The numbers don't lie, but Lobo football can hope this lowly metric is wrong

Feb. 25—As spring practice enters its home stretch, how is University of New Mexico football expected to perform this upcoming season?

There are more than a couple ways to predict. But one of them predicts: Not very well.

For instance, ESPN's Bill Connelly has a metric called SP+, factoring in recent recruiting, returning production and recent history to try and project how a team will perform on a seasonal or week-to-week basis.

Initially developed in 2008 and refined since then, it's a "predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football" with a clear-cut focus on efficiency. It doesn't pretend to be the AP Top 25 or a résumé review. Nor should it be treated as such.

But there's insights to be gleaned from preseason SP+ projections, the most recent coming on Feb. 14. New Mexico was rated 132nd of 133 Football Bowl Subdivision teams with an offensive rating of 8.4 and a defensive rating of 34.3 (103/133). Only a near-decimated Kent State (133/133) was behind the Lobos, who are coming off a 2-10 season in 2022 that included an 0-8 Mountain West Conference record.

The offensive rating doesn't need much of an explanation — the offense's woes in 2022 are old news at this point and even with an improved spring practice session under new coordinator Bryant Vincent, it's impossible to factor that into the current iteration.

The defensive rating warrants some answers, though. It would appear the biggest knock here lies in the Lobos losing 51% of their defensive production (one of three main factors in how SP+ is calculated), with tackles returning or leaving weighing heavily into how that's calculated.

When asked about his team's rating, UNM coach Danny Gonzales said he felt the team had enough talent to be more competitive than the numbers showed.

"Last year on defense, we gave up 19.6 points per game," he said. "In this day and age of college football, you give up 19 points, (you will) have a lot of opportunities to win games — but not when you score 12.

"Look at (Vincent's) history. He's never led an offense that (averaged) 12 points a game. You put those two things together and we'll see what happens at the end of the season."

How does this stack up against New Mexico's schedule? See the box with this story.

Out of 11 rated teams, that's an average opponent ranking of 97.09. Take out Texas A&M and it's 105.1, with an average home opponent rank (not including Football Championship Subdivision Tennessee Tech) of 116.2 and road opponent rank of 94.

The two main takeaways:

It's fair to say the Mountain West might be in rougher shape than usual this season.

Nobody wants to play a "bad" schedule. And there's no guarantee any lesser rated teams end up even close to their SP+ ratings. Again, these are simply projections.

But for a team scratching for their first conference win since October 23, 2021 and in the majority of bowl projections sure to be on the outside looking in, a more favorable home slate with some winnable road dates should be cause for encouragement.

Lobos' 2023 opponents

With offensive/defensive SP+ ratings in parentheses. Mountain West game dates TBA.

Sept. 2 at Texas A&M (17/133)

Sept. 9 Tennessee Tech (FCS, no rating)

Sept. 16 New Mexico State (121/133)

Sept. 23 at UMass (127/133)

TBA at Boise State (68/133)

TBA at Nevada (107/133)

TBA Hawai'i (131/133)

TBA Utah State (118/133)

TBA at Wyoming (101/133)

TBA San Jose State (103/133)

TBA UNLV (108/133)

TBA at Fresno State (67/133)