005: 🏈 Expectations
Projected win totals, preseason SP+ rankings, and point spreads under Mack 2.0.
Carolina football is 30-21 since 2019 or the start of the Mack Brown 2.0 era.
After squandering a 9-1 start and losing three straight games, angst and anxiety amongst the fanbase is high. There is plenty of time to speculate because football is a sport that only plays games on ~13 or 14 days out the year.
What is the trajectory of the program?
Has the second Mack Brown stint worked out?
What are the expectations?
In the spirit of measuring Carolina against objective expectations, let’s try to review how Carolina has performed against preseason win totals, SP+ preseason rankings, and point spreads.
Projected win totals
Carolina has exceeded its preseason win total in three* of the last four seasons. In the 2020 COVID campaign, Carolina won eight games to eclipse the win total of 7.5
2021 was a no good, very bad result. Lofty expectations of 10 wins, and a planting-of-the-face result with only six victories.
The margins in 2022 are thin. Several narrow victories, a couple tiny defeats, and a couple lopsided losses.
Consider Carolina’s point differential in its last eight games this season is -24. The Heels won five of those eight games too.
SP+ Preseason Rankings
SP+ rankings from Bill Connelly are a tempo-and-opponent-adjusted measure of efficiency. The intention is for these ratings to be both predictive and forward-facing.
Carolina exceeded preseason projections in these rankings in both 2019 and 2020. A top-15 finish in 2020 with a respectable appearance in the Orange Bowl brought big expectations in 2021.
Similar to the preseason win total of 10, the 2021 SP+ preseason rankings slotted the Heels at number 11 in the ratings.
Carolina was even ninth in the ratings despite a 3-2 start, but dropped all the way to 47th at the end of November 2021 and finished 59th after a drubbing by South Carolina in Charlotte before the end of 2021.
This season, Carolina sits at 52nd as of today. This ranking is 14 spots behind the preseason expectation of 38th. The Heels ranked 31st after the 9-1 start.
Point spreads
Carolina is 23-24 against the spread since 2019. This omits four games against the following opponents - Florida A&M (2022), Wofford (2021), Western Carolina (2020), and Mercer (2019).
Notable results:
8-8 as an underdog against the spread
15-16 as a favorite against the spread
27 of the 47 games have gone over the projected point total
5 outright losses as a double-digit favorite
3-6 overall in November and December the last two seasons
6-10 overall as an underdog
20-11 overall as a favorite
The most damning finding is Carolina has lost five games outright as a double-digit favorite. Those five games are highlighted below:
Think it’s fair to state that Carolina exceeded or met expectations in the first two seasons under Mack Brown 2.0.
The last two seasons? Not so much.
check out the code for the chart
*correction: originally, the win total for 2020 season was 8.5. This was updated to 7.5 after the schedule was changed due to COVID.