Why Tennessee football is so low in ESPN FPI…and why it’s flawed

Vol Twitter was rightfully in an uproar this week after ESPN’s 2022 preseason Football Power Index had Tennessee football outside of the top 25. Rocky Top is down at No. 28, while nine SEC teams six teams they face next year came in ahead of them.

It made sense for the Alabama Crimson Tide and Georgia Bulldogs to be in the top five. However, the Pittsburgh Panthers at No. 9, the LSU Tigers at No. 11, the Kentucky Wildcats and No. 21 and the Florida Gators at No. 25 were all alarming. All of those teams play the Vols this year.

You’d think Pitt was the only one of those teams that would be ahead of Tennessee football. Given the fact that the FPI doesn’t speak to any bias and is purely analytical, this could be a cause for concern among Vol fans entering Josh Heupel’s second year. It shouldn’t be.

The big sticking point for Vol fans are Florida and LSU being ahead of him. A 2016 breakdown of what goes into the FPI shows that while past performance, recruiting, returning talent and coaching tenure are all factors and should all favor the Vols, past performance doesn’t just mean last year.

For some reason, the FPI judges the teams’ performances over the past three years when breaking down their success. It doesn’t take into account transfer portal additions either. This is the issue. Those two things will skew the ratings heavily toward Florida and LSU.

Meanwhile, they will skew against the Vols. After all, UT went 3-7 in 2020 and 8-5 in 2019. If you add 2018, they went 5-7. However, those years all happened under Jeremy Pruitt. Now, they have a new head coach, a new scheme, and tons of new starters.

Remember how last year, all the expectations worked against the Vols because of all the players they lost to transfers? Well, the FPI is somehow holding their failures with those players, who are now gone, against them.

Now let’s look at LSU and Florida. Despite Tennessee football being one game better than both last year, Florida had gone to three straight New Years Six bowls before then. LSU had a top 10 finish in 2018 and maybe the best team ever in 2019, going 15-0 and winning the national title.

That gigantic disparity alone pushes those two ahead of the Vols, even with LSU going 5-5 in 2020, and honestly, it makes no sense. None of the head coaches from 2018 to 2020 are with their respective teams among those three schools anymore.

UT not only was better last year, but they have more returning talent, and they should win the coaching tenure edge. However, there’s another flaw. Coaching tenure is a tiebreaker, but it’s not valued the way it should be.

Something like that is why the Vols would be below a Kentucky, who is entering its 10th year under Mark Stoops, was better by three games last year despite losing to the Vols and has had as good as or a better record than UT each of the past five years. That makes sense.

Such a metric also explains Pitt being so high under Pat Narduzzi. They did just win the ACC and technically return the most talent in their division. However, the FPI doesn’t quantify the value of individual losses, and a departure like quarterback Kenny Pickett is worth three starters lost.

Now, you could mention the recruiting trail and lay claim to LSU and Florida doing better on that front, but it doesn’t hold water for 2022. Rocky Top’s class was basically identical to theirs, whose ranking was best depends on which ratings service you value. UT won on Rivals.

You could maybe make a case for previous recruiting classes, but once they are already in the system, shouldn’t on-field performance take precedent at that point? Also, if you do that, should you ignore the players the Vols added in the transfer portal like Hendon Hooker?

All of this explains why Tennessee football is being undervalued in the ESPN FPI. Analytics can be flawed for a reason, and this one certainly is. Last year’s FPI had them losing to both the Missouri Tigers and Kentucky Wildcats. They were picked to go 9-3 in 2019. Don’t ignore it, but take it with a grain of salt.