re: 2022 College Football Returning Production (ESPN)

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If you didn't return much of your production last year, you were just about sunk. Northwestern ranked last in returning production at 39% and saw its SP+ rating fall by 21.1 points. No other team fell below 50% in returning production, but those below 62% fell by an average of 5.7 points, 7.3 if you take out first-year coaching success stories at South Carolina and Tennessee.

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MOST LIKELY TO IMPROVE IN 2022
* Mississippi State (34th in SP+, 21st in returning production)
Mike Leach's Bulldogs return quite a bit, especially on a defense that slid late in 2021 but still finished a solid 34th in defensive SP+.

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MOST LIKELY TO REGRESS IN 2022
* Ole Miss (23rd in Schlabach's rankings, 98th in returning production).
Coach Lane Kiffin briefly declared himself the "Portal King" this winter thanks to his heavy influx of transfer talent, but he had little choice in trying to offset losing quarterback Matt Corral and most of last year's skill corps.

* Georgia (third in Schlabach's rankings, 96th in returning production).
I'm not even going to pretend Georgia is in any sort of danger zone this season -- recent history and recruiting rankings are going to keep the Dawgs easily in the top three in the SP+ projections. But it's worth noting that they rank 96th in returning production while last year's two other top-three teams rank 65th (Alabama) and 25th (Ohio State).

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