Leaving Arizona: Everything you need to know about the Coyotes moving to Salt Lake City
The Arizona Coyotes are on the verge of relocating to Salt Lake City.
The NHL board of governors has to approve the transaction, but all signs point to Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith acquiring the beleaguered franchise, which began its run in the desert back in 1996 following relocation from Winnipeg.
News about the Coyotes’ move hit hyperspeed in the past week after multiple reports of the NHL preparing two different schedules, one with the team in Arizona and another with the team in Utah. The news came just days after the Coyotes had released images of the new arena they hoped to build outside of Phoenix.
What happened? Why is the team moving now, after several other instances in which it should have but didn’t relocate? Here’s the full picture, as we understand it, regarding the past, present and future of the Arizona Coyotes, courtesy of ESPN’s Ryan S. Clark, Kristen Shilton and Greg Wyshynski.
Why Utah?
While the Salt Lake City market has intrigued the NHL, the league’s decision to bring a team to that market is tied to having a deep-pocketed owner that wants one, and an arena ready to house one.
Ryan and Ashley Smith, owners of the NBA’s Utah Jazz, have been seeking an NHL team for a few years. In January, Smith Entertainment Group formally requested that the NHL initiate an expansion process and bring a team to Salt Lake City.
“The Utah expression of interest has been the most aggressive and has carried a lot of energy with it,” NHL commissioner Gary Bettman said at the NHL All-Star Game in February.
Ryan Smith had spent several years building a level of trust with Bettman. He had an arena in Delta Center, home of the Jazz, that had hosted NHL exhibition games. Smith told the NHL there would be renovations to make Delta Center more hockey-friendly if he was ever awarded a franchise.
Smith said in January he didn’t care how he acquired the team, saying: “Our goal is NHL in Utah. And I’ll leave the rest up to Gary.” But an NHL source told ESPN that Smith’s preference was to have an expansion team in Utah — and along with it, the chance to build one through an expansion draft.
His willingness to forgo that and accept a relocation was a key factor in the Coyotes moving to Salt Lake City.
Beyond the building and the owner, the NHL believes it’s a market with a ton of potential for hockey. It’s a winter sports town, and one that’s expected to host the 2034 Winter Olympics — a bid that could produce a new arena for the Jazz and the new NHL team. Salt Lake City has also been experiencing an economic boom: a 2024 report by the Milken Institute ranked Salt Lake City fourth among 403 U.S. cities in growth of jobs, wages and high-tech industry.
Like Arizona, having a team in Utah also fits nicely with the location of several other U.S.-based franchises in the Western Conference. — Wyshynski
How is the transaction going to work?
If approved, multiple sources told ESPN that Smith will pay between $1.2 and $1.3 billion for the team. Coyotes owner Alex Meruelo will receive $1 billion. The rest of the NHL’s owners will split between $200-$300 million as a relocation fee paid by Smith.
Sources have indicated that the total transaction is a complicated one, as it’s not a typical relocation. It’s expected the NHL will buy the Coyotes from Meruelo and sell what’s essentially a clean slate new team to Smith, who will retain the Coyotes’ players and hockey operations staff in the transaction.
This will allow Meruelo the chance to “restart” the Coyotes down the line.
Sources told ESPN that satisfying Meruelo was a key to the transaction. There was concern within the league as far back as NHL All-Star Weekend that Meruelo could wage a prolonged legal battle over relocation if the NHL decided it wanted the franchise moved, due to uncertainty about the Coyotes’ arena plans.
One way to satisfy Meruelo was to give him around $1 billion in the transaction. But Meruelo still wanted to own an NHL team in Arizona and still planned on building an arena for one. So the NHL had to find a creative way to keep the door open for Meruelo in Arizona while moving the current incarnation of the Coyotes.
Meruelo is still seeking to win an auction for a 95-acre parcel of land in north Phoenix, where he intends to build an arena, a practice facility, a theater, housing units and retail. The auction for that land is set for June 27.
It’s the latest arena plan for the team, which has been seeking a permanent home since the city of Glendale terminated its lease with the Coyotes at Gila River Arena following the 2021-22 season. The Coyotes moved to Mullett Arena while seeking an arena solution in Tempe. The Coyotes believed they had one with a 16,000-seat arena in a proposed $2.1 billion entertainment district, but voters rejected that plan in May 2023.
It was after the Tempe vote failed that the NHL began considering its options with Arizona. The league supported Meruelo’s attempt at winning the land auction and building his arena, but questions surrounding its eventual completion were numerous. That included cost, infrastructure and timeline — the Coyotes said shovels wouldn’t be in the ground until 2025, which meant the team would play in Mullett Arena until 2027, if not longer.
