Earlier this offseason, ESPN's Bill Connelly revealed his SP+ rankings and he had the Tennessee Vols as the No. 9 team in the nation.

Connelly's rankings aren't meant to be representative of the AP Top 25. They're based on a formula Connelly created (explained below).

A note on SP+ rankings: 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, and, 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 year. These are simply early offseason power rankings based on the information we have been able to gather to date.

ESPN's Football Power Index is a different ranking system altogether.

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.

Each team’s FPI rating is composed of a predicted offensive, defensive and special teams component. These ratings represent the number of points each unit is expected to contribute to the team's net scoring margin on a neutral field against an average FBS opponent.

ESPN's FPI doesn't view Tennessee in 2022 nearly as favorably as the SP+ rankings. It has the Vols as the No. 28 overall team entering the season.

Here's where other SEC teams rank in ESPN's FPI:

• 1. Alabama
• 3. Georgia
• 10. Auburn
• 11. LSU
• 14. Texas A&M
• 17. Ole Miss
• 20. Kentucky
• 25. Florida
• 28. Tennessee
• 29. Arkansas
• 45. South Carolina

I think No. 9 is way too high for the Vols right now (maybe they'll get there, but nothing warrants that type of ranking just yet).

But I'm not sure No. 28 is accurate, either.

I'd probably have Tennessee around No. 20. I think that's fair based on how they finished last season (yes they lost to Purdue in the bowl game, but that game could've gone the other way if the Vols would've been correctly credited with a touchdown on this play).

My biggest issue with the FPI is having Auburn at No. 10, LSU at No. 11, and Kentucky at No. 20.

Auburn and LSU both finished with a worse record than Tennessee last season (both finished 6-7). And the Vols beat Kentucky head to head.

Florida at No. 25 after going 6-7 last season doesn't make a lot of sense either. But the Gators beat the Vols last year, so I won't gripe about that ranking too much.

ESPN's FPI is usually fairly accurate — last April, they actually had the Vols winning six or seven games in 2021 (ESPN's FPI is predicting UT will go 7-5 in the regular season in 2022).

But I'm not sure they got it right this year.

Tennessee is a top 25 team. And if the ball bounces their way a few times in 2022, they could easily finish in the top 15 or top 20.

Featured image via Saul Young/News Sentinel / USA TODAY NETWORK