Did we play this weekend? Was I sleeping? Have I slept? The Irish went on the Patented Wolverine SP+ Plan this week and boosted their rating substantially by pounding a hapless foe. If you read last week’s post you know I lobbed a few shots at SP+ for the rather strange evaluation of the Virginia performance, but in truth that was tongue in cheek because I know what the main culprit was. SP+ factors “turnover luck” into its calculations, and statistically speaking Notre Dame was lucky last week. Plus the offense and defense were both pretty meh in the first half. Not so this week, though, as both units came out firing on all cylinders in the first half and didn’t even let up when the backups and backup backups came in. So, like Michigan did after pummeling Rutgers, Notre Dame got a boost in SP+ this week.

Recapping the methodology again: These aren’t actual SP+ win probabilities, as SP+ creator Bill Connelly doesn’t publish those regularly after his preseason previews. We used a slightly tweaked version of the formula that the Reddit guy reverse-engineered to get close to published probabilities. That formula does some probability magic on the differential in SP+ rating for the two teams (with a bump for home field), and voilà.

Post-Week 6 Update

As you move down each column, you find the probability of Notre Dame owning that many wins at that point of the schedule. In the first row, you can see that the probability of owning 0 wins through week 1 is 0% and one win is 100%, since we already won. Same for the New Mexico row, and so on. In the last row, we’re tracking how much the probability of each win total has changed from the previous week. This is largely a function of our own outcomes, the quality of play that led to those outcomes, and SP+’s changing perceptions of our opponents.

The 12.9% figure at the end of the Stanford row reflects our probability of having 11 wins through 12 games – in other words, that’s our probability of winning out. Last week SP+ had 9-3 as the most likely outcome, while this week 10-2 has jumped back into the lead. The biggest driver of 10-2 vs. 9-3 is SP+’s changing perceptions of Michigan.

Week by Week Game Trends

Other Nuggets

  • Tackling the “Big Three”: SP+ still has a loss to Michigan and wins over USC and Stanford as the most likely outcome of the remaining big games, at 29.8%. That’s down a couple of points from last week and not that far ahead of the probability of a sweep, which is 26.3%.
  • Taking care of business: Notre Dame’s expected win total crept up a bit from 9.13 to 9.33 wins. If the Irish win all games in which SP+ heavily favors them (70% or higher win probability), that expectation jumps to 10.16 wins, up from 9.67 last week. Note that Duke, which had moved out of “heavy favorite” status last week, moved back in this week.
  • Movers and shakers: Highlighting just the notable movers…
    • You may remember that I said last week I was “highly, highly” skeptical of the big drop in win probability against Michigan after their Rutgers game. Sure enough, they looked like lukewarm garbage against Iowa and the win probability jumped back up 6.4 points.
    • Duke did not handle prosperity well, losing to Pitt a week after housing Virginia Tech. Accordingly, that win probability jumped 5.5 points.
    • The USC probability jumped 3.4 points during their idle week. This is likely partly due to Notre Dame’s performance against Bowling Green, but there are also a lot of weekly adjustments at this point – preseason projections are still falling out, conference adjustments are coming in, etc.
    • Virginia Tech beat Miami and still that probability jumped 3.3 points. They’re not good. They take on their second FCS foe of the season this week, which you would think would be a guaranteed win, but they needed to secure an onside kick in the final minute of their last FCS game to preserve that one, so…
    • The Stanford probability climbed a scant point, which isn’t all that interesting maybe except that it happened despite them dispatching Washington. I think that tells you how much concern you should have about that win for them.
    • Finally, the Navy probability dropped 2.0 points on the heels of their win over Air Force. SP+ has been steadily more impressed with them, but I’m still not sure how much I buy into it. QB Malcolm Perry is dangerous, as we’ve noted before, but aside from him they just don’t have much on either side of the ball. They’re about to enter the meat of their AAC schedule, so it’ll be interesting to see what happens there.

Lead photo credit: Getty Images/Quinn Harris