ESPN FPI projects remainder of Notre Dame football season (updated)
Notre Dame is just 2-2 despite dominating at North Carolina last weekend and are fresh off a bye as they prepare to take on BYU in Las Vegas this coming weekend. With eight games to go the Irish have plenty to play for even if the College Football Playoff and New Year’s Six are off the table.
Is Notre Dame certain to go bowling at all this year? How likely are the Irish to win eight or more games? Both seem a lot more likely following the 45-32 victory in Chapel Hill and obviously didn’t take a hit during the bye week.
I’m in a love-hate relationship with ESPN’s FPI. I say it almost weekly but it’s true. It takes emotion out of the rankings and uses mathematical formulas to rank all Football Bowl Subdivision teams 1-131 weekly. However, it seems lacking when it comes to teams regularly find ways to lose or sneak out wins, something that is hard to quantify but is impossible to convince me isn’t real (see Auburn).
Oct. 8 vs BYU (Las Vegas)
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Week 6 vs. BYU (Las Vegas)
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 69.9% (Up 5.0 from last week)
Oct. 15 vs. Stanford
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Week 7 vs. Stanford
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 89.5%(Up 1.0 from last week)
Oct. 22 vs. UNLV
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Week 8 vs. UNLV
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 92.7% (Down 0.4 from last week)
Oct. 29 at Syracuse
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Week 9 at Syracuse
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 56.0% (Down 2.5 from last week)
Nov. 5 vs. Clemson
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Week 10 vs. Clemson
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 35.7% (Down 0.7 from last week)
Nov. 12 vs. Navy (Baltimore)
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Week 11 vs. Navy (Baltimore)
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 93.8% (Down 1.4 from last week)
Nov. 19 vs. Boston College
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Week 12 vs. Boston College
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 93.7% (same as last week)
Nov. 26 at USC
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Week 13 at USC
FPI Odds of Notre Dame win: 30.0% (Up 2.8 from last week)
Notre Dame FPI Note 1 of 4: Irish move down
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Despite not playing Notre Dame lost a little ground in the overall FPI rankings as they went from 16 to 18 this week.
Notre Dame FPI Note 2 of 4: A chance to win out!
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Despite dropping a couple of spots in the FPI overall team rankings this week, Notre Dame saw their chances of winning go up slightly this week.
Very slightly.
FPI now gives the Irish a 3.0% chance of winning out after giving them a 2.9% shot a week ago.
Notre Dame FPI Note 3 of 4: Bowl nearly a guarantee
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Location still very much remains to be determined but the Irish are seen as a near-lock again to earn a postseason bowl invitation as FPI gives the Irish a 97.5% chance at getting to six wins, which is up 0.1% from a week ago.
Notre Dame FPI Note 4 of 4: Ultimate record projection
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As you saw above, Notre Dame is favored in six of its final eight contests according to ESPN’s FPI. The math works out to give Notre Dame a current projected record of 7.6-4.4, the same projection the formula gave a week ago. Obviously you can’t win part of a game so with some rounding we see the most likely outcome for the Irish is 8-4, at least according to this system.
