Pac-12 football prediction: Arizona State better than Arizona in 2023?

We're going to see a lot of Pac-12 football predictions in the months ahead, but an early forecast of how the teams in the conference would fare in the 2023 season from 247Sports recently caught our attention for where it had the Arizona State Sun Devils and the Arizona Wildcats.

We don't think Arizona fans are going to be happy about the predicted order of finish for the two Arizona schools.

247Sports predicted that ASU would go 7-5 overall and 4-5 in conference play in the upcoming season, finishing ahead of Arizona, which it predicted to end up 5-7 overall and 3-6 in Pac-12 play.

Raymond Lucas Jr. wrote of Arizona: "Jedd Fisch is successfully building the Arizona Wildcats and we expect them to continue to improve in 2023, but reaching bowl eligibility won’t be easy. The Wildcats still boast a loaded offense but had major weaknesses on defense, which is a losing recipe in the Pac-12 with all the talented quarterbacks the conference has to offer. On a positive note, Arizona has one of those passers on its team in Jayden de Laura. Arizona’s improvement will be displayed, but it may not appear in the win column."

He wrote of ASU: "Arizona State hit the transfer portal hard as first-year head coach Kenny Dillingham looks for instant results in Year 1 at the helm. The Sun Devils have consistently played solid football in the modern era outside of the last couple of seasons and we expect that to be the case in Tempe with Notre Dame transfer quarterback Drew Pyne turning things around for the program. Don’t be surprised if Arizona State pulls off a major upset in 2023."

Interestingly, the site predicted that Arizona would be ASU in 2023, but that the Sun Devils would still amass more wins than the Wildcats.

It also picked Arizona to win against NAU, UTEP, Stanford and UCLA, with the team's losses coming against Mississippi State, Washington, USC, Washington State, Oregon State, Colorado and Utah.

ASU was predicted to beat Southern Utah, Oklahoma State, Fresno State, California, Washington State, UCLA and Oregon in 247Sports' prediction for the Sun Devils, with the team's other losses coming against USC, Colorado, Washington and Utah.

Pac-12 football prediction for 2023

The site predicted that USC would win the conference at 10-2 (8-1) and had Oregon, Washington and Oregon State tied for second at 10-2 (7-2). 

Utah was picked to be fifth, at 8-4 (6-3), followed by UCLA at 7-5 (4-5), which was picked to tie with ASU for sixth.

The site had Washington State eighth at 6-6 (4-5), followed by Arizona in ninth.

Colorado (4-8, 3-6), California (3-9, 1-8) and Stanford (2-10, 0-9) rounded out 247Sports' early Pac-12 predictions for the coming season.

Arizona went 5-7 overall and 3-6 in Pac-12 play last season. ASU went 3-9 overall and 2-7 in the conference.

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