Syracuse Football: Orange Ranked 76th in ESPN's 2015 Preseason Football Power Index (FPI)

The ESPN Football Power Index (FPI) is out for the 2015 preseason. As you may recall, the FPI is the Worldwide Leader's attempt at advanced statistics à la the old BCS rankings and Bill Connelly's S&P+ and F+ ratings. Chances are you'll see preseason updates to Bill's numbers soon (his season preview series started today, by the way), so in the meantime, we have ESPN's rankings to look at.

Syracuse is 76th. Don't bother feigning surprise.

Based on the numbers above (sorry, headers are all the way at the top), the Orange are projected to have the 91st-ranked offense, 60th-ranked defense and 100th ranked special teams unit. This is unfortunate, but again, not shocking considering Syracuse only brings back about 11 starters and last year's results weren't all that great.

For your further reference, last year's Syracuse team finished 75th, possibly assisted by the insane amount of injuries, or the tough schedule SU faced. They began the year ranked 53rd, roughly expected to finish 6-6. Obviously that did not happen, and we're all pretty sad about it.

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These are interesting to look at this far out, if only because it shows the potential for new recruits and starters to jump into the fray and succeed. There are some questionable calls in these ESPN projections (Tennessee at 14, Michigan at 28 might be a bit surprising at this juncture), but again -- these are very early and ESPN's rankings are a little less nuanced than Bill's, which should help inform you a bit more about where the Orange stack up. That number will probably be similar to this one, but at least there's more numbers behind it...

For those who want to check out where the rest of the ACC's slotted in, we've included that below:

Syracuse Football 2015: WE'RE NOT LAST.

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Anything else here? Talk amongst yourselves in the comments.