Ohio State‘s 2022 ended in dramatic heartbreak in the College Football Playoff, but immediate redemption could be on the horizon. The Buckeyes are the best team in the nation and the favorites to win the national championship, according to ESPN’s Football Power Index and the Allstate Playoff Predictor.
The Buckeyes have a 37% chance to win the title — well ahead of Alabama at 20% and defending champion Georgia at 19% — according to the models.
Before we dive too far into the Buckeyes, other title contenders and the rest of the forecasted college football landscape, a quick refresher: What is FPI, and how do we project the season and College Football Playoff race?
FPI is our season-long ratings and projections system. In the preseason it relies on past performance on offense and defense, returning and transfer production and past recruiting data for players on the roster to form a rating. We then use those ratings to simulate the season 20,000 times, resulting in our projections.
In addition, the Allstate Playoff Predictor uses those simulations to forecast the playoff committee’s selection process, based on the committee’s past behavior. All of which combined allows us to forecast a team’s projected win total, chance to win its conference, reach the CFP and win the national championship.
Let’s break down some of the top storylines emerging out of FPI’s numbers ahead of the 2023 season.
A three-team top tier
So what makes the Buckeyes so dangerous in 2023, even relative to SEC powerhouses Alabama and Georgia? For starters, the best non-QB offensive returning production in the nation. That’s most notable in the receiving game, where the Buckeyes return Marvin Harrison Jr. and Emeka Egbuka — who recorded 1,263 and 1,151 receiving yards in 2022, respectively — along with tight end Cade Stover.
The model ranks Ohio State No. 1 in offensive performance in recent seasons (it ranked No. 1 in offensive efficiency in 2022) and second in offensive talent (based on cumulative recruiting ranks on that side of the ball). Quarterback aside (we’ll get to that), we can see why FPI makes the Buckeyes the best offense in the nation by a decent margin. Defensively, the Buckeyes rank third — they don’t quite boast the talent levels that FPI sees in Georgia or Alabama — but the margin is smaller and thus the Buckeyes are the best team overall. Georgia’s defense ranks No. 1 in FPI rating, driven more by the historical performance of the unit than anything else.
What’s also interesting here is just how far behind everyone else is from the top three. More than five points per game separates Georgia (No. 3) from LSU (No. 4) in FPI’s ratings. Each of the top three teams has at least a 19% chance to win the national championship, while no other team is over 6%. And there is a cumulative 76% chance — in April! — that one of the three wins the national title.
In addition, there is a 26% chance that all three of the Buckeyes, Crimson Tide and Bulldogs make the playoff, and the top six most likely combinations feature all three of those teams.
In other words: It’s a crystal-clear top tier. And what’s somewhat amazing is this is happening in a year when none of the three are returning their starting quarterbacks. C.J. Stroud, Bryce Young and Stetson Bennett are all NFL-bound, and yet the model still has confidence in these squads.
It means that the model has less confidence in each of their QBs than it does for, say, USC with Caleb Williams. Though in the case of Ohio State, for example, the fact that Kyle McCord (the most likely starter, in the model’s mind) had an 87 grade as a recruit gives the model some confidence in him despite the lack of track record.
A QB with a track record of success is ideal, but as evidenced by FPI’s ratings for Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia, it’s not a prerequisite.
Our annual ‘Texas is back (or is it?)’ conversation
Sitting at No. 5 in FPI’s rankings and No. 4 in terms of chance to win the national championship: Texas. It’s a somewhat familiar place for the model, though. FPI was bullish on the Longhorns starting last year (rank: No. 7) and it finished bullish on them, too (rank: No. 7).
But now it’s really in on them, with a 34% chance to reach the playoff and its first top-5 preseason FPI rank since 2012. They’ve got strong talent, based on recruiting grades, on both sides of the ball (fourth on offense, sixth on defense). And, despite losing running back Bijan Robinson to the NFL, the Longhorns return quite a bit of production on offense, led by wide receiver Xavier Worthy.
Quinn Ewers, the incumbent at quarterback facing competition from Arch Manning and Maalik Murphy, didn’t have a great season last year (65.6 QBR, which ranked 50th) but does have a year of experience. And, as we saw with the teams at the top, a good situation around a quarterback can yield a high FPI rating.
