You might be surprised by where Ohio State is ranked in the SP+ ratings

Ohio State is slowly starting to gain some respectability on the national scale after two weeks of offensive fireworks and defensive improvement. The Buckeyes have climbed all the way back up to No. 7 in both the USA TODAY Sports AFCA Coaches and Associated Press polls.

And now, OSU has also risen in the ESPN SP+ Ratings made popular by Bill Connelly. In fact, according to the metric that is supposed to project how efficient and productive a team will be in the future, Ohio State has risen all the way up to a tie for No. 2, in a tie with Alabama. Both have 26.3 points and are just behind a Georgia team that gets a big boost for what its defense has been able to do so far in 2021, with a total of 27.2 points.

Not surprisingly, OSU gets its total ranking based mostly on its offensive firepower that’s currently ranked as the best offense in the country according to the SP+ Ratings. So what does the rest of the top ten look like? It is somewhat surprising because these ratings don’t really marry up with the perception of voters in both polls.

Behind the three teams already mentioned in the top ten are Clemson (4), Florida (5), Penn State (6), Oklahoma (7), Michigan (8), North Carolina (9), and Wisconsin (10). And while we’d like to beat our chest about Ohio State being in the top three, we can’t really agree with some of these teams being in the top ten, so we’ll just leave it there.

We’ll see if these SP+ Ratings pan out for Ohio State in the near and future term, but for now, it’s just fun to talk about.

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