Oregon is (probably) who we thought they were. Movelor was right about Florida State. Alabama’s alive, Georgia’s in some danger, and Notre Dame’s path is opening back up. Let’s take a look at the bracket.
Moving In: Notre Dame, Iowa State
Notre Dame should not be an underdog from here until December. Notre Dame might be favored by double digits in all eight of those games. Will the résumé hold up? The criticism is the lack of good wins, but historically, close losses to good teams have been treated kindly. Also, USC might end up ranked.
I will say: Notre Dame only gets a home game in 28% of our simulations. That’s still a lot, but part of what’s happening here is that they have a high floor and a low ceiling. Just as we expect someone from the SEC to pass Indiana, it wouldn’t be surprising to see a Big 12 team, second ACC team, or Big Ten–SEC also-ran pass the Irish. Their destiny is probably in their own hands, but Notre Dame is still unlikely to host a game in December.
Iowa State moves in after beating up Arizona, and we’ll talk about the injury concerns somewhere else. They’re the new Big 12 favorite, but Texas Tech remains in at-large position.
Moving Out: Penn State, LSU
It’s not the losses themselves for these two, since these exact losses were expected. It’s those losses pulling the average season downwards. Penn State and LSU both enjoyed upside because these games would have been big wins. They didn’t win them. It doesn’t look good. Penn State might need to win out with the exception of the Ohio State game. LSU might need to win in either Tuscaloosa or Norman, in addition to taking care of business at home.
Moving Up: Alabama
The new SEC favorite, Alabama has a path like last year’s Notre Dame team: Lose terribly (FSU isn’t NIU, but Alabama lost by more points), then go make the playoff anyway. We still have questions about Alabama’s consistency, but we’ll deal with those somewhere else.
Moving Down: Texas
With Alabama’s rise, Texas gets bumped out of a home game. Lot of season left.
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Probabilities and average final rankings:
Things that stand out:
- Alabama is the SEC favorite, but Mississippi is the SEC’s best playoff bet. Of the SEC’s four best teams, Lane Kiffin’s is the only one still unbeaten. That is also true of the SEC’s five or six best teams, depending how you define who’s best.
- Despite being such a big favorite against the rest of its schedule, Notre Dame is still worse than a 50/50 bet to make the playoff. The Irish will probably lose again.
- I don’t think LSU ever rose past the 9-seed in our bracketology, but still striking to see them down around only a 1-in-4 playoff shot. At the same time, though, that’s not a terrible shot? It’s better than everyone’s but 15 teams. That isn’t out of line with what you’d expect from a borderline top-ten team playing in the SEC, which was the reasonable assessment of LSU coming into the season.
- Penn State sitting below 50/50 is counterintuitive, but Texas and Georgia are both also below 50%. It’s hard to make the playoff. Even in the twelve-team format.
- Memphis is the clear favorite for the fifth automatic bid, but the Tigers are not favored over the field.
- We’re up to 22 teams with an average final ranking in the top 25, but only four teams with an average final ranking in the top 10. It’s not unreasonable to take this to mean that we’ve figured out who’s good but we’re still putting together who’s best.
Movelor’s new top 25:
Things that stand out:
- Welcome back to North Dakota State, who keeps rolling down in the FCS.
- Ohio State stays above Oregon despite the Ducks beating Penn State on the road. Ohio State’s really good. Penn State’s not.
- The SEC’s top trio is hard to separate on paper. Even with Alabama beating Georgia in Athens, there are cases to be made that the Bulldogs were the better team.
- Notre Dame and Miami are perfectly equal, which sounds about right after what we saw from them four weeks ago.
- Think of Penn State as being more like Indiana than Ohio State and Oregon. That’s their category. It’s not bad, but it’s very Penn State.
- There’s a big drop after LSU. Eleven best teams, then everybody else.
- The SEC has ten of the eighteen best teams in the country.
- USC’s still one of the twenty best teams.
- Utah’s back to looking like the Big 12’s best, which mostly makes me wonder if Texas Tech is going to rise further. It might depend on their quarterback decision.
- We’re getting to the point in the season where you should trust Movelor. It’s been roughly as accurate as ESPN’s FPI and SP+ (more accurate than in the past) and currently sits 0.7 points per game less accurate than the closing line. The offseason tweaks worked, and aside from a few FCS cases, it appears to have caught up to all the teams it was majorly wrong about in August.
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