• ESPN’s Football Power Index ranks Michigan as the 17th best team entering the 2025 season, projecting 8.4 wins.

• Michigan has a 25.3% chance of making the College Football Playoff and a 1% chance of winning the championship, according to ESPN.

• Key games include matchups against Oklahoma, Nebraska, and Ohio State.

So, you’re telling me there’s a chance?

That’s not only an iconic line from “Dumb & Dumber,” but an apt description for how Michigan football fans could be feeling entering the 2025 season, especially after seeing the latest chatter from ESPN.

On Tuesday, June 3, ESPN released the first edition of its Football Power Index, a metric that measures the relative strength of every Football Bowl Subdivision team for 2025.

At the top? The Texas Longhorns. At the bottom? The Kent State Golden Flashes.

And in the middle are the Wolverines, coming in as ESPN’s 17th-best squad. U-M finished last season 8-5, and “The Worldwide Leader” doesn’t see too much of an improvement, projecting Sherrone Moore’s crew to win 8.4 games.

That puts the Wolverines on the bubble between 8-4 and 9-3, right about where the final berths for the 12-team College Football Playoff might be. As a result, ESPN puts Michigan’s chances of making the CFP at 25.3%.

But what are the odds the Wolverines can win the whole thing, like they did in the 2023 season?

ESPN puts those chances at 1%.

That’s just behind a trio of SEC teams — LSU, Ole Miss and Auburn, which come in at 2.1%, 1.5% and 1.1%, respectively — and ahead of another trio of SEC teams — South Carolina, Oklahoma and Florida, at 1%, 0.8% and 0.7%.

Although a dozen teams are projected to finish with at least 8.5 wins, there are 13 teams getting at least a 30% chance to make the CFP, including a trio of Big Ten schools (Ohio State, Penn State and Oregon).

The Wolverines don’t have a murderer’s row of a schedule, but they don’t have cupcake city, either.

In Week 2, U-M travels Oklahoma to face the Sooners, who’ve reloaded with a pair of West Coast transfers in former Washington State quarterback John Mateer and former Cal running back Jadyn Ott, as coach Brent Venables reaches a pivotal season in his OU career.

Two weeks later, U-M heads to Nebraska to take on the Cornhuskers and QB Dylan Raiola — the top high-school recruit in the class of 2024 (and the nephew of former Detroit Lions offensive lineman Dominic Raiola). U-M has dump-trucked Nebraska in the past two meetings — 34-3 in 2022 and 45-7 in 2023 — it was a close one between the programs in in Lincoln in 2021, with Michigan ultimately prevailing, 32-29.

U-M’s remaining schedule doesn’t appear terribly difficult, though the Wolverines will have to travel to East Lansing for their annual matchup with Michigan State.

ESPN has the Spartans as the 59th-best team entering 2025, with a projected 5.2 wins.

The Wolverines wrap up the season with the Buckeyes in Ann Arbor. Michigan has dominated that rivalry recently, with four consecutive wins.

But Ohio State is still the defending national champion and ESPN puts the Buckeyes as No. 3 entering the season, with a 70.3% chance of making the CFP and a 10.8% chance of winning it all.

U-M’s schedule isn’t the hardest and it’s not the easiest, but the good news? ESPN is telling us there’s a chance.

Tony Garcia is the Michigan Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.