Alabama Football: New regular season game predictions for Crimson Tide

I can hear the chants from away stadiums already. The ones aimed at Alabama Football will be simple, including just one word ‘Overrated’ and they will be heard over and over until the Crimson Tide shuts up a road crowd. Only one thing will be heard more in Starkville and that will be cowbells.

Alabama football players will likely not notice and if they do, they will not care. Traveling Crimson Tide fans will become annoyed quickly. Hey, it’s all part of the great game of college football.

After the loss to Texas, ESPN’s FPI did not consider the Crimson Tide overrated. The algorithm still has Alabama at No. 1. Digging deeper into ESPN’s Analytics, there were changes to individual game projections. ESPN had given Alabama a 75.2% probability of beating Texas.

In ESPN’s first set of projections for the season, the Crimson Tide’s toughest projected opponent was LSU with Alabama having a win probability of 74.2%. After the LSU and Alabama losses, the Crimson Tide has a slightly higher projection to beat LSU, at 76.5%.

The biggest change in ESPN’s game predictions is Alabama in week four, hosting Ole Miss. The Crimson Tide’s probability was 86-plus% and now the ESPN calculation is 75.3%. The next biggest change is from the Crimson Tide’s road game against Texas A%M. Alabama was projected with an 82% probability and it has dropped to 76.5%.

Alabama Football ESPN Win Predictions (after week two)

• Alabama is projected at 98.6% to beat South Florida on Saturday afternoon
• Crimson Tide win over Ole Miss at 75.3%
• Crimson Tide road win over Mississippi State at 84.7%
• Bama over the Aggies in College Station at 76.5%
• Crimson Tide home win over Arkansas at 91.7%
• Almost no change in the Alabama vs. Tennessee projection at an 85.2% win
• Crimson Tide home win over LSU at 76.5%
• Crimson Tide road win over Kentucky at 88.8%
• The projection for Alabama to beat Chattanooga is 99%, but it should be 100%
• Crimson Tide road win over Auburn at 81.7%

An obvious question is how good are ESPN’s analytics, and in response, I can only shake my head that I don’t know. They are at least – interesting.

Alabama Football Post-Season

The Crimson Tide is currently not projected to make the CFB Playoff final four. That can certainly change, but most current projections replace the Crimson Tide with Texas.

Depending on which source is chosen, the Tide’s post-season destination will be the Peach Bowl, against either Penn State, USC, or Memphis. For what it is worth, Memphis is currently No. 51 in the Football Power Index.

ESPN’s early FPI numbers often include outliers. The algorithm corrects based on each week’s games and the outliers have usually disappeared by midseason.