ESPN CFB Tiers: Where Are The Hokies To Start The Season?

With the 2025 CFB season now just three weeks away, the preseason power rankings, tiers, and similar things are starting to pour out from major outlets.

Entering year four in Blacksburg, head coach Brent Pry is trying to play his way off the hot seat. After coming into the 2024 season with high expectations, the Hokies finished with a 6-7 record, including more abysmal one-score game performances. Virginia Tech saw five players drafted and a number of high-profile players elected to enter the transfer portal. With 30-plus new transfers on the team and two new coordinators, can Pry find a way to work his way off the hot seat this season? Is a bowl game going to be good enough, or will Virginia Tech need to find themselves in ACC contention?

The Hokies were picked to finish 11th in the ACC in the media day poll released last week and were placed at No. 48 in the annual CBS Sports 136, which ranks every FBS program in the country. In a newly released "College football team tiers" from ESPN's David Hale, the Hokies found themselves in Tier 9, which was labeled "Regression to the mean (the good kind)":

"This spring, ESPN's Bill Connelly dug into three metrics that often rely heavily on luck: turnovers, close games and injuries. His findings: A lot went wrong for Florida State last year.

Now, it's admirable that Connelly dug deep into the numbers, ran some regression analysis and employed NASA-level computing power to identify this. Another way to do it would've been to simply watch five minutes of FSU football last season, because at any given moment, something ridiculous was going wrong for the Seminoles.

You simply don't go from 13-1 to 2-10 without the football gods deciding to do some serious smiting.

Everything that could go wrong did go wrong, from Connelly's stats -- FSU was 128th in turnover luck, 90th in close-game luck and 110th in lineup consistency -- to the types of things that were probably a bit more predictable (settling for DJ Uiagalelei at QB over Cam Ward).

It should be noted that, once again, FSU has rolled the dice on a QB with a checkered past, and Tommy Castellanos seems intent on taunting the aforementioned football gods, but at the very least, some of that bad luck has to go the other way in 2025, putting the Seminoles on course to improve by a good measure.

The same can be said for Virginia Tech. The Hokies are 1-12 under coach Brent Pry in games determined by a touchdown or less, but it's also worth noting that last year marked the first time since 2010 the Hokies didn't lose a single regular-season game by more than 10.

NC State adds to the ACC's run of bad luck last season, with Grayson McCall's early-season injury upending the offense and a 45-point year-over-year swing in points off turnovers for a team that lost five games by 10 or fewer points.

But the team that might have the best chance to turn the disappointments of 2024 into a serious playoff run in 2025 is Auburn. Jackson Arnold takes over at QB for an offense loaded with skill-position talent. The defense should be solid. Then look at the luck-based numbers: Auburn was 124th in turnover luck and dead last in close-game luck, which covered up the fact it was among the best teams in the country in success and explosive play rate differential. The pieces are in place, the Tigers just need a little more luck to make a run at 10 wins."