‘I could see his number in the rafters’: Chris Kreider establishing his place among all-time Rangers playoff greats
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Greg Wyshynski, ESPN
NEW YORK — Mark Messier first met Chris Kreider when the New York Rangers forward was playing at Boston College over a dozen years ago.
“He looked like he was going 100 mph standing still on the ice. He looked like a Ferrari,” Messier said. “You don’t realize how big he is until you get up next to him. He’s so perfectly proportioned.”
It’s the 30th anniversary of the Rangers’ last Stanley Cup victory in 1994, perhaps the signature moment in Messier’s Hockey Hall of Fame career. He won league MVP twice and playoff MVP once, and he’s third all time in career points scored. But that image of Messier becoming the first Rangers player in 54 years to lift the Cup — after successfully guaranteeing victory in the Eastern Conference finals as their captain — still defines him decades later.
“I’ll tell you what: You make your money in the regular season, but you make your name in the playoffs,” Messier said. “And Chris Kreider is a playoff performer.”
No one has scored more postseason goals in Rangers history than Kreider’s 47 tallies in 117 games. The 33-year-old winger is also second to defenseman Dan Girardi (122 games) in team history in postseason appearances. When the games matter most, Kreider has mattered the most for the Rangers.
“At the end of the day, there’s a lot of things you have to do inside of the game. But one thing I know you have to do is put the puck in the net, and he has an incredible knack for that,” said coach Peter Laviolette, who led the Rangers to the President’s Trophy in his first season with New York. “Chris has been a great leader on this team. We needed to have a big performance in Game 6, and I thought he really delivered.”
If Kreider’s reputation as a playoff star wasn’t already cemented, it became concrete after his natural hat trick in the third period to eliminate the Carolina Hurricanes in Game 6 of their second-round series. Only two other players in NHL history have had a natural hat trick in the third period that included a series-clinching goal — the others were Jake Guentzel with Pittsburgh in 2018 and Ottawa forward Jack Darragh in 1920.
“I think we were down on ourselves after the first two periods [of Game 6]. Whenever you’re in a spot like that, you need your big players to come up big, and that’s what Chris did,” Rangers center Vincent Trocheck said.
Kreider’s hat trick sent the Rangers to the Eastern Conference finals, where they’ll face the Florida Panthers starting Wednesday (8 p.m. ET, ESPN/ESPN+) for the chance to play for the Stanley Cup.
It also inspired one of the Stanley Cup playoffs’ oddest images: Kreider removing hats that were thrown on his lawn by celebrating neighbors after his victorious team returned from Raleigh last week.
The things you wake up to….
A photo of Chris Kreider picking hats up off of his lawn after scoring a 3rd period hat trick in Game 6 in Carolina to help the Rangers advance to the Eastern Conference Final #NYR #NHL pic.twitter.com/5mf2jeoMnI
— Jay Recher (@jayRecher) May 18, 2024
“I can’t believe he picked them up by himself. He should’ve had someone else go pick them up,” Rangers captain Jacob Trouba joked.
Those hats on the grass are indicative of Kreider’s importance to Rangers fans and his status as a franchise icon. “He is right up there with the best of them,” said Ryan Callahan, who played eight seasons with the Rangers.
Callahan sees the Rangers’ recent history as a series of eras. There was the generation that won in 1994, with homegrown players like Brian Leetch and Mike Richter blending with imports like Messier. Then came the Henrik Lundqvist generation, which crossed over with the early part of Kreider’s career. But this generation, according to Callahan, “is definitely Chris Kreider’s generation” with the Rangers.
“If they go on to win a Cup, I could see his number in the rafters. That’s how impactful he’s been on this generation,” Callahan said. “Even if they don’t, who knows? He’s had so much success there.”
MESSIER SAID THAT Kreider is a “conscientious” player.
He plays in all situations and makes a difference in each phase of the game. Kreider has averaged 3:40 per game on the power play in this playoff run, when he has two goals and two assists, and he has averaged 1:59 per game on the penalty kill, where he has a shorthanded goal and an assist. His mind is on all facets of the game, at all times. His teammates have described him as “very intelligent,” on and off the ice.
“He’s a thinker. At times early in his career, I think he might have been paralyzed with a little too much thought and perhaps was too hard on himself,” Messier said. “Those are the things that come with maturity.”
Understanding the plight of a young player, Kreider took a rookie under his wing this season — a 6-foot-7 one at that. Forward Matt Rempe became Kreider’s teammate at the Rangers’ Stadium Series game at MetLife Stadium, and he said Kreider has been a valuable advisor during a turbulent first year in the NHL.
“He’s been so good to me. Like a big brother. I talk to him every day. He gives me books to read. We talk about bulls— fantasy books that we’re reading,” Rempe said. “For the last two months, I’ve just been reading all the books he’s been giving me.”
