While some like to call attention to the number of returning of starters each team projects to have during the long spring and summer offseason of college football, that metric is outdated and can oftentimes be misleading.

For example, if a returning starter wasn’t very good, what is the true value of him returning for another season? Thanks to people like Bill Connelly of SB Nation, more accurate data is out there to study. Connelly recently published his annual look at the returning production for each college football season for offense, defense and total production — with NFL departures and transfers taken into consideration.

Connelly also assigns extra weight to returning production in the passing game on offense and defending the pass on defense. He explains his rationale in more depth over at SBNation but basically his research has shown the return of production from these positions make for more accurate projections.

Here is how each and every SEC team measured via SBNation’s research:

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