Thus, Bettman and the NHL came up with an ingenious way to satisfy their concerns and Meruelo’s needs. It’s expected that the final transaction will include a clause that allows Meruelo to “reactivate” the franchise as an expansion team — paying what’s expected to be a $1 billion expansion fee if that happens — between now and 2029 if his arena project is completed.
All of the team’s intellectual property — including those iconic Kachina jerseys — would remain with Meruelo. It’s an agreement that evokes the deal made with the city of Cleveland when the Browns moved to Baltimore in 1995.
If the project is completed, the NHL can return to a market where it clearly wants to have a team — witness the constant fights to “save” the Coyotes since their bankruptcy in 2009 — and have a state-of-the-art arena ready for an expansion team. If the project doesn’t come to pass, Meruelo walks away with $1 billion for having let the Coyotes move to Utah. — Wyshynski
Are all of the players, coaches and staff going to join the new franchise?
Every NHL team has personnel decisions they must consider in the offseason, and that would have been the case for the Coyotes whether they stayed in Arizona or relocated to Salt Lake City.
Per Cap Friendly, the team has 13 players who are under contract for next season. It’s a group that includes forwards such as Nick Bjugstad, Logan Cooley, Lawson Crouse, Clayton Keller, Matias Maccelli and Nick Schmaltz. Cooley was the third pick of the 2022 draft and is part of a core of homegrown players that includes Josh Doan, Dylan Guenther, Keller and Maccelli, among others.
They have three pending unrestricted free agents, including defenseman Travis Dermott, who could re-sign with the team or head elsewhere. They also have seven restricted free agents who are in need of a new contract. Five of those RFAs are defensemen, such as Sean Durzi, J.J. Moser and Juuso Valimaki.
All those players under contract could either remain with the franchise or get traded elsewhere, which is a scenario that every NHL franchise faces in the offseason.
Still, relocated teams go through changes, which was the case when the Atlanta Thrashers became the Winnipeg Jets after the 2010-11 season.
Of the 38 players that played at least one game for the Thrashers, there were 23 that remained with the club during their inaugural campaign in Winnipeg. It’s a group that included Nik Antropov, Dustin Byfuglien, Evander Kane, Andrew Ladd and Blake Wheeler.
Atlanta’s transition to Winnipeg also saw changes with the coaching staff and the front office. The Thrashers hired Craig Ramsay at the start of their last season in Atlanta only to have the team’s new ownership group move on from Ramsay and hire Claude Noel, who was the head coach of the Vancouver Canucks‘ AHL affiliate that was already in Winnipeg (the Manitoba Moose).
The Thrashers also hired Rick Dudley as their general manager in April 2010, but he was gone by June 2011. He was replaced with Kevin Cheveldayoff, who has been the only general manager the franchise has known since its time in Winnipeg.
So what’s the situation with the current coaching staff and front office that’s in place?
Coyotes coach Andre Tourigny is about to finish his third season with the club. Back in August, he signed a three-year extension, with general manager Bill Armstrong saying at the time, “He is an excellent coach, leader and communicator who has helped us establish a tremendous culture in our dressing room. Our players like him, respect him and compete hard for him.”
The club also signed assistant coach Mario Duhamel and goaltending coach Corey Schwab to multiyear extensions just days after announcing Tourigny’s new deal.
Less than a month later, the club announced it had signed Armstrong to a multiyear extension. Armstrong has been with the club for four seasons and has overseen an organization that has worked to develop one of the stronger farm systems in the NHL. Back in February, the team also gave contract extensions to director of amateur scouting Darryl Plandowski and associate director of amateur scouting Ryan Jankowski. — Clark
What are Coyotes players saying? What are other teams’ players saying?
The team’s players have been guarded publicly with their comments so far, waiting to learn more about how official the situation would become before opening up. They had, after all, answered questions when rumors of the franchising relocating cropped up in years past.
“We’ve just tried to focus on hockey and since I’ve played in Arizona, there’s always been a lot of rumors, so we try to do as best we can to try and focus on hockey,” Keller said. “It was definitely in our heads. You can say it’s not a distraction, but buddies, family, people are always texting and keep putting it in your head. [Tourigny] said we had another opportunity to deal with the same thing and learn from our past mistakes.”
Auston Matthews never suited up for the Coyotes. But if it weren’t for that Arizona-based team, the Scottsdale-raised Matthews may never have believed in pursuing the sport as a kid — a decision that’s led to Matthews becoming a first-overall pick, Hart Trophy winner and Rocket Richard winner as one of the league’s most prolific scorers.
He weighed in on a potential move by the Coyotes prior to the news this weekend that a change was imminent.
“Obviously, selfishly, growing up there with them was a big part of me getting into hockey,” Matthews said Thursday. “I’d love for them to figure it out, but you kind of understand the position the NHL’s in as well.”
