‘Sometimes you have to protect yourself’: Why Josh Hader took a stand until he got a long-term deal
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Buster Olney, ESPN Senior Writer
ON APRIL 30, with the Houston Astros tied 8-8 with the Cleveland Guardians in the ninth inning, Josh Hader emerged from the bullpen to pitch. This wasn’t unusual — Hader, whom the Astros signed to a five-year deal in January, has been a late-inning reliever for the Astros, San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers since he took over the closer role in Milwaukee in 2019.
What was unusual was what happened in the next inning: Hader came back out. Despite giving up a double to David Fry, he got out of the 10th inning with two strikeouts and a fly ball, and the Astros won on a two-run walk-off homer in the bottom of the inning.
It was Hader’s first two-inning appearance since Sept. 7, 2019.
That gap was no accident. Hader, one of the greatest relievers of his era, had spent the previous four years working under unprecedented, self-imposed usage rules to keep himself healthy. Together with his agent, Jeff Berry, Hader became the first known relief pitcher to place such restrictions on himself.
“From the outside looking in, some people would say it’s selfish; some people feel like players should do what they’re told,” Hader said. “But if I get hurt, I’m not able to work. Sometimes you have to protect yourself.”
That remained Hader’s stance until a team was willing to make him a long-term commitment, a process that extended until late January, when the Astros signed Hader to a five-year, $95 million deal. It is the first multiyear deal of Hader’s career.
Now that his professional future is settled, Hader and Berry are telling the backstory of Hader’s contractual machinations in his first six-plus years in the majors — including an arbitration hearing against the Brewers that compelled Hader and Berry to set the usage rules.
Hader and Berry see the reliever’s story as a pertinent example of an almost existential problem for baseball: teams striving to suppress salary doled out to some of their best employees — some of their best players, like Hader — in an industry worth tens of billions.
Hader has struck out 42% of the 1,578 batters he has faced in the big leagues, and batters have hit .159 against him in his career, with a .293 slugging percentage. Since his debut in 2017, no relief pitcher has more fWAR than Hader’s 11.7. All of this data reinforces what his former manager, Craig Counsell, said about him: Hader is among the greatest relievers in baseball history.
“He’s been a historic reliever in our game,” Counsell said in an interview in late March. “He’s had just one blip in his career” — in 2022, he had a two-month stint when he gave up 25 runs in 19 appearances — “but other than that, there’s never been anybody better.”
And yet Hader lost his arbitration hearing in 2019 and went unsigned for months this winter, in what Berry believes is a lack of acknowledgment of his importance to a roster. It’s a well-known pressure point for relievers and even starters. Last year, Tampa Bay Rays reliever Ryan Thompson posted about his issues with the arbitration process; he made $1 million in 2023 after asking for $1.2 million. Now-Baltimore Orioles ace Corbin Burnes lost his hearing and earned $10 million rather than $10.75 million and said his hearing “definitely hurt” his relationship with the Brewers.
According to multiple agents interviewed for this story, the industry’s view of relievers has made them more and more disposable: Teams believe relievers’ volatility means it makes more sense to cycle through a high volume of bullpen arms with one-year obligations rather than committing to multiyear contracts. One agent pointed to a parallel to how NFL teams view running backs.
”This efficiency model has taken over a lot of the industry,” Berry said, “and it’s bonkers.”
In 2013, the 30 teams across MLB used 513 relievers. Last season, 651 pitched in major league games — an increase of more than 25% over a decade, with many at or close to minimum wage. That this all comes at a time when arm injuries are ever more prevalent only exacerbates the problem.
Through the course of reporting this story, players, agents and members of multiple front offices agreed with Hader and Berry’s larger point.
“The system is broken,” one team staffer said. “We need to find a way to make it better.”
