Pitt may have come back and knocked off Cincinnati at Nippert Stadium over the weekend, but the ESPN Football Power Index clearly doesn’t view the victory very highly.
Pitt rose pretty high following its Week 1 win against Kent State, a 31-point drubbing at home, but a 28-27 win at Cincinnati (in which the Panthers trailed just about the entire game) dropped the Panthers back down.
Pitt has a 3.2 Football Power Index score, which is 53rd-best in college football and 11th-best in the ACC. It’s a pretty large drop from the Week 2 FPI, despite a win.
The index now predicts Pitt will finish 6-6 this season (with a 58.1% chance to hit the 6-win mark, considering the weakness of the Panthers’ schedule), and if that mark isn’t hit, the season will be considered a failure.
Pitt has a 1.1% chance to win the ACC outright, a 3.4% chance to make the College Football Playoff and a 0.1% chance to make the national championship game.
There are no ACC schools in the top 10 of the FPI, but Louisville, Miami and Clemson are lurking just outside.
Louisville (14.8, 11th), Miami (14.3, 12th) and Clemson (13.4, 14th) are the FPI leaders in the ACC, and Boston College (9.1, 24th) and Florida State (7.0, 32nd) round out the top five. Georgia Tech, Cal, SMU, North Carolina and Virginia Tech round out the top 10.
Pitt needed a 21-point comeback to beat Cincinnati over the weekend, the largest comeback in the last half-century. Eli Holstein completed 11-of-12 pass attempts for 189 yards and two touchdowns, leading another drive late in the fourth quarter to set up a game-winning 35-yard Ben Sauls’ field goal. It wasn’t perfect, but Pitt secured the win.
“It’s a gutsy win by our guys,” Pat Narduzzi said Saturday in his post-game presser. “Couldn’t be prouder of the effort they gave. We came up in the fourth quarter and said we’re going to win this thing. Broke down on, ‘Win.’
“Our guys believed. It shows true character to come back from being 21 down. Players made plays. We made plays in the second half on offense and defense.”
A win against West Virginia (3.9, 47th) would be a great boost, not just in the FPI but in building the platform for a standout season.
just shows how pointless rankings are…
crazy … and, presumably beating #47 won’t elevate us that much, or at least it shouldn’t based on the math. the following week is YSt … won’t really move up from that one unless it’s a 30+pt beatdown. i am ignoring these kind of indices. H2P !
Is Joe Lunardi running these rankings……….