The Longhorns also benefit from their conference: There are fewer tough foes and no divisions in the Big 12, and that leads to a more straightforward path to a conference title than they will have in the SEC next season (Texas’ 54% chance to win the Big 12 is higher than Georgia’s 49% or Alabama’s 41% chance to win the SEC). That doesn’t mean Texas has an easy schedule, though. With a road game at Alabama on Texas’ slate, the Longhorns have the toughest schedule of any of the FPI’s top 10 teams.
USC leads a Pac-12 with a chance
A year ago at this time, FPI gave the Pac-12 a mere 8% chance to put a team into the playoff. We were artificially low on USC — the Lincoln Riley effect wasn’t fully accounted for — but the point remained: The Pac-12 was a long shot. That ended up panning out, as the conference did not put a team in the playoff.
But the conference boasts the seventh-best team in the nation in USC, according to FPI. The Trojans alone have a 25% shot at the playoff, and the conference has a 34% chance overall at putting at least one team in the playoff thanks mostly to Oregon (5%) and Utah (4%). (This might be bittersweet for the conference, knowing it will soon lose USC to the Big Ten, but that’s a next-year problem for the Pac-12).
With Williams — who finished fifth in QBR last season and is a potential No. 1 overall pick in 2024 — leading the way, USC enters the season with clearly the best quarterback room in the nation, according to FPI. That they have Williams back after he led the Trojans to a No. 3 rank in offensive efficiency only bolsters the model’s confidence, and is part of why it considers USC to be the second-best offense entering the year only behind Ohio State.
The difference between USC and the top contenders mentioned earlier: The Trojans are elite only on one side of the ball. FPI sees them as the 36th-best defense, which is actually a huge forecasted improvement. The defensive unit ranked 82nd in defensive efficiency last season.
All of this gives USC a strong chance — 50%, a true coin flip — to win the Pac-12. And with an easier but not too easy schedule, a 1-in-4 shot at the playoff.
After finishing 10-3 with strong quarterback play from Jordan Travis (QBR: 85.3, which ranked seventh), the Seminoles are getting some heavy buzz. FPI likes Florida State … but maybe not as much as everyone else. The Seminoles rank 14th in FPI, though they are just two-tenths of a point away from 12th.
The model is mostly buying the offense (rank: No. 10) but is less confident in the defense, which it ranks 26th. In general, Florida State has lower talent rankings (based on the recruiting ranks of players on the roster) than the teams above it in FPI. The Seminoles rank 17th in offensive talent and 24th in defensive talent. There’s a lot to like here — just not quite as a top-10 team yet.
It’s in part due to the talent gap that FPI still likes Clemson (FPI rank: eighth) more in the ACC. The Tigers, who have higher talent ratings on both sides of the ball, have a 45% chance to win the ACC, while the model gives Florida State just a 17% chance.
Considering the hype around Colorado with Deion Sanders now the Buffaloes’ head coach, as well as a slew of transfers in to play for him, it’s a bit of a shock to see Colorado all the way down at … 95th in FPI’s rankings — the lowest-ranked Power 5 team.
The model has somewhat of a handle on the transfers. They’re recognized in Colorado’s “talent” and returning production portions of the calculation, and the Buffaloes do have higher talent scores on both offense and defense than virtually all of the teams around them in the overall rankings. From the model’s perspective, though, that isn’t enough to overcome the recent poor play. The Buffaloes ranked fourth worst and 11th worst in offensive and defensive efficiency last season. So FPI actually is predicting a decent step up this year.
That being said, 95th is still rough. It’s probably reasonable to think this is an unusual circumstance of roster turnover — one-win teams don’t usually transfer in high-end players — that FPI might not be able to perfectly capture.
Conference playoff race
The SEC and Big Ten are each extremely likely (97% and 94%, respectively) to put a team in the playoff. But what about two teams, like the Big Ten had last year?
The SEC is the favorite to pull off that maneuver in 2023 with a 51% chance to put multiple teams in the playoff, while the Big Ten is at 25% (every other conference is under 1%).
The SEC has two major things going for it:
• While Ohio State is the best team in the nation, FPI believes the SEC boasts teams Nos. 2, 3 and 4 in Alabama, Georgia and LSU. By contrast, Michigan and Penn State — the Big Ten’s next-best teams — come in at No. 6 and No. 10.
