With the college football offseason well underway, you’ll no doubt start to see lists, mentions, stats, tables, graphs and figures pointing toward the number of returning starters for various programs or units around the nation.

But how much value does that figure have? Especially considering different outlets classify a “starter” using various methods.

Over the last few years, Bill Connelly of SBNation has taken an entirely new approach to quantify returners. Instead of looking at returning starters, Connelly looks at returning production, with some variables. According to his research, returning passing numbers — be that on offense with receivers and quarterbacks or on defense by the ability to stop opponent’s passing games — correlate to higher returning values.

Interestingly enough, returning rushing numbers and offensive line starts don’t correlate to nearly as much value from one season to the next based on Connelly’s research. Also of note, returning defensive production has been a stronger indicator of future success according to his research.

SBNation has ranked the returning offensive and defensive returning production for all 130 teams here, but we’ve gone ahead and listed out each SEC team below. Based on this research, Mississippi State and Florida return the most production in 2018 in the SEC, while the two Tennessee programs and LSU have the most production to make up in the coming season.

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