ESPN released its updated SP+ projections for the 2025 college football season, and West Virginia checks in at No. 57 overall. The Mountaineers’ rating is shaped by multiple factors, and this year, ESPN added another layer to the formula.
SP+ is a predictive model created by ESPN’s Bill Connelly that’s designed to project future performance, not just reward past wins or losses. It factors in four main areas:
Returning production – About two-thirds of the formula is based on how much production is back from last season. That includes updates for transfers, injuries, and attrition.
Recent recruiting – This reflects the quality of a team’s new and developing talent, with more weight placed on recent recruiting classes and transfer additions.
Program history – A small slice of the model looks at the past few seasons to account for overall program health.
Coaching changes – New for 2025, ESPN added slight adjustments based on head coach and coordinator changes, especially when tied to units that over- or underperformed their historical norms.
WVU's 2025 SP+ numbers:
SP+ Rank: 57
SP+ Rating: 1.0
Offense: 29.9 (47th)
Defense: 28.9 (73rd)
Special Teams: 0.2 (18th)
Projected Wins: 5.2
Strength of Schedule: 53rd
West Virginia returns a mix of experience and new faces but still has questions to answer, particularly on the defensive side. The offense is expected to take a step forward, while special teams remain a strength under the new staff.
Updated returning production rankings
With the updated SP+ projections come updated returning production figures. While this metric doesn’t directly measure team quality, it’s one of the better indicators of whether a team is likely to improve or regress, especially when the numbers are extreme.
The model includes transfer activity, both incoming and outgoing. If a team loses a key player but replaces him with a transfer, that’s factored into the formula. Transfers from non-FBS programs count at half credit.
Here’s where WVU stands:
Returning Production Rank: 80
Total Returning Production: 52%
Offense: 48% (87th)
Defense: 56% (58th)
Those numbers reflect moderate turnover on both sides of the ball, especially on offense, where new contributors will have to step in quickly. If WVU is going to exceed expectations, much of that success will depend on how fast the new pieces settle in and whether the defense can move closer to the national average.
ESPN’s SP+ Rating
The SP+ preseason projections are based on returning production, recent recruiting and recent history.
ESPN also notes that the SP+ “is a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking, and along those lines, these projections aren’t intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the season. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather.”
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