HADER WAS A 19th-round draft pick of the Baltimore Orioles in 2012, and the following year, he was traded to the Houston Astros — where David Stearns was assistant general manager — in a deal for pitcher Bud Norris. Two years later, Hader was traded to the Brewers in the summer of 2015 — where Stearns inherited the left-hander again when he was hired as general manager that September.
Hader made his major league debut on June 10, 2017, and right away, he became a unique weapon out of the bullpen of then-Brewers manager Craig Counsell. Counsell lined him up against left-handed hitters but also deployed him for multiple innings in high-leverage situations before the ninth inning. Of the 35 games that Hader pitched in his rookie year, he generated four or more outs in 16 of them. Corey Knebel was the Brewers’ closer and an All-Star that season; Hader did not register a single save.
Hader was just as good in 2018, when he pitched 81⅓ innings, the sixth-most innings by any reliever, over 55 games. Hader got 12 saves in 2018, and then in 2019, he continued to pitch as the Brewers’ closer, picking up 37 saves; he worked more than three outs in 15 of those 37 saves. The Brewers were using him like a Swiss Army knife, Berry recalled, and the lefty was thriving.
The following winter, Hader was eligible for salary arbitration for the first time. What he had done on the mound was largely unprecedented, but Berry, needing a comparable performance in history, cited Jonathan Papelbon’s one-year, $6.25 million deal as a closer with the Boston Red Sox in 2009. Berry asked for $6.4 million in arbitration for Hader. The Brewers offered $4.1 million.
The day before the hearing, Stearns and Berry spoke, and Stearns made a two-year offer over speakerphone. Though Berry doesn’t remember the exact proposal, he said it did not reflect Hader’s standing as an elite reliever.
“It seems that you want to go to a hearing,” Stearns said, according to Berry. (Stearns — now the head of baseball operations for the Mets — said in a recent phone interview that he would not comment on conversations he had with Berry or Hader.) Berry recalled that Stearns, who had once worked in Major League Baseball’s central office, pitched a warning. “I’ve seen the case,” Stearns said, “and it’s going to be bad.”
Berry knew that meant MLB’s case would be based on Hader’s low volume of saves — the primary currency for relievers in free agency — in his first 2½ seasons. Stearns also acknowledged that the lawyers presenting the case for the Brewers would introduce offensive statements that Hader posted on social media as a teenager, years before he signed professionally (a tactic front offices had used in contentious arbitration hearings before).
To Berry, this was mind-boggling — a team minimizing and obscuring the performance of one of its own players, and an example of how counterproductive the arbitration structure was for relievers. Berry consulted with Hader before relaying a message to Stearns: “Bring up anything you want.” Stearns and the Brewers knew better than anyone, Berry thought, just how dominant Hader had been. Nothing could change that.
When the arbitration hearing began, Berry made his case, pointing to Hader’s historic performance. The lawyers working on behalf of the Brewers and MLB’s labor relations department — which typically drives arbitration recommendations to the teams, with the team carrying the right to act on its own — focused on the saves, in spite of how Milwaukee deployed Hader.
Berry recalled Patrick Houlihan, the executive vice president of Major League Baseball labor relations, opening his argument by saying that Berry and Hader were trying to change 40 years of precedent, referring to the importance of saves in similar hearings. True or not, Berry felt it a disingenuous argument, given how the Brewers had deployed Hader.
“What I heard in that room was how they valued relievers,” Hader recalled, “and it was 100% based on saves.”
Even so, when a union lawyer called Berry to tell him that Hader had lost, he was shocked. When he spoke with Stearns for the first time after the decision, Berry said Stern’s response seemed to be: Sorry, that’s the system. Berry remembers Stearns’ kicker: “He’ll make his money in free agency.”
Stearns assured Hader that it wouldn’t affect their relationship. “We value you as one of the best pitchers in the organization,” Hader remembered him saying.
