Alabama Football Lands No. 2 in ESPN’s Post-Spring SP+ – Only Ohio State Stands in the Way

The Alabama Crimson Tide has high expectations in year two under head coach Kalen DeBoer. ESPN writer Bill Connelly ranks the Tide high in his post-spring SP+ projections for the 2025 college football season.

Connelly ranks Alabama No. 2, only behind defending national champion Ohio State.

Alabama enters the rankings with a score of 27.9, while Ohio State comes in with a 29.5 ranking. Penn State (27.7), Georgia (26.9), and Texas (26.4) round out the top five.

ESPN's SP+ projections take three major factors into account:

1. Returning production. The returning production numbers are based on rosters I have updated as much as humanly possible to account for transfers and attrition. The combination of last year's SP+ ratings and adjustments based on returning production makes up about two-thirds of the projections formula.

2. Recent recruiting. This piece informs us of the caliber of a team's potential replacements (and/or new stars) in the lineup. It is determined by the past few years of recruiting rankings in diminishing order (meaning the most recent class carries the most weight). This is also impacted by the recruiting rankings of incoming transfers, an acknowledgment that the art of roster management is now heavily dictated by the transfer portal.

3. Recent history. Using a sliver of information from the previous four seasons or so gives us a good measure of overall program health.

(One other reminder: 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.)

The projection gives Alabama an offensive score of 40.4, good for fifth in the country. Defensively, Alabama comes in with a 12.6 projection, also good for fifth. If Alabama can hit its projected numbers, the Tide would have a top-five offense and defense in college football next season.

Alabama also comes in with the 11th-ranked strength of schedule according to ESPN's SP+ projection.

The Crimson Tide returned 14 starters from last year's 9-4 roster, with 8 coming on the defensive side of the ball. In the SP+ returning production ranking, Alabama was good for 64%. The Tide had the 13th-ranked defensive production retention at 69%.

Here is the full top 10 from the Post Spring SP+ Rankings:

1. Ohio State - 29.5
2. Alabama - 27.9
3. Penn State - 27.7
4. Georgia - 26.9
5. Texas - 26.4
6. Notre Dame - 24.9
7. Oregon - 24.7
8. Clemson - 23.3
9. LSU - 22.1
10. Michigan - 21.5

The top ten features four SEC teams, four Big Ten teams, one ACC team, and one Independent.

Wyatt Fulton is the Tide 100.9 DME and Brand Manager, primarily covering Alabama Crimson Tide football and men's basketball. For more Crimson Tide coverage, follow Wyatt on X (Formerly known as Twitter) at @FultonW_.