are typically quite good at predicting that one-year wonders will regress back toward the mean, for instance. (We're a lot better at telling you who won't be as good as you think than we are at telling you who will be better.) That said, I took a bit of a different approach this year. I found some proper weighting (last year is taken more into account than five years ago), and it seemed to correlate more strongly with next year's success. We'll see if it works out. But what that means is that FEI is going to probably favor the teams with solid five-year performance and a shoddy 2011 season. (Boston College, in other words.)

One last note: welcome to the team, Matt Hinton! This is exciting. I shared some of my work on Matt's old (and new again) Sunday Morning Quarterback site, and he discussed some of it a couple of times. That probably influenced Aaron's decision to bring me on here four years ago, at least a little. Thanks for that, Matt.

Posted by: Bill Connelly on 31 Aug 2012

4 comments, Last at 06 Sep 2012, 8:28am by jgrenci@zoominternet.net