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We’re going to try to be quick today, as we’re running a little behind after an event last night.
We haven’t run the model yet to account for last night’s games, so we don’t have updated playoff probabilities for you in here, but what a fun evening of football that was. Some reactions:
Nebraska obviously could have done more, but what a win by and for Illinois. Illinois’s schedule probably precludes any serious playoff or conference title contention, and Movelor—our model’s rating system—still only has them 34th in the country heading into today. But! They’re 4–0, they’ve beaten two respectable Power Four teams, and the softer part of their upcoming schedule is soft enough that it’s not crazy to think they could finish the year, post-bowl, at 10–3. That’d be the Illini’s first ten-win season since Ron Turner took them to the Sugar Bowl.
You can’t say enough about Luke Altmyer’s performance, but that interception by Torrie Cox Jr. was as consequential as it was impressive. Illinois probably loses that game if Cox doesn’t make that play. Illinois’s secondary is fierce and fun, and Bret Bielema knows what he’s doing as a Big Ten head coach. We should at some point dig into what went wrong at Arkansas for him. Is the SEC that much different of a beast? Were there some other factors at play?
The loss stings for the Huskers, who harbored realistic dreams of a 7–0 start, but if I were a Nebraska fan I’d be walking away with a feeling of, “We’re getting better and we’re not there yet.” Expectations develop quickly, and they’d developed for Nebraska, and Nebraska let them down. But Nebraska’s still on track to win more games than they did last year, and their freshman quarterback is, to put it mildly, good. I don’t see any reason to not be bullish on Nebraska over the next two years and beyond.
Moving to the ACC, Stanford won a hard, impressive, dramatic game. We’d gotten admittedly smitten with Syracuse, whom we’ll now admit has more flaws than we previously acknowledged even to ourselves. At the same time, we really didn’t expect Stanford to shut down the run like they did.
We didn’t dislike the Troy Taylor hire, but Stanford football looked pretty hopeless when the Pac-12 went down. It’s still not in a great place, but the possibility of making a bowl game is on the table, and this program hasn’t done that since 2018. Credit to Emmet Kenney for the game-winning kick. Acknowledgment to Ohio State fans that Kyle McCord has his limitations. (Interesting limitations, though. It seems like his style of play last season—being so conservative—was coached into him. This year, he’s more of a semi-reckless gunslinger.)
As for Washington State…
What a ballgame.
John Mateer throwing an overtime interception when his team only needed a field goal is very John Mateer. But that doesn’t make us love him any less. The team is so fun.
Washington State had so many chances to win that game, and I think most of us would say they outplayed San Jose State and just got hoodwinked a few times. The fact it came down to that Dean Janikowski kick to send the game to overtime was mostly a product of failure in a few high-leverage moments.
We say that to say that we still believe WSU’s a pretty good team. Right around the top 25 in quality. I’m curious what this will do in the eyes of the AP voters unfortunately responsible for setting the narrative the College Football Playoff committee will subliminally follow. I’m assuming hardly any watched the game or will go back and watch it. For most teams, this doesn’t matter, but for a team like WSU, an effective independent stuck between high-major and mid-major status with only the at-large bid option available, it matters. And that stinks. It would be good in this instance if the AP poll didn’t exist, because it’s been unfair so far to WSU and how it ranks WSU is possibly the only thing of consequence it’ll do all year.
At the same time, to have our cake and eat it too, we’re feeling good about telling you to keep an eye on San Jose State in the Mountain West. There’s a very clear top four in that league, and the Spartans are in it. This loss is brutal for their playoff chances, but the path isn’t impossible, and they could have some nice high-profile matchups late in the year, closing with a trip to Oregon State and then three straight home games against Boise State, UNLV, and Stanford before a potential MWC championship appearance.
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Ok, moving on to our real purpose today.
We went through our model’s simulations from yesterday morning and identified how many games every team needs to win in order to enter conference championship weekend with a good chance of making the College Football Playoff.
We didn’t include conference championship games in this sample, and that’s a little weird. Our rationale was that this is more about at-large bids than it’s about automatic bids. Whoever wins the Big Ten and SEC will make the playoff. Whoever wins the ACC and Big 12 will most likely make the playoff. Whoever wants the Group of Five automatic bid will almost definitely have to win their conference championship anyway. For teams who don’t qualify for their conference championship game, this tells us what they need to do to make the playoff. For teams who do, this tells us what they need to do to enter their conference championship with a chance.
We only did this exercise for teams with better than a 0.99% probability of making the playoff. We wanted teams with a large enough sample of simulations in which they make the playoff to at least allow us to draw hints of conclusions. Again, this doesn’t include last night’s results, so apologies to fans of the schools who played. This should still be pretty accurate for you, but it’s a little outdated.
Finally, we should note that all of this can change. A team might be 40% likely right now to make it if they go 11–1 through the regular season, but that number could become 60% or 75% or even 96% depending how that 11–1 manifests itself and what else happens around the country.
With all of those caveats addressed…
We got nine groups of teams.
Group 1: Nine wins to have a good chance (>50%), ten wins to nearly lock it up (>95%).
Teams: Georgia
There is one team in this category, and it’s Georgia. Georgia’s regular season schedule is so challenging and their wins are expected to be so dominant that even a 9–3 regular season would leave them with better than a 50% chance of making the field. With a 10–2 season? They’re in more than 95% of the time.
Group 2: Ten wins to have a good chance, eleven wins to nearly lock it up.