Maple Leafs rookie Matthew Knies is another one of the few Arizona-bred players in the NHL, and expressed his disappointment last week about the Coyotes potentially moving elsewhere.
“Not too happy with the situation,” Knies said. “It’s pretty unfortunate. The Coyotes did a lot for me growing up, and I loved going to the games. It was a big reason as to why I got into hockey. But that kind of situation is out of my control. I’m hopeful that they can stay there, because it meant a lot to me, but I guess we’re going to have to see what happens.”
If it weren’t for the Coyotes, Knies said he might not have pursued playing hockey. Naturally he was concerned losing an NHL team in that area will impact how other kids view their opportunity in the sport, and was hopeful the Coyotes would stick.
“When I was growing up, [Arizona] wasn’t the hockey hotbed Colorado or Chicago or Detroit was,” he said. “But it was definitely growing, and you could see the potential there. The Coyotes were a big part of that, and so it’s definitely gotten a lot better. I know a lot of kids are starting to pick up a hockey stick now, and it’s just really good to see. So, again, hope they can stay there.” — Shilton
Will it be the Utah Coyotes, or a new team identity?
Even if there are actual coyotes in the state of Utah, it appears as if there is going to be a new name for the franchise.
Smith, who is also a co-owner of Real Salt Lake in MLS and the Utah Royals in the NWSL, took to social media on April 8 asking, “If an NHL team were to come to Utah, what should we name it?” The question was then followed by a link to a survey.
As of Saturday, the survey was no longer active.
Smith’s post on X generated more than 3 million views and over 1,000 responses. Some of the proposed team names were serious suggestions, while others were a bit more sardonic.
There were some who suggested the new team be called the Salt Lake Golden Eagles, an homage to the professional team that was there from 1969 through 1994 before they left town to become the Detroit Vipers.
Others suggested some winter-themed names such as the Utah Blizzard or the Utah Yeti. But there were some who wondered if that would work given that the Colorado Avalanche are in a neighboring state and have similar elements in their name and uniform design.
A few people chimed in with ideas such as the Utah Buzz, the Utah Hive, the Utah Stingers, the Utah Swarm and the Salt Lake City Swarm. Those are all nods to the state’s extensive relationship with bees. One of Utah’s nicknames is “The Beehive State.” The Western honey bee is the official insect of Utah, while a beehive is featured on the state flag, the state seal and Utah State Route road signs.
And yes, there were some who suggested that they keep Coyotes given there are coyotes in the state. But as noted above, the deal between Meruelo and the NHL is that Meruelo will be able to retain the team name and intellectual property in the hopes of “reactivating” the Coyotes franchise in the future.
There’s also the recent historical precedent that’s been set with relocated NHL teams and changing names. Five of the past six relocated teams have changed their names to something that was more regional in nature.
For example, the Colorado Rockies became the New Jersey Devils while the Quebec Nordiques turned into the Colorado Avalanche. It was the same for when the original Winnipeg Jets became the Coyotes, the Hartford Whalers were changed to the Carolina Hurricanes and the Atlanta Thrashers became the Winnipeg Jets once the NHL came back to Manitoba.
The only team of those six to relocate and keep part of its original name was when the Minnesota North Stars relocated to become the Dallas Stars. The franchise kept “Stars” due to Texas being known as “The Lone Star State.” — Clark
Where will the team play? Will it get a new arena in the future?
The plan right now is for the Utah team to play out of the Delta Center, a facility owned by Smith that is home to the NBA’s Jazz.
However, as ESPN’s Emily Kaplan reported, sources have said the NHL told the Smiths there are hockey-specific upgrades needed at Delta Center if it were to become the team’s permanent home.
The venue has hosted preseason NHL games in each of the past four seasons — primarily between L.A. and Vegas — but the current layout would limit sightlines for NHL games and prohibit the Smiths from selling the arena to 18,206-seat capacity (only 10,420 seats were sold for those NHL preseason games).
Given the limited amount of time before puck drop of the 2024-25 season, it’s not as if the Smiths would be expected to completely overhaul their facility overnight. But some alterations will be possible over the summer and more changes could be carried out in the next offseason.
Smith has government support on that front thanks to a bill passed in the Utah State Senate to help fund a renovated entertainment district downtown. That was in anticipation of an NHL franchise potentially relocating there, something to which Utah Gov. Spencer Cox has expressed — and had already given — his approval prior to the weekend’s news. — Shilton
What’s the future of the NHL in Arizona?
The NHL has never wavered about how it values the Arizona market. The league likes the population size, its television audience and its geography in relation to other U.S. teams in the Western Conference. There’s also been a significant youth hockey boom in that market during the franchise’s time in Arizona. NHL players like the Maple Leafs’ Matthews and Knies grew up rooting for the Coyotes.
