With less than two months to go before the 2022 college football season officially kicks off, ESPN has updated its Football Power Index (FPI).

According to the model, Utah remains the team to beat out west even after the high-profile addition of wideout Jordan Addison to USC’s offense. The No. 3 and 4 teams swapped in ESPN’s latest batch of projections, as did Nos. 5 and 6. The bottom half of the league, in terms of the projected order, remained unchanged from the first reveal.

Here are the updated Pac-12 standings projections from FPI:

  1. Utah (13th nationally, 9.4 projected wins)
  2. Oregon (23rd, 8.6)
  3. USC (35th, 8.1)
  4. UCLA (39th, 8.3)
  5. Washington (48th, 7.5)
  6. Arizona State (50th, 6.8)
  7. Oregon State (57th, 6.0)
  8. Stanford (62nd, 5.0)
  9. California (67th, 5.6)
  10. Washington State (79th, 5.0)
  11. Colorado (84th, 3.5)
  12. Arizona (91st, 3.5)

The Utes rose two spots in FPI from their early release back in April. The projected win total was also 9.3 then.

Oregon stayed in the same spot with the same projected win total.

USC jumped UCLA, even though they’re both projected to still win eight games. For the Bruins, they ranked 34th in the initial projections and were projected to win 8.7 games. USC moved up from 37th. Perhaps that’s the Jordan Addison effect?

Arizona State suffered the biggest drop of the Pac-12 teams, falling from 41st to 50th. The Sun Devils were projected to win 7.7 games before. As they fell, Washington slid up from 50th to 48th. FPI is still expected the Huskies to be around seven wins.

Oregon State and Stanford largely remained unchanged.

Cal moved up three spots while Colorado moved up two and Arizona dropped two.

FPI still views the Utes as the favorite to win the Pac-12, with a 25.2% chance to win the league. Oregon has the next-best odds with a 19.2% chance to win the Pac-12, followed by USC (7.5%) and UCLA (5.5%).

ESPN defines FPI as “a “measure of team strength that is meant to be the best predictor of a team’s performance going forward for the rest of the season.” The updated Top 25 can be seen below, with the previous rank in parenthesis if it has changed:

  1. Alabama
  2. Ohio State
  3. Georgia
  4. Clemson
  5. Notre Dame
  6. Michigan (7)
  7. Texas (6)
  8. Oklahoma
  9. Miami (18)
  10. LSU (11)
  11. Auburn (10)
  12. Texas A&M (14)
  13. Utah (15)
  14. Oklahoma State (13)
  15. Michigan State (16)
  16. Penn State (12)
  17. Ole Miss
  18. Kentucky (20)
  19. North Carolina (22)
  20. Pittsburgh (9)
  21. Wisconsin
  22. Baylor (19)
  23. Oregon
  24. Mississippi State
  25. Tennessee (NR)