Georgia Tech Drops In ESPN's FPI After Their Close Call vs Wake Forest

Georgia Tech not only dropped from No. 16 to No. 17 in the AP Poll, but they dropped 11 spots in ESPN's FPI (Football Power Index). The Yellow Jackets are now No. 43 in FPI and are behind Miami, Florida State, Virginia, Louisville, and Duke now in the conference. The Yellow Jackets only have to play Duke out of that group.

FPI gives Georgia Tech a 7.3% chance to win the ACC and a 9.7% chance to make the college football playoff. The Yellow Jackets are off this week and will be back in action against Virginia Tech next Saturday. They have a favorable ACC schedule left and a reasonable path to get to Charlotte, but Georgia Tech has yet to play a complete game.

What exactly is FPI?

"ESPN uses its FPI (Football Power Index) as an advanced analytical model to help look at matchups and predict outcomes. In ESPN's own words: "FPI is a predictive rating system designed to measure team strength and project performance going forward. The ultimate goal of FPI is not to rank teams 1 through 128; rather, it is to correctly predict games and season outcomes. If Vegas ever published the power rankings it uses to set its lines, they would likely look quite a lot like FPI."

Bye week arriving at the right time?

It is fair to say that Georgia Tech has not played a complete game up to this point. They stumbled out of the gate with three turnovers on the first three possessions against Colorado, two turnovers on their first two possessions against Gardner-Webb, and being outgained against Wake Forest over the weekend. With the bye week coming on Saturday, head coach Brent Key feels it is coming at the right time for his team:

“Yes. Yes. We've got to recharge. We've got to mentally get ourselves back and ready to go. You know, the physical part, yes, everyone, you know, thinks about the physical part, but the mental grind of it, you know, as it starts to mount, as the season starts to mount. So, yeah, it could come at a better time. I'm very excited, you know, very, very fortunate we are as a team, but also really happy and excited that we're able to come out of this with a win and finish off that first part of the season. We're in the endurance phase now of the season. We're in that endurance phase. Everybody comes out the gate sprinting. In the last third of the season, you see the finish line. But this middle part, that's the endurance phase.

Endurance doesn't mean taking it easy. It doesn't mean coasting through it. Endurance is that you're out in the middle of the ocean, you swim all the way out there, and now you turn around and it's just as far to go back, and you can't see either side. That's endurance now. We've got to have that for the next four or five weeks. Then we get into that final sprint towards the end. There's a big test of our identity as a football team today. We talked about that prior. We all just saw last night how quickly it can disappear. I'm proud of these guys for the way they played the second half and the way they finished the game.”