Bettman has called the Coyotes “a victim of circumstance” when it comes to their struggles in the market, through ownership issues and their arena plights.
“We believe Arizona and particularly the greater Phoenix area is a good NHL market and a place we want to be,” he said in May 2023.
While leaving the door open for Meruelo to own an expansion franchise in a new arena was clearly a way to satisfy him in the relocation gambit, the fact remains that the NHL appears committed to bringing an expansion team back to Arizona. Bettman has been steadfast in saying that the NHL is not currently in an expansion mode, but cities like Houston and Atlanta are also showing significant interest. — Wyshynski
Timeline of the NHL’s Phoenix/Arizona Coyotes (1995-2024)
1995: The Winnipeg Jets are sold to Minnesota businessmen Steven Gluckstern and Richard Burke, who intended to move them to Minneapolis-St. Paul for the 1996-97 season. After being unable to work out a lease agreement in the Twin Cities, they instead opted to move the team to Phoenix.
1996: The now-Phoenix Coyotes play in America West Arena, home of the NBA’s Suns, in a facility that was suboptimal for hockey. Players on that inaugural team included Keith Tkachuk, Jeremy Roenick, Hall of Famer Mike Gartner, goalie Nikolai Khabibulin and Shane Doan, who played his rookie season with the Jets and then 20 seasons with the Coyotes.
2001: Burke, now the primary owner, sells the Coyotes to an ownership group that includes Phoenix-area developer Steve Ellman and NHL legend Wayne Gretzky, who was a part-owner and the team’s new president of hockey operations.
2003: After attempts to further retrofit America West Arena and build a new building in Scottsdale failed, Ellman turned his attention to West Valley. In 2001, he signed a lease agreement with the city of Glendale to build a new arena. On Dec. 27, 2003, the Coyotes played their first game at Glendale Arena, beginning a run of 18 seasons there. As attendance for the team fell from a high of 15,582 tickets distributed per game in 2005-06 to just 11,989 in 2009-10, the arena’s location away from where many Coyotes fans lived became a point of criticism.
2005: Jerry Moyes, a trucking magnate who was also a part-owner of Major League Baseball’s Arizona Diamondbacks, buys the Coyotes from Ellman. Gretzky becomes head coach of the team, a position he held for four seasons without a playoff berth.
2006: The Coyotes were set to host the 2006 NHL All-Star Game, which never happened due to the NHL players’ involvement in the 2006 Winter Olympics. The Coyotes would never host an All-Star Game or draft in their time in Arizona.
2009: Media reports revealed that the Coyotes were hemorrhaging money and being propped by up by the NHL. In May, Moyes put the team into bankruptcy with the intention of having Canadian billionaire Jim Balsillie, former CEO of BlackBerry creator Research In Motion, relocate the team to Hamilton in Ontario, Canada. The NHL stripped Moyes of his ownership authority. In bankruptcy hearing, the NHL put in a bid against that of Balsillie and argued that this bid, if accepted by the court, would have circumvented NHL rules. The court sided with the NHL, which took over the team and sought a new owner that would keep the franchise in Arizona.
2012: Under coach Dave Tippett, the Coyotes win their only division title and make their only conference final. After qualifying for the playoffs in their first four seasons in Phoenix, the Coyotes would make the playoff tournament only four times before relocating.
2013: After close calls with potential owners like Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, Chicago investor Matt Hulsizer, former San Jose Sharks owner Greg Jamison and “Ice Edge Holdings,” the NHL finally unloaded the Coyotes to an ownership collective called IceArizona and Renaissance Sports and Entertainment for a reported $225 million. That came with a 15-year lease with the city of Glendale that ended speculation that the team would relocate to Seattle.
2014: The team rebrands as the Arizona Coyotes. IceArizona sells a controlling interest in the Coyotes to hedge fund manager Andrew Barroway.
2015: The Glendale City Council votes 5-2 to end its 15-year agreement for the Coyotes to manage and play at Gila River Arena, opting for short-term leases at a reduced rate for the city.
2016: The Coyotes announce plans for an arena in Tempe for the 2019-20 season that would have created facilities for the Arizona State University hockey team. ASU pulls out of the deal in 2017.
2019: Barroway sells the majority of the Coyotes to billionaire Alex Meruelo, the first Latino owner in the NHL. Meruelo takes full control of the team in 2023.
2021: The city of Glendale and the Gila River Arena choose not to renew their operating agreement with the Coyotes beyond the 2021-22 season.
