Kaplan’s playoff buzz: What’s up with Wyatt Johnston, Matt Rempe and Sergei Bobrovsky
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Emily Kaplan, ESPN
The Stanley Cup playoffs have been phenomenal, and we’re only halfway through. Breakout stars have emerged, controversies have broiled and the hockey itself has been as entertaining as ever.
After a month of traveling, here are some of the biggest stories I’ve seen developing behind the scenes.
FIRST OFF, BUSINESS is good. Four of the teams in the final eight — the New York Rangers, Boston Bruins, Vancouver Canucks and Edmonton Oilers, in that order — ranked in the top 10 in league revenue for the 2022-23 season. Television ratings have hit record highs, up 9% from last year, including a 12% jump in the second round.
This season’s “hockey related revenue” figures haven’t been released by the NHL and NHL Players Association yet, but expect a big jump for Florida. The Panthers were a bottom-10 team but have experienced serious growth since their trip to the 2023 Stanley Cup Final. Winning, especially in the entertainment-rich South Florida market, helps immensely. The Panthers averaged 18,640 per game during the regular season, up 11.7% from 2022-23 — the best year-over-year percentage increase in the league. Florida also sold out every home game in the playoffs so far. It has had standing-room-only options, which it is exploring expanding.
This is great news for everyone, including the players, who have had 6% of their salaries withheld for escrow and should see a decent chunk returned. There will be a further uptick in revenues next year thanks to the move of the Arizona franchise to Utah.
DURING THE PANDEMIC, we often wondered about the lasting effects of that strange and uncertain time. For two young stars on the Stars — Wyatt Johnston and Thomas Harley — the disruption came during peak development years. Both players are strong examples of making the most of situations and coming out of them stronger.
For Johnston, the pandemic hit during his draft year. His Ontario Hockey League season was canceled. His only competitive hockey for the year was seven games at the U18 world championships. Living at home with his parents in the Toronto area, regulations were strict.
“Toronto had some city rinks that you could sometimes go to, but a lot of them were no sticks. So me and my buddy would show up at 6 a.m. and just skate for a while because that was the only ice we could get. No shinny was allowed,” Johnston said. “There was a park near my house, and my dad and a lot of the dads helped build a rink there. We made a little rink in my back driveway that I’d rollerblade on, and just work on stick skills.”
Now 21, he found a positive spin.
“I think it almost helped me,” he said. “Even though I wasn’t playing in games, I was working on my skills, which helped with stickhandling and I could work on specific things. Also, the first year in the O, I was small and skinny. So I had a lot of time to work on getting bigger and stronger — I’m not there yet, but I made strides. I went from 160 [pounds] to 175ish that year. We bought a barbell and a rack setup for the garage. It was dark and not a big area. It was pretty cold, I’d wear gloves and have a space heater. Sometimes my gym would be open, sometimes it would be closed. But I just found ways to work.”
Harley, meanwhile, spent an exorbitant amount of time living out of hotels before becoming an NHL regular. That included five different quarantines in one year, between the world junior bubble, Stanley Cup playoff bubble and training camps. Harley spent the 2021-22 season shuttling between the AHL and NHL, where he lived out of hotels, checking out when the team was on the road — only to check in to another hotel.
Harley has emerged as one of the Stars’ most trusted defensemen, trailing only Miro Heiskanen in ice time. His success on the ice is reflected in his personality: calm and composed. The Stars have been praised for their patience in letting Harley develop, working on his defensive game in the minors, but Harley deserves credit for his patience, too.
EVERYONE I’VE TALKED to — from players and coaches to league office employees — agreed that the officiating hasn’t been perfect. But it never is. The gripes run the gambit, especially if calls (or non-calls) affected their team. I’ve canvassed players across several teams, and their complaints are far more muted than the echo chamber of social media. Commissioner Gary Bettman and the league office have repeatedly reminded teams not to air grievances publicly. The NHL doesn’t believe it’s a productive approach. But everyone has a boiling point — see Bruins GM Don Sweeney holding a news conference in the middle of Round 2.