• The conference’s top two teams are in separate divisions and aren’t scheduled to play each other. That means Alabama and Georgia won’t beat up on each other until the conference championship game at the latest, while only one of Ohio State, Michigan or Penn State can reach the Big Ten championship game.
Lauren Poe and Mitchell Wesson contributed to this article.
“Nothing’s changed. Just a different number,” Ovechkin said.
Someone asked Tom Wilson if his linemate had informed him about what 40 feels like.
“I told them that I didn’t need to ask, because I will not be playing hockey when I’m 40,” Wilson said with a laugh. “It’s so impressive. I’m 31 and it’s hard. [Hockey] takes a toll on the body. We all just play as long as we can. I don’t think anybody in that room will be talking about playing when they’re 40, let alone scoring 44 goals and having a broken leg and all that stuff last year. He’s a machine.”
Ovechkin entered the 2025-26 season with 897 career goals, having surpassed Gretzky’s mark of 894 goals. He scored 44 goals in 65 games last season, sitting out 16 games after breaking his left fibula in a Nov. 18 game against the Utah Hockey Club.
“He’s the GOAT. He’s still flying out there. It’s so pretty darn impressive,” Wilson said. “He can just keep playing and scoring. His mentality and his physical perseverance to just keep going and do what he’s doing is … I mean, there’s really no words to describe it.”
Here’s one word to possibly describe it: unexpected.
Ovechkin finished the 2023-24 season with a whimper that had many wondering if his tank had hit empty. He didn’t register a point when the Capitals were swept by the New York Rangers in the opening round of the playoffs, going without a shot on goal in two of the games.
But Ovechkin answered that uncertainty by expediting his record chase and passing Gretzky on April 6 at the New York Islanders. In the process, he fueled a 111-point Washington season — a 20-point improvement over 2023-24 — that saw the Capitals advance to the second round of the playoffs for the first time since winning the Stanley Cup in 2018.
“The goal chase last year energized our team. It helped us get through the dog days a bit. It was such a cool moment for the whole organization,” Capitals GM Chris Patrick said. “But I think Alex has always been team first. I think the way he’s handling this season just shows that he’s a team-first guy.”
FROM THE MOMENT Ovechkin arrived at Capitals training camp, there was speculation about this season being his last. He’s in the final year of a five-year contract extension he signed in July 2021. He broke Gretzky’s record. He hit the big 4-0. But Ovechkin was noncommittal about his future before the season.
“I don’t know if this is going to be the last. We’ll see,” he said at training camp.
Then, asked again on the eve of the Capitals’ first game: “I don’t know. I take it day by day, you know? You have to have fun. Enjoy yourself. Do the best that you can.”
Ovechkin hasn’t made up his mind. The Capitals say they don’t know which way he’s leaning. They’re happy to give him the time he needs to figure it out.
“I want him to have the space. To have this season go how he wants it to go,” Patrick said. “If he wants to talk, we’ll talk. If not, we’ll figure it out later.”
Ovechkin deferred to Patrick when asked if there was a deadline of sorts this season in which he’d have to inform the Capitals about his future. “I don’t know. You should talk to him, not me. This is the time of the year when you just have to get ready emotionally and get ready physically. We’ll see how it goes,” he said.
Undoubtedly, a preseason announcement about this being Ovechkin’s retirement tour would have put the focus on him rather than his teammates for a second straight season.
“Definitely. It would bring that element to arenas, especially in the Western Conference where it would be the last time he ever goes into those arenas,” coach Spencer Carbery said.
Ovechkin said he welcomes a season without something like the Gretzky goals record chase overshadowing everything else. “You just get tired to hear, ‘When it’s going to happen, how you’re going to do it?'” he said. “Right now, we just focusing on the different things.”
One reason Ovechkin might stick around beyond this season is the Capitals’ resurgence. When he re-signed with Washington in 2021, it was with the understanding that the team wouldn’t go into a rebuild with him on the roster. Surrounding him with talent would keep him happy and support his pursuit of Gretzky’s record.
