Cats Illustrated continues to partner with PFF in order to bring Kentucky fans analytic-driven coverage of college football, and this week the sports website released their initial 2021 rankings for every FBS team in the sport.

This week PFF announced that it had done a "first run of (its) college football metrics and simulation" in the past week.

"We have not only our initial rankings in place but also results from our simulation for conference and national championship odds," it said.

Alabama, Clemson, Ohio State, Georgia, and Oklahoma are 1-5 at the top of the national rankings, which should surprise no one. Interestingly, PFF's model gave one of those five schools roughly a 75% chance to win the national championship, which speaks to just how top heavy the sport is right now.

PFF placed Kentucky at No. 27, right outside the top 25.

That's good enough for No. 3 in the SEC East behind only Georgia (No. 4) and Florida (No. 6).

Missouri (No. 41), Tennessee (No. 45), South Carolina (No. 73), and Vanderbilt (No. 106) round out the East in the national context.

Kentucky also has games scheduled against Louisiana-Monroe (No. 127), Chattanooga (FCS), LSU (No. 10), Mississippi State (No. 55), New Mexico State (No. 123), and Louisville (No. 54).

So according to PFF's early preseason rankings the Cats' 2021 schedule appears to be very top heavy with three games against top-10 conference foes but a big drop down in competition after Georgia, Florida, and LSU.

Kentucky is ranked higher than nine of the 12 teams on its schedule.