The common theme of most complaints: the need for transparency and consistency. One coach commented to our broadcast crew that his players were getting kicked out of faceoff circles by linesmen and never got explanations for why.
Goaltending interference challenges have been the most unpredictable, though most are blaming the Toronto-based situation room.
Sweeney’s big pitch? “We should not be asking the coach after the game what they feel about the officiating and what happens,” the Bruins GM said. “Those questions should either be directed at the supervisor of officials, supervisor of the series and/or the officials. You want full access and transparency? Then put the officials in front of the microphone to answer the question.”
I don’t get the sense there’s much appetite from the league’s perspective to make that change. ESPN rules analyst Dave Jackson doesn’t think there will ever be a time when the league puts referees in a news conference setting, but he thinks a good compromise would be a pool reporter. I just haven’t heard much momentum from the league to institute that.
SOMETHING NEW THIS season seems to be an embellishment problem. There have been eight embellishment calls through the first two rounds — the most in a single postseason in a decade. And remember, we’re only halfway through. There’s always an uptick in flopping in the playoffs, with players desperately looking for an edge, but this year feels particularly bad.
Several suggestions have floated around on how to curb it. Several people I talked to — players and coaches — echoed what Elliotte Friedman said on Sportsnet this weekend: Refs should penalize only the flop, not the initial offense. Another player on one of the current playoff teams suggested, “Or just double-minor the dive. Because it’s embarrassing what’s going on right now. We’re starting to look like soccer.”
I’VE COVERED MULTIPLE series the first two rounds, and nobody is practicing as hard as the Rangers. Typically teams opt for rest in the postseason, and maintenance days are extremely common. Not for New York, which also has had the benefit of finishing its first two rounds early, giving the team five full days off.
But when the Rangers are on the ice, they work. Practices have a midseason intensity, including battle drills. Even guys I know are banged up are going all out. Several players in exit meetings last year expressed a desire to be coached harder, and that’s the culture coach Peter Laviolette instilled when taking the job this year.
“We’ve preached on being competitive, and it’s not something you can turn off then turn on when you want to, you have to practice it,” defenseman Braden Schneider told me. “It works for us. It’s something that was hard to get used to at the start of the year, but now it’s second nature. I enjoy it because it keeps you in that mode of playing hard.”
MATT REMPE MIGHT have the biggest ratio of impact versus ice time in the league. We might not see the Rangers rookie in many road games, as last change allows opponents to maximize matchups against him. In the regular season, Rempe averaged 6:20 of ice time at home and just 4:20 on the road, and he has played in only two road games all playoffs. But at Madison Square Garden, the crowd erupts every time Rempe jumps over the boards, an undeniable energy swing for the Rangers.
When I talked to Rempe last week, he praised the communication he has received from Laviolette and his staff. The rookie knows his game is built on physicality and emotion, but he needs to stay in control to stay on the ice.
“It’s really tough,” Rempe said. “I get my instructions every game of what I’m supposed to do. Sometimes you’re mad, sometimes you want to let emotions take over, but you always have to put the team first. So it’s just learning the game inside the game. I’m still trying to figure it out to be honest with you, but I have a lot of people helping me.”
The hardest moment for Rempe so far in the playoffs was turning down a fight with Capitals bruiser Tom Wilson in Game 3 of the first round.
“I really wanted to do it. That was a guy I looked up to, and that goes against me — I don’t ever want to turn down a fight,” Rempe said. “But we were up in the series, we couldn’t give them anything to hold on to or potentially give them momentum. It was really hard to say no. I still think about it. But it’s all about the team.”
THE PANTHERS HAVE developed a reputation as a team that plays on the edge through physicality. Throughout the regular season, perhaps no team had more scuffles after whistles than the Panthers.