The retool around Ovechkin has produced two straight trips to the Stanley Cup playoffs and a Metropolitan Division title last season. It has been a combination of solid prospect development and bold bets on trades and signings by management — hastened by the cap flexibility afforded the team as veterans Nicklas Backstrom and T.J. Oshie saw their NHL careers end — that were widely successful, such as the trades for forward Pierre-Luc Dubois, defenseman Jakob Chychrun and goalie Logan Thompson.
Under Carbery, who was hired two seasons ago, the Capitals haven’t just avoided a rebuild in Ovechkn’s twilight years. They’re a legitimate contender.
“We’ve created a standard now where we’re a team that’s expected to do well. We’ve got to make sure when teams come into our rink, we keep that expectation that it’s going to be hard playing the Capitals,” Wilson said.
Ovechkin says he appreciates that culture, and the fact that management brought back almost everyone from last season’s team.
“Yeah, I mean you go to locker room and you see the guy who was next to you from last year,” he said. “We have some additions, but they understand the culture. They understand where they’re at. I think it’s pretty good.”
Carbery says he believes it’s that joy Ovechkin feels with his teammates and playing the game that has kept him going.
“I think he loves the game. He loves to come to the rink, he loves to be around his buddies. He loves to go out and compete and try to win. I don’t think that’ll change one bit,” the coach said. “Even though he’s passed Wayne and now has the all-time goal record, I think he’ll be as hungry as ever to get to 900 and then 910 and try to help our team win games.”
CARBERY TALKS TO OVECHKIN every day.
“I won’t be, ‘Hey, do you feel good enough to play next year?’ I have a lot of conversations with him. Part of it is about him and part of it is that he’s the captain. I want to get a sense of what we need as a group. But I also check in on how he’s feeling as well,” he said. “A lot of [his decision] will have to do with how the year goes. At his age, coming back from an injury in training camp. He wants to see how he feels, mentally and physically, going through the grind. See where he’s at.”
Ovechkin’s primary motivation on the ice is bringing a second Stanley Cup championship to Washington. But as Carbery mentioned, Ovechkin still has personal milestones to hit too.
Ovechkin entered this season trailing Gretzky by 42 for the most goals scored between the regular season and Stanley Cup playoffs combined in NHL history. Gretzky has 1,016, and Ovechkin’s combined 49 goals last season gave him 974 for his career.
Ovechkin will also have a chance to set a record for most goals scored by a 40-year-old player. Gordie Howe holds that mark with 44 in the 1968-69 season. From a personal standpoint, Ovechkin is just a handful of games away from 1,500 in his career, a benchmark only 22 players in NHL history have reached.
“He’s got a couple milestones I think coming up right away and it’ll be fun to see him hit those,” Patrick said. “I’m just at a point where every time I see him play, I’m just appreciating it, because he’s 40 years old. We’re not going to have this forever. To get to witness it every night is a treat.”
Defenseman John Carlson, who also doesn’t have a contract beyond this season, said it’s been “a hell of a ride” with Ovechkin, whether or not this is his final season.
“I’m not going to get too nostalgic too early here. But, yeah, it’s been really cool to play with one of the game’s greats, and now the leading goal scorer of all time,” Carlson said. “Those are insane things that you can reflect on. Pretty special times.”
Carlson has been Ovechkin’s teammate since 2009-10. Wilson has played with him since 2013-14. Neither player has given much thought to this being their captain’s last season in the NHL.
“Not really, to be honest. I think he’s one of those guys where it doesn’t really matter. If he’s playing well and he wants to be scoring goals and he wants to stick around, I’m sure they’ll figure a way to keep him around,” Carlson said. “If he doesn’t want to play another year, then he won’t play another year.”
Perhaps Ovechkin will take inspiration with how Gretzky retired from the NHL. He also didn’t want a retirement tour. News about 1998-99 being his final season didn’t leak until very late in the season, creating hysteria around the Rangers’ April 15, 1999, game at the Ottawa Senators as Gretzky’s last stop in Canada. He would formally announce his retirement the next day in New York. Wilson understands that, in an instant, Ovechkin could also call it a career.
“No one will really think about him not being around here until it smacks us all in the face,” Wilson said. “He’s just a Capital. He comes to the rink every day and leads this group. He’s going to do that until he is done. We won’t really focus too much on that. It’s just so fun having him around.”
And so the Capitals wait as Ovechkin ponders whether this is the season that the Russian Machine powers down.
