Notre Dame football given insanely low win total in one power ranking
Anticipation is high for the Notre Dame football team as they gear up for the 2024 season. The consensus is that they are a strong playoff contender, with some analytics even suggesting they could potentially go undefeated in the regular season.
And then there’s Pro Football Focus’s power rankings. To say their rankings are an outlier would be an understatement. For one reason or anothe, PFF has zero faith in the Fighting Irish. And zero faith in Marcus Freeman, apparently.
Notre Dame football prediction is weirdly low
Notre Dame football ranked 12th in the PFF Power Rankings, and unlike other outlets, the Irish have an opponent higher on the board. PFF has Florida State ranked 7th in its power rankings. Other top Irish opponents are Texas A&M (No. 21), USC (No. 23) and Louisville (No. 27).
In the power ranking, the Irish have a 91 percent chance to make a bowl game but just a 1.8 percent chance to win the national championship. Notre Dame also has just a 28 percent. chance to make the College Football Playoff. Those odds are some of the lowest you’re going to find anywhere.
One of the strangest juxtapositions in this power ranking is where PFF ranks ND’s 2024 schedule. You might think that they’d have to be giving the schedule more respect than other analysts, but the Irish have the 34th strongest schedule for 2024 for these rankings.
That means PFF believes Notre Dame has an easy schedule, but also won’t be able to do much with it.
As far as games won, the rankings have the Fighting Irish winning just 8 games. However, looking at it further, the site tends to project low win totals for a lot of teams. Despite having the Georgia Bulldogs as the odds on favorite to win it all, they average just 9.9 wins in the PFF projections.
No. 2 Texas is projected to win just 9.0 games. Michigan ranks No. 3 on the list - which was way higher than most have them - and the Wolverines are projected to win 8.7 games.
Knowing that, it’s easier to stomach the rather low projections for Notre Dame football, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still ridiculously low.