Kreider has been known as the Rangers’ renaissance man during his 12-season NHL career, which began after they drafted him 19th overall out of Boston College in 2009. Teammates have noted the Massachusetts native has a noticeable intellectual curiosity.
Kreider speaks multiple languages, including Spanish and Russian. Along with his fantasy book recommendations to Rempe, Kreider once put together a summer reading list for CNBC that spanned from Ernest Hemingway’s “The Old Man and the Sea” to Daniel Coyle’s “The Talent Code,” which argues that greatness isn’t born but can be grown within an individual.
“This book will change your perspective on what society has labeled ‘natural talent,’ and will hopefully convince you that you can teach yourself basically anything if you work smart,” he said at the time.
Kreider has his share of talents, starting with his speed. “I think his speed is just tremendous,” said Callahan, who would later face Kreider as an opponent with the Tampa Bay Lightning. “It’s straight-line speed. It’s not east-to-west speed or anything like that. The kind of speed when you’re on the ice against him, it’s almost intimidating the power he has coming at you.”
But as “The Talent Code” proffers, there are other aspects to Kreider’s game that weren’t inherent. Things he has taught himself through the years.
“When I first played with him, he wasn’t known for being a net-front presence guy who tipped the puck or anything like that. I think he’s kind of evolved,” Callahan said. “He realized with his strength and his size that if he goes to that area he could do damage.”
Rangers goalie Jonathan Quick has known Kreider for a while, having skated and trained with him during the summer. But he’s seeing a different side of Kreider as a teammate, having previously been acquainted with his back while Kreider was planted in front of the crease.
“It’s difficult to play against him because he’s not trying to do one thing every time. He has different things he could do; you’re trying to figure out which one he is going to do,” Quick explained. “He could score on tips, he could score on screens, he could score dropping off with the chop. He’s as good as there is in front of the net.”
True to form, Kreider’s natural hat trick in Game 6 against Carolina totaled just 18 feet in distance for the three goals.
The combination of speed and immovability in front of the net makes Kreider a unique talent in today’s NHL.
“What makes him special is his speed and his size. I think he’s one of the true power forwards that are left in the league,” Callahan said. “He’s like an old-school power forward where he’s fast, he’s big and strong.”
The NHL has seen elite players add to their games as they age. Steve Yzerman went from being an offensive dynamo to a Selke Trophy-winning, two-way player. Jaromir Jagr went from skating through defensemen with Connor McDavid-like precision to more of a power forward later in his career. Callahan said it takes a special player to augment what they already do with new tricks.
“I think there’s a lot of guys that are set in their ways, right? That had success as they were younger and they get stubborn. They feel like that’s the way they have to produce,” he said. “Kreider realized that with his size and his strength that if he gets to that front of the net, he’s going to get a lot of opportunities if he goes to those dirty areas, he is going to get a lot of opportunities. You don’t see that often, guys adding that extra element to their game at the pro level.”
But one of the biggest lessons Kreider has learned through his career is when to rise to the occasion, said his coach.
“He’s learned that in the biggest moments, some guys really step up and they’re able to deliver what can make a hockey game go your way. He’s one of those guys,” Laviolette said.
Just don’t ask Kreider if he savors those moments.
2:01
E:60: ‘No Easy Victories – The 1994 New York Rangers’ trailer
Premiering June 4 at 9 p.m. ET on ESPN and ESPN Plus, relive the journey of the Rangers’ chase for the Stanley Cup in 1994.
KREIDER SAT IN HIS dressing room stall at the Rangers’ practice facility near Tarrytown. He was a few days removed from Game 6 in Raleigh, and a few days before facing the Panthers in the conference finals.
Did he think about the enormity of that moment against the Hurricanes during the break?
“You turn the page,” he said.
What about immediately after Game 6? Did he savor it even a little bit?
Kreider pretended to hold an open book in his left hand, then pretended to turn a large page from one side to another with his right hand, drawing laughter from the assembled media.
“I mean, we’re in the middle of a playoff run. Got a ways to go. We’ve got to prepare for our first game [against Florida],” he said.
Linemate Jack Roslovic, whom the Rangers acquired at the trade deadline from Columbus, has come to know this dichotomy of Chris Kreider: the dry humor blended with stoic focus on the task at hand.
“Just an awesome human,” he said. “He’s very light, but very serious.”
Does Kreider typically strike the balance well behind the scenes?
“Most of the time. Except for when he’s having a bad day,” Roslovic said.
The days on the ice have been mostly good for Kreider over the past few seasons. He had 10 postseason goals in the Rangers’ run to the Eastern Conference finals in 2022. In last year’s disappointing seven-game loss to the New Jersey Devils, Kreider had six goals. His hat trick against the Hurricanes gives him seven goals in 10 games in the 2024 playoffs.
In the regular season, Kreider is seventh among all NHL players in goals scored over the past three seasons (127), including a career-high 52 tallies in 2021-22. This season, he passed Adam Graves (280) on the Rangers’ all-time goal-scoring list, leaving him behind only Rod Gilbert (406) and Jean Ratelle (336).
