Clemson football: ESPN FPI projections – Yes or no?

A few days ago I wrote about the ESPN FPI projections for Clemson football in 2022, in which the algorithm projected the chances of the Tigers going undefeated, forecasted their final record, at least six wins, winning their division, the ACC, making the playoff and winning the title.

Today, I’m going to break down each of those and look at each individual projection and give a “Yes” or “No” and reasoning for each.

This should be a fun exercise and one you can call me on either now or when I’m proven wrong at whatever point of the season that it becomes clear that I was wrong. Because I’m going to be wrong.

I enjoy looking at the output of algorithms because, for one thing, they assign a number or percentage, instead of the more nebulous “good chance” or “no way” humans tend to give.

The other thing that tends to happen is if a team is given a 15% chance to win, humans tend to take that to mean they have “no chance” to win, when in fact, as we found out in the original post, 15% actually means a 1 in 6.67 chance of winning.

Not great, but not close to “no chance” either.

Alright, here we go…