Despite all the noise around the Alabama football team this season, at least one ranking format still believes in Nick Saban and company.

ESPN’s football power index ranks the Crimson Tide as third in the nation behind Ohio State (No. 4 in the AP Poll) and Oklahoma (14 in the AP Poll). Alabama checks in at No. 12 in the AP poll this week, moving up one spot after its win against Ole Miss.

According to ESPN, FPI is meant 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.”

ESPN refers to its FPI rankings as similar to how Vegas lines would predict games, which is probably the simplest way to understand it.

So you can understand why Alabama is ranked so highly in a format that is highly based off of what the Vegas lines would be for any given matchup.

Nonetheless, it is still surprising to see Alabama ranked ahead of Georgia (No. 5) as well as a team they lost to in Texas at No. 7. It will be interesting to monitor the FPI for the rest of the year with the Crimson Tide’s remaining schedule ranked as the 28th toughest in the nation according to the same metrics.

You can check out the entirety of ESPN FPI here.