“It’s cool, especially for an organization like the Rangers, an Original Six team, all the legends, all the names, big names, who have played here and he’s getting up there with those records,” said Mika Zibanejad, who has been Kreider’s friend and frequent linemate since the Rangers acquired him in 2016. “Just the fact that he’s been here his whole career and has been able to do what he’s done is impressive.”
Gilbert’s No. 7 and Ratelle’s No. 19 hang from the rafters at Madison Square Garden. So does No. 11, for both Vic Hadfield and Messier, the latter of whom believes Kreider’s longevity and productivity with the Rangers could result in his No. 20 joining those legends in the Garden ceiling.
“One of the great things about Chris is that he was drafted by the Rangers and he’s played his whole career there,” Messier said. “You think about Brian Leetch and Mike Richter, the players that were drafted and played their entire careers there. … Chris came in, got out of college and really carved out a niche for himself with the Rangers. He’s turned into a bona fide star.”
Kreider could end up with his name on a banner in the MSG rafters one day. But more important for him at the moment is being eight wins away from helping this Rangers team earn its own banner inside the Garden and a place in history.
“When you go to Madison Square Garden, you see our ’94 championship banner hanging there. That will never be taken down,” Messier said. “To have a banner raised above the biggest stage in New York City, maybe the biggest cathedral in sports, is pretty powerful.”
That’s the legacy Chris Kreider is creating, goal after goal, moment after moment for the Rangers.
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Greg Wyshynski
The Winnipeg Jets defended star goaltender Connor Hellebuyck after another disastrous performance on the road, a 5-2 loss Friday night in which the St. Louis Blues forced Game 7 in their Stanley Cup Playoff opening-round series.
Hellebuyck was pulled after the second period in favor of backup Eric Comrie, the third straight game in St. Louis that he failed to finish. Hellebuyck surrendered five goals on 23 shots, including four goals on eight shots during a 5-minute, 23-second stretch in the second period that cost the Jets the game.
As has become tradition in this series, Blues fans mockingly chanted, “We want Connor!” after Hellebuyck left the game and the Jets’ bench.
“This isn’t about Connor,” Winnipeg coach Scott Arniel said. “Tonight was not about Connor. Tonight, we imploded in front of him. Now, it’s a one-game showdown. It’s our goalie against their goalie, our best players against their best, our grinders against theirs. I have a lot of confidence in our [entire] group — not just Helly.”
Hellebuyck won the Vezina Trophy last season as the NHL’s top goaltender, as voted on by the league’s general managers. He also won the award in 2019-20 and is the favorite to win it for a third time this season. Hellebuyck is also a finalist for the 2024-25 Hart Trophy, awarded to the NHL’s most valuable player. He was the starting goaltender for Team USA at the 4 Nations Face-Off tournament in February and was expected to do the same for the U.S. in next year’s Winter Olympics in Italy.
But his recent performances in the Stanley Cup playoffs have been the antithesis of that success.
Over the past three postseasons, two of which the Jets lost in the first round in just five games, Hellebuyck is 5-11 with an .860 save percentage.
Hellebuyck failed to finish any of the three games played in St. Louis during the series. He was pulled with 9:28 left in regulation in Game 3, having given up six goals on 25 shots. In Game 4, Hellebuyck was pulled 2:01 into the third period after surrendering five goals on 18 shots. Hellebuyck has allowed four or more goals in seven straight road playoff games, tying the second-longest streak in Stanley Cup playoff history
At home against the Blues in this series, it has been a different story, if not necessarily a great one: Hellebuyck is 3-0 in Winnipeg, with an .879 save percentage and a 2.33 goals-against average.
His home numbers in the regular season: 27-3-3 with a .938 save percentage and a 1.63 goals-against average in 33 games. His road numbers: 20-9-0 with a .911 save percentage and a 2.43 goals-against average. Hellebuyck was not pulled in his 63 appearances in the regular season.
Even with Hellebuyck’s multiple seasons of playoff struggles, his team exonerated him from blame for the Game 6 loss.
“I don’t need to talk about Bucky,” said forward Nikolaj Ehlers, who returned to the lineup for the first time since April 12 after a foot injury. “He’s been unbelievable for us all year. He’s continued to do that. We’ve got to be better.”
Said forward Cole Perfetti, who had a goal in Game 6: “Things got carried away. We lost our game for four or five minutes. They got a couple pucks through, and they found the back of the net. It’s frustrating. Happened a couple of times now this series where we fell asleep and they jumped on us.”
Perfetti said the Jets have rebounded from losses like this — one reason their confidence isn’t shaken ahead of Sunday’s Game 7.
“We had a loss like that in Game 4 [in St. Louis],” he said. “We went home and got the job done in Game 5. We’ve got the home ice. We’ve got the fans behind us and our barn rocking.”
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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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