An MLB spokesperson declined comment on the specifics of Hader’s rules, pointing to a statement issued by management last year about the arbitration process: “During the last round of bargaining, MLB proposed replacing salary arbitration with a formulaic approach that would have paid more money to arbitration-eligible players in aggregate. That proposal was rejected. We continue to believe the salary arbitration system creates unnecessary acrimony between the clubs and players and wastes an enormous amount of time and money. We would welcome the opportunity to discuss changes to the system.”
BERRY SPENT DAYS stewing over management’s handling of Hader’s arbitration.
Before resigning from CAA in March, Berry was a player representative for 26 years, and more than once he had called for change in baseball’s system. When Buster Posey, one of his clients, suffered a shattered ankle in a home plate collision in 2011, Berry campaigned for rules about home plate collisions, which he says earned angry calls from both players’ association and Major League Baseball officials; that rule was changed. In 2018, Berry wrote a long memo to players advocating for change on arbitration, salary structure and roster manipulation, which led to a tense call with commissioner Rob Manfred. Berry now says he served as a source of a story about how MLB officials award a championship belt for success in navigating the arbitration season.
So after mulling over Hader’s treatment, he had an idea.
“My first thought was: ‘You can’t have it both ways,'” Berry recalled. “You can’t say he’s the best and use him any way you want, and then not pay him like the best. You can’t throw up your hands and say, ‘That’s the way it is.'”
He presented his idea to Hader while the two played a round of golf: If the Brewers were going to fight the All-Star over his salary, then they would design rules to protect him. Berry had never heard of another pitcher dictating his own usage, but he also had never had a pitcher used as Hader had been. Berry proposed three new rules for Hader to present to the front office: He would not pitch more than two days in a row; he would not pitch more than three outs; he would pitch only in a save situation or when the score was tied.
Hader quickly agreed. Hader and Berry had watched teams use elite relievers over and over until they broke — like Dellin Betances of the Yankees, who was deployed in a similar high-leverage role. Betances made the All-Star team for four straight seasons (2014-2017) before suffering injuries that derailed his career at age 31.
“If they don’t see what I do as valuable,” Hader said, “and I can’t get the value I’m worth, then why would I put myself in jeopardy to get hurt — and not have a job? If I get injured, a team isn’t going to sign me to a long-term deal, because I wouldn’t be able to pitch and I’d have no value to them. I was just following what they told me was valuable.”
Berry called Stearns to inform him of the pitcher’s personal rules, and he remembers Stearns reacting in disbelief. “You can’t tell us how to use our player,” Stearns said, according to Berry. But Stearns’ only real recourse, Berry knew, was to suspend Hader — and provoke a public confrontation with one of his best players. Berry said that Stearns was initially skeptical about Hader’s rules and whether having those restrictions would become unworkable over a full season.
“This was about doing what was right for Josh Hader,” said Berry, who said his sense was that Stearns never took the pitcher’s stance personally. “[Stearns] understood the position I was taking, even if he didn’t agree with it.” When Stearns was asked for his memory of first hearing about the Hader rules, he wouldn’t comment.
The pitcher met with Stearns and Counsell in the manager’s office at the Brewers’ spring training site to discuss the rules for how he would be used, and he believed Counsell processed them with respect for his feelings. As a player, Counsell had been part of the union’s executive committee, and as a manager, he has a reputation for being an excellent communicator. In a recent interview, Counsell, now in his first season as manager of the Chicago Cubs, recalled that conversation with Hader.
“It’s hard to disagree with it,” Counsell said. “I think Josh had worked really hard up to that point, and done whatever the team had asked him to do. More than anything, Josh was trying to stay healthy. … How can I not agree with that? Especially after what he had done.”
With Hader’s rules in place, Counsell managed the closer over the next 2½ years. During the regular season, he did not find the situation onerous. “He was available; he pushed himself to be available,” Counsell said. “I didn’t feel restricted by him not being available.”
Stearns wouldn’t talk about the specifics of the meeting with Hader but said that afterward, “Josh did a really good job with us communicating what his preferences are. … Throughout his time in Milwaukee, the goal was to always use him in the highest leverage point.
