Last time we looked at Georgia’s strength of schedule per ESPN’s FPI, it was fourth.
Now? It’s second.
Breaking it down, if you toss out FCS Samford and Sun Belt Appy State (70th in FPI), the only team left on the schedule outside the top forty is Vanderbilt, and even the Commodores are a respectable 46th.
Yet somehow that feels a little disconnected from my subjective feeling about Georgia’s schedule. Part of that no doubt stems from my skepticism that the SEC East is as solid as ESPN projects.
I’ll say this, though: if FPI says Georgia is a 9-3 regular season team playing the second toughest schedule in the country, it makes you wonder what the record might turn out to be if the schedule proves to be less daunting.
Get The Picture 
UT is 30th with the same sec east schedule as UGA, Bama /LSU instead of miss st/auburn, and plays tech. I guess espn has notre dame as the next national champion to rank UGAs schedule 28 spots tougher.
LikeLiked by 1 person
2 major OOC games tends to make your schedule tougher…
LikeLike
Sounds like the whole field is pretty tightly bunched.
LikeLike
ESPN has come full circle to show that FPI is subjective a great deal more than what used to be. In fact, they have denigrated FPI to the imagination ranks instead of the mathematical ranks.
LikeLike
Agree, Senator. Our schedule doesn’t seem to even be in the Top 10, but it is all a guessing game at this point. That same guessing game will have UGA favored in all but one of those games, most likely. We out talent our schedule, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see the East more competitive top to bottom in 2017. Dawgs should go 10-2, with 9-3 being the low finish, could be even better if the offense can step it up at QB, and the OL just get in front of the defense and stop the penetration we saw last season.
2nd toughest is pretty laughable, would think most of the West teams have tougher than us, maybe all of them. How about FSU with Bama and FU on their schedule?
LikeLike
I don’t know about 2nd toughest in the nation but I have been saying all along that the UGA 2017 football schedule is a lot tougher than people on this blog have been saying. The SEC East will be better plus we get Auburn (picked by the sprtswriters to be second in the West) and Missy State (improved a lot and with the 2nd best HC in the SEC) from the other side. Then add to that ND at ND. All you guys who think the Dawgs have such an easy schedule need to look again and this time look at where the opposing teams actually are–not just where they were historically. UT has beaten the Dawgs the last 2 games. FU has won the WLOCP the last 3 times. Vandy has beaten the Dawgs 2 out of the last 4 and at Vandy is going to be a tough out. The Dawgs barely got past UK last year and Tech has beaten the Dawgs 2 out of the last 3 games. Except for the cupcakes on a game by game analysis the Dawgs are in for a serious battle almost every week. I find it difficult to believe that the Dawgs will win all of those battles.
LikeLike
I notice you didn’t mention the recent history of the Auburn series.
LikeLike
Now THAT scares me, too. Georgia and Auburn are completely flat dead even I think over the history of the series, yet Georgia won some ridiculous number of the last 10 or so games. Can you spell “regression to the mean?”
LikeLike