As spring practices culminated and we look toward summer workouts and then preseason camp, a lot of Atlantic Coast Conference and national pundits (and odds-makers) have weighed in on how they think Syracuse football will fare in the upcoming season.
On paper, undeniably, the Orange's 2025 docket is brutal. The 'Cuse opens its next campaign in Atlanta against Tennessee in late August. Syracuse football has a daunting road slate, and it will battle several teams that reached the 12-team College Football Playoff during the 2024 season, including national runner-up Notre Dame.
I've gone on record numerous times in saying that if the Orange can go 7-5 with that schedule and attain a second-straight bowl victory, that would prove fabulous. Of course, head coach Fran Brown expects his squad to perform equally as good in 2025, or better, than it did a stanza ago, when the 'Cuse went 10-3 overall and finished at No. 20 in the final Associated Press top-25 poll.
In any event, Bill Connelly of ESPN recently provided a spring update of his SP+ rankings for every Football Bowl Subdivision ("FBS") team, including Syracuse football. Connelly's data aren't behind a paywall, so I'll share here what was said about the Orange. Hint: it's a tad gloomy.
Where Syracuse football resides in the latest SP+ projections from ESPN.
For some context, Connelly notes that these preseason ratings are based on three factors: returning production, recent recruiting and recent history. He further added, "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."
Okay, so Syracuse football is No. 56 overall. It is No. 42 on offense, No. 76 on defense and No. 101 on special teams. The Orange's average wins are 4.8, and the team's strenth of schedule rank is No. 14.
In another set of ratings, called post-spring returning production rankings, the 'Cuse is No. 98 overall, at 46 percent. Syracuse football is No. 128 on offense and No. 48 on defense.
Here are the spring SP+ rankings for the Orange's 2025 foes:
Tennessee, No. 13 overall
UConn, No. 84 overall
Colgate, NA
Clemson, No. 8 overall
Duke, No. 41 overall
SMU, No. 43 overall
Pittsburgh, No. 47 overall
Georgia Tech, No. 44 overall
North Carolina, No. 54 overall
Miami, No. 12 overall
Notre Dame, No. 6 overall
Boston College, No. 62 overall
Only two of Syracuse football's opponents in the upcoming stanza have a worse SP+ rating than the 'Cuse. Then again, the 2025 season is a few months away.