“With the open communication and the back-and-forth with Josh, I think it allowed Josh to perform at a high level, and along the way, the Brewers won a lot of games.”
AFTER THAT MEETING, Hader’s usage shifted dramatically. In the COVID-shortened 2020 season, Hader got four (or more) outs in only one of his 21 appearances, and he never pitched more than two consecutive days. During the 2021 season, Hader pitched on three consecutive days April 29-May 1, and then again June 11-13 and Sept. 24-26. He never had an appearance of more than three outs. Early in 2022, Hader got saves on both ends of a doubleheader.
Midway through the 2022 season, Hader was traded to the Padres, who were in the midst of their best season in decades. During trade negotiations, he and Berry asked that his usage guidelines remain intact. In a season and a half in San Diego, Hader recorded 40 saves; he made his fifth All-Star Game and closed five games in the 2022 playoffs without giving up a run. In all, since 2021, the lefty had racked up 103 saves and three more All-Star appearances, averaging 14.6 strikeouts per nine innings.
Meanwhile, the Padres were among the most aggressive teams in pursuing stars, trading for Yu Darvish and Juan Soto, chasing after Trea Turner and Aaron Judge as free agents and signing Xander Bogaerts. Joe Musgrove and Jake Cronenworth signed extensions with the team. But the Padres never advanced talks on a long-term deal with Hader, according to Berry. “They knew we were open to it,” Berry said. “The Padres could’ve signed him.”
But the Padres didn’t engage, and when Hader reached free agency in fall 2023, no one else came running either.
“There weren’t many calls,” Berry said.
He reached out to the Texas Rangers, who were coming off a World Series title and, on paper, seemed to be an excellent fit for Hader. But Berry heard the same from general manager Chris Young that other agents did: Because of the Rangers’ uncertainty over their television deal, they didn’t have spending flexibility. Berry remembers citing the Rangers’ own success with Corey Seager and Marcus Semien as an argument to pursue Hader. “You’ve proven the impact that star players can have,” he said to Young.
The Los Angeles Dodgers checked in, the New York Yankees checked in, other teams checked in. Team doctors reviewed his medical records, which sources from multiple front offices described as “very unusual” because they didn’t reflect the wear and tear normally seen for a reliever with as many years of service as Hader. But no offers. Berry was flummoxed.
Two executives with teams in contact with Berry believed the price point for Hader was out of their range because Berry told them that Hader should get offers that reflected his standing as the best reliever in baseball. To those executives, this meant that Berry would not settle for less than Edwin Diaz‘s record-setting five-year, $102 million deal with the Mets.
But Berry said he did not ask for a specific amount; rather, he felt he invited offers. And got none in November, or December, or in the first weeks of January. For 2½ months, nobody made a proposal for arguably the most dominant left-handed reliever ever.
“That is completely illogical behavior,” Berry said. “In a business built on competition, it doesn’t make any sense.”
Then Astros reliever Kendall Graveman underwent shoulder surgery in mid-January.
Houston, which lost relievers Hector Neris, Phil Maton and Ryne Stanek to free agency this winter, had been the first team to check in on Hader in the fall, and reached out again after Graveman’s injury. This time, Astros GM Dana Brown told Berry he was ready to be aggressive. “We love this guy,” Brown told Berry. “We’ve done our homework.”
The deal — five years, $95 million — came together quickly. In the end, it was the largest reliever contract ever in terms of present-day value (Diaz’s deal included $26.5 million of deferred money). For Hader, it was also a homecoming, a decade after he won a California League title with Houston’s High-A team in 2014.
His long journey to a multiyear commitment from his employer was finally over. And with the contract signed, Berry asked Hader how he could be used by the Astros.
“Any way they want,” Hader said. “They made a commitment to me, and I’ll make a commitment to them.”
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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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