Teams: Alabama, Georgia Tech, Louisville, Michigan, Ohio State, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Texas, Washington
In this group, it takes ten wins to cross 50% playoff probability and eleven to cross 95%. The teams involved? Four—Alabama, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and Texas—are SEC powers. Three—Michigan, Ohio State, and Washington—are Big Ten powers. Two—Georgia Tech and Louisville—are ACC teams who play Notre Dame. What we’re seeing is that schedule matters, but also that the really high level teams, like Ohio State and Georgia, will likely be treated accordingly. Their wins will come by a lot of points. Their losses will come by few.
Group 3: Eleven wins to have a good chance, but also eleven wins to nearly lock it up.
Teams: LSU, Mississippi, Notre Dame, Oregon, Texas A&M, USC
This is a weird one. It’s the group where 10–2 would most likely leave the team out but 11–1 would almost definitely get the team in. We get most of the remaining SEC teams with a playoff chance plus Notre Dame and two more of the Big Ten contenders. To get back to our conference championship discussion: There’s an implication here that 11–2 would be enough for these teams and 10–3 wouldn’t be. (Yes, Notre Dame can only play twelve games.)
Group 4: Eleven wins to have a good chance, twelve wins to nearly lock it up.
Teams: BYU, California, Duke, Indiana, Iowa State, Kansas State, Miami (FL), Missouri, Nebraska, Oklahoma State, Penn State, Pitt, Syracuse, UCF, Utah
These are teams who would be sweating at 11–1, which probably means 12–1 would be enough and 11–2 wouldn’t be. (There are plenty of scenarios where 11–1 leaves a team out of its conference championship. There even might be scenarios where a 12–0 team misses its conference championship this year. I haven’t gone digging, but I would imagine they exist given what a low percentage of conference foes these teams play.)
This group brings us the last SEC team (Mizzou) and a smattering of Big Tenners, but the majority of the cohort comes from the Big 12 and the ACC. Nonconference schedules are too different from one another to apply blanket win prescriptions by conference, but at a very high level, the implication here is that most Big 12 and ACC teams can only afford one loss, max, while most Big Ten and SEC teams can afford two.
Group 5: Twelve wins to have a good chance, also twelve wins to nearly lock it up.
Teams: North Carolina, Rutgers, San Jose State
Sorry, San Jose State. This doesn’t mean you’re out of the playoff race, but I suppose you can look at Group 9 now. Had you won last night, a 12–0 start and a MWC championship loss should have still gotten you in as an at-large. This may be unbelievable to some, but plenty of Group of Five teams have finished seasons healthily ranked, and there are scenarios where the MWC drafts off its own coattails. That top four—Boise State, UNLV, San Jose State, and Fresno State—is good. The rest of the conference is bad. That offers both meat on the bone (quality wins) and eye candy (opportunities for blowouts).
UNC and Rutgers are both underwhelming enough and play such an underwhelming schedule that even at 11–1, they probably wouldn’t enter their conference title game favored to make the playoff field. One way or another, they need twelve wins. The good thing here is that if they get those twelve, they’ll enter the conference championship with house money from a playoff perspective.
Group 6: Ten wins to have a good chance, no way to nearly lock it up.
Teams: Clemson, West Virginia
West Virginia already has two losses, so it can’t get to 11–1. Clemson only has one, but it was so decisive and their ACC schedule is so weak that 11–1 wouldn’t quite be enough to make them feel locked in. Why does Clemson have such a good chance at 10–2? Because they’d most likely make the ACC Championship and they’d most likely be the favorite in that game.
Group 7: Eleven wins to have a good chance, no way to nearly lock it up.
Teams: Arizona, Army, Baylor, Boise State, Boston College, Fresno State, Maryland, NC State, SMU, TCU, Texas Tech, USF, Virginia Tech, Western Kentucky
On the power conference side, these are one-loss teams who’d otherwise be in Group 4. For the Group of Five’s, these are teams who’ll likely be favored in their conference championship if they get to 11–1 and would have a strong enough résumé that at 12–1, it’d very likely be the Group of Five’s strongest.
Group 8: Twelve wins to have a good chance, no way to nearly lock it up.
Teams: Coastal Carolina, James Madison, Liberty, Louisiana, Memphis, Northern Illinois, Toledo, UNLV, Washington State
Do all these teams need to go undefeated? I’m not sure about that. For some, 12–1 might be enough to earn an at-large bid. 11–2 would almost definitely not cut it, though, and they might need to get to 13–0. In a lot of ways here, we’re getting at nonconference strength of schedule.
Group 9: No path to a >50% chance enter the conference championship.
Teams: Bowling Green, Kansas, Oregon State, Tulane
Kansas and Tulane already have two losses. Tulane’s are good enough that they could still make the playoff going into the AAC Championship 10–2, but they’re fighting an uphill battle even then. Kansas is good enough as a team that it could still win the Big 12, which would most likely get it in but would probably require a victory in the title game as an underdog. Bowling Green only has one loss, and it’s a good one, but that one loss keeps them from joining NIU and Toledo in Group 8. Oregon State already has one loss, and because they can’t win a conference championship that currently leaves even 11–1 as a playoff-unlikely scenario for the Beavs.
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I understand this is a confusing way to do the exercise, and I apologize if it really just does not make sense. As the field winnows, we’ll be able to get into greater specifics. At the moment, though, this is what it looks like teams need heading into Week 4.
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