College Football Playoff Probabilities, Entering Week 3

We have our model! You can find details on how it works here. The short version is that Movelor is the ratings system we’ve created to project and simulate games, and it’s paired in the model with our old CFP Rankings formula which has served us so well these last few years.

We’ll publish every team’s division championship probability, conference championship probability, playoff selection probability, and national championship probability at the bottom of this, so if you want to look at the whole FBS, you can do it down there. Up here, though, we’re going to go through the playoff picture, now that we have our model to assist us, before diving into this week’s games. So, first, the playoff picture:

These are our eight likeliest playoff teams. There are plenty of others who could make the field—ten others are between 5.0% and 10.0%, and a few dozen others have at least a 1-in-1,000 chance—but these are the eight in our focus.

At the top, Georgia’s path is clear. The SEC East is not easy, but the Dawgs are so much better than everyone else that for them to lose in the regular season and make the conference championship and lose in the conference championship and not get enough help elsewhere—the things that all more or less need to happen in conjunction for them to miss the field—an improbable combination of results would need to occur. They are a 5-in-6 favorite to make the playoff merely two games into the season.

Behind them, Alabama remains more likely than not to make the cut, but Movelor did react negatively to the narrow escape from Texas, and the SEC West is a tougher animal than the East. Alabama is roughly in line with Ohio State and Michigan, and it’s worth noting here that, as you can find below, Movelor favors Michigan narrowly over Ohio State to win the Big Ten. What does it mean, then, that the Buckeyes are more likely to make the playoff? Nonconference scheduling matters. Ohio State scheduled Notre Dame, who might be bad but is probably at least decent. That leaves enough meat on the bone to give them better outs than the Wolverines should something go awry (one of those outs is Ohio State losing to Michigan but Michigan going 11-2 with a Big Ten Championship loss, but that is a narrow road).

It’s a big drop, then, to Oklahoma State and Clemson, and it’s a bit eye-popping to see the Pokes labeled as more likely than the Tigers to make the field. It’s also a bit eye-popping to see the Tigers only at one-in-five. What’s going on? Well, Clemson was good-not-great last year and then didn’t add much talent relative to what they’ve been adding. Oklahoma State finished last year strong, then won comfortably last week against an Arizona State team whom Movelor views respectably. Oklahoma State, in Movelor’s eyes, is not only the fifth-likeliest playoff participant in the country. It’s the fifth-best team. This goes against consensus. We’ll find out if Movelor’s right.

A broader point worth ingesting with this gap between the top four and the Oklahoma State/Clemson duo is that Georgia, Alabama, Michigan, and Ohio State all benefit from being a lot better than the other teams in their conference. For Georgia and Alabama, this is because of how good they are. For Michigan and Ohio State, it’s a little more mixed. For Oklahoma State and Clemson, the gap just isn’t there, and Oklahoma State has the added pitfall of being forced to play its league’s second-best regular season team if it wins the Big 12 regular season title. For Michigan and Ohio State, it’s likely they’ll be playing somewhere around the fifth-best Big Ten squad. That is a large advantage.

Next up are Oklahoma, the narrow Big 12 underdog, and Utah. Oklahoma has slid in Movelor’s eyes by a few points despite beating UTEP by 32 and Kent State by 30, and this is because Movelor thought they should have won by more. It sounds a little silly, but at the same time, having the capacity to run up the score against mediocre teams is indicative of a powerful offense. Oklahoma’s offense is probably fine, but as with Oklahoma State, it’s possible Movelor’s onto something. Utah, meanwhile, does have the one loss but is the clear Pac-12 favorite in Movelor’s eyes, nearly a 50% bet to win that league. A one-in-ten playoff chance isn’t very good. We want to stress this. But it’s eighth-best in the country right now, which goes back to our point from last weekend that with Notre Dame out of the picture, the second tier of playoff contenders is thin.

