Yes, I know that COVID has thrown a curve ball into computer rankings and that teams that haven't played many games may still have an unhealthy amount of preseason bias baked into their ranking. But Penn St. has played 7 games now so I would hope that we are past the "early season" of their rankings.

Bill Connelly talked about this a little bit in his article this week as to why Penn St. is ranked in the top 25 in his SP+ rankings and it's not because of preseason bias, etc.

Remember back in 2016, when, after going 10-3 the year before, Notre Dame collapsed to 4-8? The Fighting Irish suffered seven one-score losses that year while averaging a 22-point winning margin in their four wins, and despite the gaudy-in-the-wrong-way record, they finished a healthy 18th in SP+. That got me yelled at a lot, but it was vindicated the next year when the Irish looked perfectly normal the next year and went 10-3. Sometimes the breaks go against you.

That brings us to Penn State. The Nittany Lions began the year 0-5 for the first time in their history. Devastating program collapse? Not really. They outgained Indiana and Nebraska by 200+ yards each and generated postgame win probabilities of 95% and 83%, respectively ... while losing both games by a combined eight points.

There was no redeeming a terrible performance against Maryland, but the Nittany Lions had only fallen to 29th five games in and are now back up to 22nd following solid wins over Michigan and Rutgers. It remains to be seen whether they go 10-3 like the 2017 Irish next year, but this season's start might end up looking far more like a speed bump than a change in trajectory.

Basically, some of these rankings look at more than just wins/losses/point differential when determining rankings. Even though Penn St. lost to both Indiana and Nebraska, their efficiency numbers in those games (as described above) actually came out pretty good for them. Basically it is showing a Penn St. team that according to his rankings is MUCH better than their record shows. If you value predictive rankings that are more likely to predict winners and losers of future games, this is valuable. If you are looking for a team with the best resume, etc. this is not valuable.

But it also helps to explain why FPI would place Penn St. at #22 while also placing their "strength of record" (SOR) at #69.