“We respect Alex so much and everything he’s done for this organization. So when the time comes for him to make his decision on his future, he will,” Carbery said. “We don’t know what the future holds. He’s left it open. Certainly as an organization, we’re like, ‘Heck yeah, as many more years as you possibly can play.'”
Ottawa Senators captain Brady Tkachuk is expected to miss at least a month with an injury to his right hand, coach Travis Green said Tuesday.
Tkachuk injured the hand Monday when he was cross-checked by Nashville Predators defenseman Roman Josi early in the first period and went awkwardly into the boards. He finished out the 4-1 loss but didn’t always look comfortable.
Green told reporters Tuesday that surgery is an option for Tkachuk but that, at a minimum, he’ll miss four weeks.
“He’s going to miss a significant amount of time,” Green said. “We’ll know more in the next 24 hours. We don’t know exactly, but it’s four weeks plus. We don’t know exactly.”
PHILADELPHIA — Sean Couturier wrestled with a bad back and slogged through a strained relationship with his former coach in recent years, and — at times — it was too close to call which hurdle irked the Philadelphia Flyers‘ captain more.
Feeling healthy and starting the season with a clean slate under new coach Rick Tocchet, Couturier flashed a reminder of just how productive he can be for a Flyers team itching to move out of a rebuild and into the playoffs.
Couturier had two goals and two assists to make Tocchet a winner in his home coaching debut and lift the Flyers to a 5-2 win over the two-time defending Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers on Monday night.
“I think he trained hard this year. He came into camp in really good condition,” Tocchet said of Couturier. “When your captain comes in in good condition, it helps the coach out. It was nice of him to come in real good shape for us.”
The 32-year-old Couturier has been sidelined with back issues and was even a healthy scratch under former coach John Tortorella. Two seasons ago, Tortorella benched Couturier only 34 days after he was named team captain. Couturier was on the fourth line for the home opener last season — seemingly a lifetime ago and now anchored by a strong relationship with Tocchet.
“I’m starting to find my confidence back,” Couturier said.
Couturier, who was a rookie in the 2011-12 season, became the longest-tenured athlete in Philadelphia sports once Eagles defensive end Brandon Graham retired at the end of last season.
Tocchet easily received the loudest cheers from fans during pregame introductions ahead of the home opener. The Flyers hired the former fan favorite as coach in hopes his return would push them out of an extended rebuild and into playoff contention. Tocchet, who played more than a decade with Philadelphia in separate stints at the start and end of his career, is at the start of his fourth head-coaching job after time with Tampa Bay, Arizona and Vancouver.
Tocchet took over months after the Flyers fired Tortorella with nine games left in another losing season for a franchise that hasn’t reached the playoffs since 2020.
“Love the first win type of thing but I’m just happy the guys for the guys, the way they’ve been working on the concepts,” Tocchet said.
Philadelphia, once a model franchise in the league, has one of the longest championship droughts in the NHL.
The Flyers have failed to win the Stanley Cup since going back to back in 1974 and ’75. Those Broad Street Bullies teams have become a cherished part of the franchise’s past but also a reminder of how much time it has been since the Flyers won: They last played in the final in 2010.
The Flyers opened with a somber nod to those Bullies teams with a tribute for Bernie Parent. Parent, who died in September at 80, won Conn Smythe and Vezina trophies in back-to-back seasons for the Stanley Cup champions. The Flyers painted his retired uniform number “1” behind each net and chose to bypass a moment of silence for fans to instead “show the same passion he lived for with a standing ovation.” They will wear a “1” jersey patch this season.
“It was a great effort in his honor,” Couturier said. “He’ll definitely be missed around here. We used to always seem him around at the games. He always had that quality of just light, lighting everything up and putting a smile on everyone’s face.”
The Flyers gave the player of the game a goalie mask in the style of Parent’s version that he wore in the 1970s and netted the goaltender the cover of Time magazine. Dan Vladar had 24 saves on 26 shots to earn his first win with the Flyers and become the first player to wear the mask.
Vladar helped hand the Panthers their first loss in four games — which included a win in Florida over the Flyers last week.
“Every single guy had goosebumps during the ceremony,” Vladar said. “It was a sad thing but what a hell of a player and a hell of a person he was.”