People around the organization say the narrative is overblown. They’ve honed in on discipline through the playoffs. Taped to the bottom of the Panthers bench are photos and names of the officials; that’s not uncommon, I’ve seen it for several teams. But under their names are the letters “STFU,” a reminder not to complain to the officials and focus on the Panthers’ own game.
“The stuff after the whistles, we can’t do that,” Aaron Ekblad told me ahead of Game 1 against the Rangers. “Discipline is so, so important to us. Obviously our penalty kill isn’t as good as it was this year, so when we find yourself in those situations where you want to punch a guy in the face, you have to hold back. Hopefully that swings the jump ball back in our favor when it comes to penalties.”
THE RENAISSANCE OF Sergei Bobrovsky has been incredible to watch. Bobrovsky, a two-time Vezina Trophy winner, signed a massive seven-year, $70 million deal in 2019, and the early returns were just OK. Now, in his age 35 season, he has been as important to the Panthers’ success as any player on the roster. People around the team credit the resurgence to a perfect combination of special athlete and special coaching. Bobrovsky’s work ethic is second to none.
The Panthers also have more resources for goaltending coaches than any other team. Their goaltending excellence department includes Roberto Luongo; his brother Leo Luongo; Francois Allaire, who worked with Patrick Roy back in the day; and Rob Tallas, who has survived four general managers and nine coaches over his tenure in Florida. That’s how good he is.
There are plenty of examples of goalies having career years under that system, with Bobrovsky’s backup Anthony Stolarz being the latest. I asked one of Tallas’ former goaltenders what makes him so great. He said: When he’s trying to teach you something, he doesn’t tell you, he creates drills where you discover the answer yourself.
THE STARS HAVE reached the Western Conference finals playing essentially five defensemen. Nils Lundkvist is averaging 4:28 a game, and he took just three shifts in the Game 6 double overtime win against Colorado. Coach Peter DeBoer explained the strategy: “I don’t think there is a rule that you have to play six D even minutes or anything like that. Just depends on the situation.”
When I asked further, DeBoer said that three of his defensemen — Heiskanen, Harley and Chris Tanev — are such good skaters, they don’t feel like the minutes they are playing are as hard as they are for some others. Jani Hakanpaa would draw into the lineup if healthy, but he hasn’t played since mid-March (lower body injury). Hakanpaa has begun skating on his own this week and just began traveling with the team.
SO MUCH IS made about which teams make splashes at the trade deadline. But which of those teams want or are able to keep those players — especially on expiring contracts — as part of their future plans?
Pat Maroon made it clear at Boston’s exit interviews that he wants to return. Coach Jim Montgomery repeatedly told us that Maroon’s intangibles as a leader could not be overstated. But the Bruins have a lot of offseason business to attend to, chiefly re-signing Jeremy Swayman to a big new contract and likely finding a trade home for fellow goaltender Linus Ullmark.
Boston will have a lot of cap space, and many people around the league have hinted the Bruins are targeting Elias Lindholm, for whom they weren’t willing to give up enough assets at the deadline, leading him to Vancouver. The Canucks will check in, but he will be costly and they have plenty of tough decisions.
In a year when players are blocking more shots than ever, nobody is doing it like Tanev, who leads the league with 56 in the postseason through 13 games. He has been a perfect fit in Dallas but will get a ton of love on the open market. He probably priced himself out from some suitors during this playoff run.
Speaking of seamless fits, Jake Guentzel was everything Carolina wanted in a reliable scorer and total playoff gamer. Both sides seem amenable to getting something done. The winger is super tough. He broke some ribs and tore his oblique in February while playing for the Penguins, and I’m told he wanted to play through it. Guentzel’s rationale: He had played through similar injuries before.
He pushed back when GM Kyle Dubas wanted to put him on long-term injured reserve. That’s what ultimately happened, though. In that time, the Penguins fell out of the playoff race, which led to Guentzel being traded. That time off, though, allowed Guentzel to rest up and be his best self for the Canes this spring.
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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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