2022: The Coyotes move to Mullett Arena, a 5,000-seat facility on the campus of ASU and home to the school’s men’s hockey team, signing a three-year lease with options that carried through 2027. The team and the NHL called it a temporary move while the Coyotes attempted to secure a new arena site.
2023: Meruelo’s proposal to turn a Tempe landfill into a $2.1 billion arena and entertainment complex is defeated in a public vote, a result that was shocking for the franchise and the NHL. Bettman called it “terribly disappointing” and said “we are going to review with the Coyotes what the options might be going forward.”
2024: While Coyotes fans and players prepared for the team to bid on a parcel of land near Phoenix for a potential new arena in the summer, the possibility arose of Meruelo selling the franchise, with the NHL and the Smith Entertainment Group relocating it to Salt Lake City. — Wyshynski
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Bill Connelly
Almost no word in the English language makes a college football fan more defensive than the L-word: luck.
We weren’t lucky to have a great turnover margin — our coaches are just really good at emphasizing ball security! We’re tougher than everyone else — that’s why we recovered all those fumbles!
We weren’t lucky to win all those close games — we’re clutch! Our coaches know how to press all the right buttons! Our quarterback is a cool customer!
We weren’t lucky to have fewer injuries than everyone else — our strength-and-conditioning coach is the best in America! And again: We’re just tougher!
As loath as we may be to admit it, a large percentage of a given college football season — with its small overall sample of games — is determined by the bounce of a pointy ball, the bend of a ligament and the whims of fate. Certain teams will end up with an unsustainably good turnover margin that turns on them the next year. Certain teams (often the same ones) will enjoy a great run of close-game fortune based on some combination of great coaching, sturdy quarterback play, timely special teams contributions … and massive amounts of unsustainable randomness. Certain teams will keep their starting lineups mostly intact for 12 or more games while another is watching its depth chart change dramatically on a week-to-week basis.
As we prepare for the 2025 college football season, it’s worth stepping back and looking at who did, and didn’t, get the bounces in 2024. Just because Lady Luck was (or wasn’t) on your side one year, doesn’t automatically mean your fortunes will flip the next, but that’s often how these things go. Be it turnovers, close-game fortune or injuries, let’s talk about the teams that were dealt the best and worst hands last fall.
Jump to a section:
Turnover luck | Close games luck
Injuries and general shuffling | Turnaround candidates
Turnover luck
In last year’s ACC championship game, Clemson bolted to a 24-7 halftime lead, then white-knuckled it to the finish. SMU came back to tie the score at 31 with only 16 seconds left, but Nolan Hauser‘s 56-yard field goal at the buzzer gave the Tigers a 34-31 victory and a spot in 2024’s College Football Playoff at Alabama’s expense.
In the first series of the game, Clemson’s T.J. Parker pulled a perfect sack-and-strip of SMU QB Kevin Jennings, forcing and falling on a loose ball at the SMU 33-yard line. Clemson scored two plays later to take a 7-0 lead. Late in the first quarter, Khalil Barnes picked off a Jennings pass near midfield, ending what could have become a scoring threat with one more first down. A few minutes later, Clemson’s Cade Klubnik fumbled at the end of a 14-yard gain, but tight end Jake Briningstool recovered it at midfield, preventing another potential scoring threat from developing. (Klubnik fumbled seven times in the 2024 season but lost only one of them.)
Early in the third quarter, after SMU cut Clemson’s lead to 24-14, David Eziomume fumbled the ensuing kickoff at the Clemson 6, but teammate Keith Adams Jr. recovered it right before two SMU players pounced.
Over 60 minutes, both teams fumbled twice, and Clemson defended (intercepted or broke up) eight passes to SMU’s seven. On average, 50% of fumbles are lost and about 21% of passes defended become INTs, so Clemson’s expected turnover margin in this game was plus-0.2 (because of the extra pass defended). The Tigers’ actual turnover margin was plus-2, a difference of 1.8 turnovers in a game they barely won.
Clemson was obviously a solid team in 2024, but the Tigers probably wouldn’t have reached the CFP without turnovers luck. For the season, they fumbled 16 times but lost only three, and comparing their expected (based on the averages above) and actual turnover margins, almost no one benefited more from the randomness of a bouncing ball.
It probably isn’t a surprise to see that, of last year’s 12 playoff teams, eight benefited from positive turnovers luck, and six were at plus-3.3 or higher. You’ve got to be lucky and good to win, right?
You aren’t often lucky for two straight years, though. It might be noteworthy to point out that, of the teams in Mark Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early 2025 rankings, five were in the top 20 in terms of turnovers luck: No. 5 Georgia, No. 7 Clemson, No. 9 BYU, No. 11 Iowa State and No. 17 Indiana (plus two others from his Teams Also Considered list: Army and Baylor).
