Football Notre Dame ranked No. 5 in initial SP+ rankings from ESPN

[Tyler James]

Bill Connelly of ESPN released Friday his initial in SP+ rankings ahead of the 2025 season. Connelly uses returning production, recent recruiting and recent history in building his projections.

Connelly's reminder on SP+:

"It's a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. It is a predictive measure of the most sustainable and predictable aspects of football, not a résumé ranking. Along those same lines, these projections aren't intended to be a guess at what the AP Top 25 will look like at the end of the season. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather."

Connelly's projections have Notre Dame ranked No. 5 in the initial SP+ rankings for 2025. Notre Dame has an SP+ of 23.4 The offensive SP+ is 37.3, which is ranked 10th. The defensive SP+ is 13.9, which is ranked 8th. The special teams SP+ is -0.2, which is ranked 106th.

The four teams ahead of Notre Dame: No. 1 Ohio State (28.0), No. 2 Alabama (26.1), No. 3 Penn State (25.3) and No. 4 Georgia (24.5).

Where Notre Dame's 2025 opponents are ranked:

No. 14 Miami
No. 12 Texas A&M
No. 116 Purdue
No. 35 Arkansas
No. 31 Boise State
No. 45 NC State
No. 30 USC
No. 68 Boston College
No. 63 Navy
No. 53 Pittsburgh
No. 57 Syracuse
No. 88 Stanford

Full SP+ breakdown is here behind the ESPN+ paywall.