It’s also noteworthy to point out that three teams on Schlabach’s list — No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU and No. 15 SMU — ranked in the triple-digits in terms of turnovers luck. Oregon started the season 13-0 without the benefit of bounces. For that matter, Auburn, a team on the Also Considered list, ranked 125th in turnovers luck in a season that saw the Tigers go just 1-3 in one-score finishes. There might not have been a more what-could-have-been team in the country than Hugh Freeze’s Tigers.
Close games
One of my favorite tools in my statistical toolbox is what I call postgame win expectancy. The idea is to take all of a game’s key, predictive stats — all the things that end up feeding into my SP+ rankings — and basically toss them into the air and say, “With these stats, you could have expected to win this game X% of the time.”
Alabama‘s 40-35 loss to Vanderbilt on Oct. 5 was one of the most impactful results of the CFP race. It was also one of the least likely results of the season in terms of postgame win expectancy. Bama averaged 8.8 yards per play to Vandy’s 5.6, generated a 56% success rate* to Vandy’s 43% and scored touchdowns on all four of its trips into the red zone. It’s really hard to lose when you do all of that — in fact, the Crimson Tide’s postgame win expectancy was a whopping 98.5%. (You can see all postgame win expectancy data here)
(* Success rate: how frequently an offense is gaining at least 50% of necessary yardage on first down, 70% on second and 100% on third and fourth. It is one of the more reliable and predictive stats you’ll find, and it’s a big part of SP+.)
Vandy managed to overcome these stats in part because of two of the most perfect bounces you’ll ever see. In the first, Jalen Milroe had a pass batted at the line, and it deflected high into the air and, eventually, into the arms of Randon Fontenette, who caught it on the run and raced 29 yards for a touchdown and an early 13-0 lead.
In the second half, with Bama driving to potentially take the lead, Miles Capers sacked Milroe and forced a fumble; the ball sat on the ground for what felt like an eternity before Yilanan Ouattara outwrestled a Bama lineman for it. Instead of trailing, Vandy took over near midfield and scored seven plays later. It took turnovers luck and unlikely key-play execution — despite a 43% success rate, Diego Pavia and the Commodores went 12-for-18 on third down and 1-for-1 on fourth — for Vandy to turn a 1.5% postgame win expectancy into a victory. It also wasn’t Alabama’s only incredibly unlikely loss: The Tide were at 87.8% to beat Michigan in the ReliaQuest Bowl but fell 19-13.
(Ole Miss can feel the Tide’s pain: The Rebels were at 76.0% postgame win expectancy against Kentucky and 73.7% against Florida. There was only a 6% chance that they would lose both games, and even going 1-1 would have likely landed them a CFP bid. They lost both.)
Adding up each game’s postgame win expectancy is a nice way of seeing how many games a team should have won on average. I call this a team’s second-order win total. Alabama was at 10.7 second-order wins but went 9-4. That was one of the biggest differences of the season. Somehow, however, Iron Bowl rival Auburn was even more unfortunate.
Based solely on stats, Arkansas State should have won about four games, and Auburn should have won about eight. Instead, the Red Wolves went 8-5 and the Tigers went 5-7.
Comparing win totals to these second-order wins is one of the surest ways of identifying potential turnaround stories for the following season. In 2023, 15 teams had second-order win totals at least one game higher than their actual win totals — meaning they suffered from poor close-game fortune. Ten of those 15 teams saw their win totals increase by at least two games in 2024, including East Carolina (from 2-10 to 8-5), TCU (5-7 to 9-4), Pitt (3-9 to 7-6), Boise State (8-6 to 12-2) and Louisiana (6-7 to 10-4). On average, these 15 teams improved by 1.9 wins.
On the flip side, 19 teams overachieved their second-order win totals by at least 1.0 wins in 2023. This list includes both of 2023’s national title game participants, Washington and Michigan. The Huskies and Wolverines sank from a combined 29-1 in 2023 to 14-12 in 2024, and it could have been even worse. Michigan overachieved again, going 8-5 despite a second-order win total of 6.0. Other 2023 overachievers weren’t so lucky. Oklahoma State (from 10-4 to 3-9), Wyoming (from 9-4 to 3-9), Northwestern (from 8-5 to 4-8) and NC State (from 9-4 to 6-7) all won more games than the stats expected in 2023, and all of them crumpled to some degree in 2024. On average, the 19 overachieving teams regressed by 1.9 wins last fall.
It’s worth keeping in mind that several teams in Schlabach’s Way-Too-Early Top 25 — including No. 6 Oregon, No. 8 LSU, No. 11 Iowa State, No. 13 Illinois and, yes, No. 21 Michigan — all exceeded statistical expectations in wins last season, as did Also Considered teams like Army, Duke, Missouri and Texas Tech. The fact that Oregon and LSU overachieved while suffering from poor turnovers luck is (admittedly) rather unlikely and paints a conflicting picture.
Meanwhile, one should note that three Way-Too-Early teams — No. 12 Alabama, No. 23 Miami and No. 25 Ole Miss (plus Washington and, of course, Auburn from the Also Considered list) — all lost more games than expected last season. With just a little bit of good fortune, they could prove to be awfully underrated.
Injuries and general shuffling
Injuries are hard to define in college football — coaches are frequently canny in the information they do and do not provide, and with so many teams in FBS, it’s impossible to derive accurate data regarding how many games were missed due to injury.
We can glean quite a bit from starting lineups, however. Teams with lineups that barely changed throughout the season were probably pretty happy with their overall results, while teams with ever-changing lineups likely succumbed to lots of losses. Below, I’ve ranked teams using a simple ratio: I compared (a) the number of players who either started every game or started all but one for a given team to (b) the number of players who started only one or two games, likely as a stopgap. If you had far more of the former, your team likely avoided major injury issues and, with a couple of major exceptions, thrived. If you had more of the latter, the negative effects were probably pretty obvious.
Despite the presence of 1-11 Purdue and 2-10 Kennesaw State near the top of the list — Purdue fielded one of the worst power conference teams in recent memory and barely could blame injury for its issues — you can still see a decent correlation between a positive ratio and positive results. The six teams with a ratio of at least 2.8 or above went a combined 62-22 in 2024, while the teams with a 0.5 ratio or worse went 31-56.
Seven of nine conference champions had a ratio of at least 1.3, and 11 of the 12 CFP teams were at 1.44 or higher (five were at 2.6 or higher). Indiana, the most shocking of CFP teams, was second on the list above; epic disappointments like Oklahoma and, especially, Florida State were near the bottom. (The fact that Georgia won the SEC and reached the CFP despite a pretty terrible injury ratio speaks volumes about the depth Kirby Smart has built in Athens. Of course, the Dawgs also enjoyed solid turnovers luck.)
Major turnaround candidates
It’s fair to use this information as a reason for skepticism about teams like Indiana (turnovers luck and injuries luck), Clemson (turnovers luck), Iowa State (close-games luck), Penn State (injuries luck) or Sam Houston (all of the above, plus a coaching change), but let’s end on an optimistic note instead. Here are five teams that could pretty easily enjoy a big turnaround if Lady Luck is a little kinder.
Auburn Tigers: Auburn enjoyed a better success rate than its opponents (44.7% to 38.5%) and made more big plays as well (8.9% of plays gained 20-plus yards versus 5.7% for opponents). That makes it awfully hard to lose! But the Tigers made exactly the mistake they couldn’t make and managed to lose games with 94%, 76% and 61% postgame win expectancy. There’s nothing saying this was all bad luck, but even with a modest turnaround in fortune, the Tigers will have a very high ceiling in 2025.
Florida Gators: The Gators improved from 41st to 20th in SP+ and from 5-7 to 8-5 overall despite starting three quarterbacks and 12 different DBs and ranking 132nd on the list above. That says pretty spectacular things about their overall upside, especially considering their improved experience levels on the O-line, in the secondary and the general optimism about sophomore quarterback DJ Lagway.
Florida Atlantic Owls: Only one team ranked 111th or worse in all three of the tables above — turnovers luck (111th), second-order win difference (121st) and injury ratio (131st). You could use this information to make the case that the Owls shouldn’t have fired head coach Tom Herman, or you could simply say that new head coach Zach Kittley is pretty well-positioned to get some bounces and hit the ground running.
Florida State Seminoles: There was evidently plenty of poor fortune to go around in the Sunshine State last season, and while Mike Norvell’s Seminoles suffered an epic hangover on the field, they also didn’t get a single bounce: They were 129th in turnovers luck, 99th in second-order win difference and 110th in injury ratio. Norvell has brought in new coordinators and plenty of new players, and the Noles are almost guaranteed to jump up from 2-10. With a little luck, that jump could be a pretty big one.
Utah Utes: Along with UCF, Utah was one of only two teams to start four different quarterbacks in 2024. The Utes were also among only four teams to start at least 11 different receivers or tight ends and among five teams to start at least nine defensive linemen. If you’re looking for an easy explanation for how they fell from 65th to 96th in offensive SP+ and from 8-5 to 5-7 overall, that’s pretty succinct and telling.
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Dan Wetzel
It once seemed improbable that the most compelling figure of the college football offseason would be Bill Belichick’s 24-year-old girlfriend, but somehow, here we are.
Jordon Hudson’s spot in Belichick’s life has always been a public talking point. After all, they started dating two years ago, when Belichick was 71. Of late, though, she’s become an obsession.
Belichick is arguably the greatest coach in the history of the sport, winner of six Super Bowls leading the New England Patriots. His jump to the college ranks and the University of North Carolina is, for purely football reasons, of great intrigue.
Would this work? Could this work?
Currently though, the focus is on Hudson, who takes an active role in managing Belichick’s affairs, including running point on publicity for his new book, “The Art of Winning: Lessons from My Life in Football.”
That includes a viral clip from a “CBS Sunday Morning” interview when Hudson shut down a question about how the two met and was deemed a “constant presence.” That led to all sorts of attention on the relationship, not to mention Belichick’s acuity and Hudson’s recent real estate holdings. Former Patriots great Ted Johnson even told WEEI radio in Boston that “the Tar Heels should consider firing Bill Belichick.”
A few days into this modern controversy, where a social media clip redefines someone with decades in the public eye, can we all settle down for a moment?
As with any relationship, only Belichick and Hudson are privy to what is transpiring between them. But as sensationalistic as all the TikTok comments and website stories currently are, when it comes to actually coaching a football team, let’s settle back on one undeniable truth.
This is Bill Belichick.
Sure, the current attention can be fairly labeled as the kind of “distraction” that might personally crush and professionally derail most people. Belichick is not most people.
“Never been too worried about what everyone else thinks,” Belichick told CBS.
If you allow his history — a lesson from his life in football, if you will — to inform, then you would know that there has rarely, if ever, been any personal feud, situation, tabloid headline or bit of accusational strife that has derailed the man’s single-minded focus on winning.
Belichick doesn’t just thrive in the briar patch of controversy — he seems to prefer it. The more external noise, the better.
A former player standing trial for murder? Win the Super Bowl.
Accused of illegally videotaping opponents? Post a 16-0 season.
A star quarterback alleged to have cheated to win the AFC Championship Game by deflating footballs? Name-drop “My Cousin Vinny” in a news conference, then win the Super Bowl.
Have the team get fined and stripped of a first-round draft pick and the quarterback suspended for the start of the season? Win another Super Bowl.
Maybe this isn’t what he was expecting from the book release, but let’s be clear, he was expecting to create a major media stir.
Belichick is famously passive-aggressive. When he never once mentioned Patriots owner Robert Kraft in his memoir — not even in the acknowledgments — he did so expecting a commotion. This was likely to make it clear that Belichick believed the Patriots’ success during their 24 years together was more based on the coaches and players than the very front-facing owner who, depending whose version you believe, fired Belichick in January 2024.
This was throwing red meat to the sports media machine. It just turned out that the Hudson situation represented even more red meat to the far larger American pop culture/social media machine.
Belichick might not have seen this coming, but this is how he has always operated. He welcomes speculation and even being painted as the villain. Even his closest confidants, from Bill Parcells to Tom Brady, often wind up in prolonged, public ice-outs. There are the endless scraps with the media, the league office, officials or other coaches.
The public questioning his actions and motivation? Please.
Consider that back nearly two decades ago, the NFL made a deal with Reebok for its coaches to wear approved clothes. Belichick bristled at being told what to wear. In an act of fashion defiance, both Patriots and Belichick sources say, he took a plain gray sweatshirt and cut off the sleeves to make it ugly. (It inadvertently became a huge seller, labeled the “BB Hoodie” in the Patriots Pro Shop.)
Or when, in an effort to protest the NFL making teams categorize player injuries — doubtful, questionable, etc. — Belichick began listing Brady as “probable” on the report with a shoulder injury week after week for years despite there being no known injury. Brady would just laugh when asked about it.
Or when he thought the NFL was getting too commercialized, so he refused to have his name used by EA Sports in the Madden video game — “NE Coach” was all that was listed — even though he would make money for literally doing nothing.
Or maybe consider in 2000, when he reversed course on accepting the head coaching job with the New York Jets. Rather than get all apologetic, he handwrote a note that read: “I resign as HC of the NYJ.”
He loves this stuff. Like many highly competitive people, finding an enemy, or some doubt, or some negative opinion about him seemingly feeds him. It certainly doesn’t cause him to wilt.
The current kerfuffle isn’t much different from past ones. He’s been through divorce, and his dating life was even fodder for the New York tabloids. It didn’t matter. He just kept winning.
All of that makes it unlikely that Hudson is somehow bossing Belichick around — or that she would even want to. This is just BB.
Whatever happens with the couple — we wish them the best — is one thing, but anyone who thinks Belichick is somehow incapable of weathering some gossip or jokes, or won’t be laser-focused on coaching, teaching and preparing his players, hasn’t been paying attention.
Here’s guessing Belichick will be fine. He always has been.
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