On the topic of those playoff contenders: We listed seven of these last Sunday—all of them but Utah—as primary, secondary, or tertiary characters in the story. We also listed USC and BYU. Movelor is very low on USC, taking an aggressive negative stance on the unprecedented roster construction there in contrast to the media’s aggressive positive stance and other ratings systems’ more measured stance. As such, it and our CFP Formula only give the Trojans a 0.4% chance of making the playoff. BYU, meanwhile, who has a very clear path but just might not be all that good, comes out at a 5.1% chance.

Onto the games, then.

Games of Consequence

The most consequential games are unlikely to actually be consequential, and they’re the games our eight likeliest playoff appearers are playing. Georgia’s at South Carolina. Michigan hosts UConn. Ohio State hosts Toledo. Alabama hosts Louisiana-Monroe. Oklahoma State hosts Arkansas-Pine Bluff. Clemson hosts Louisiana Tech. Utah hosts San Diego State. Only Oklahoma, who visits a two-loss Nebraska team which just fired its coach, is expected by betting markets to play a game at two scores or closer. Things probably won’t happen with these games, but if they do, they’ll be big.

Games of Decisiveness

There are, then, below these consequential games, games less likely to impact the overall playoff picture but of high consequence for teams’ individual playoff (and similar) hopes. BYU visits Oregon, with the latter trying to pump up its 1.8% playoff probability and show it’s not a mess while the former tries to establish itself as a legitimate national power. We don’t have exact scenarios today, but I’d imagine nearly all of BYU’s 505 playoff-appearing simulations were ones where they went 12-0, and given they’re around a toss-up to win this game, that implies a win could boost their playoff chances close to ten percent, putting them up there with Utah and Oklahoma. This is, hands down, the biggest game of the weekend.

Five others that matter:

• Penn State (8.2% playoff-likely) plays at Auburn (0.2% playoff-likely) in a game that would look excellent on paper for the Nittany Lions were it a win. Penn State wins the conference in 6.2% of our simulations, so most of its playoff paths run through that route, but losing this would signify that they probably can’t compete with Michigan and Ohio State anyway, and there’s evidently another 1-in-50 path to the playoff which one would assume involves winning this game, because a loss paired with not winning the Big Ten leaves little room to impress. Auburn, meanwhile, is fighting for its dignity (also called bowl eligibility) in the SEC West, as all SEC West teams do below Alabama from time to time.
• NC State (5.9% playoff-likely) is still trying to purge the memory of a should’ve-been-a-loss at ECU from the public consciousness as they host Texas Tech (0.7% playoff-likely). Texas Tech’s a good sleeper in the Big 12, having finished last year strong after their midseason coaching change. NC State, like the entire ACC (and Pac-12, and Big 12), has a better chance of winning its conference than making the playoff, so scenarios in which they lose this game and go on to win their league are ones where NC State is likely damned.
• Michigan State (6.4% playoff-likely) goes to Washington (0.4% playoff-likely) for a very similar game to Penn State’s at Auburn’s, but with higher upside (Washington’s far likelier to win the Pac-12 than Auburn is to win the SEC) and higher downside (Washington might stink, winning at Auburn might still hold some weight even if they finish 5-7).
• Miami (3.5% playoff-likely) plays at Texas A&M (0.8% playoff-likely) in a game that should have been a clash between two suspect-but-hyped teams and is instead more akin to Penn State and Michigan State’s trips to SEC and Pac-12 country. More than anything, this is a measuring stick for the Hurricanes in Mario Cristobal’s first year, and it’s unlikely to be treated as a particularly accurate one because it’s very hard to know if the Aggies are actually any good.
• Finally, USC hosts Fresno State, who was supposed to be one of the best mid-majors in the country but fumbled their chance to excite when Oregon State beat them last Saturday night. What we’re looking for here is the same thing Movelor’s looking for: Margin. If USC exceeds expectations, it will rise in our model’s eyes, and it should rise in ours as well. If USC does not exceed expectations, we should not respond by continuing to say they’re as good as Oklahoma and Utah when that’s far from evident.

The Deep Cuts

Other games of intrigue:

• Wake Forest (5.4% playoff-likely) hosts Liberty (0.1% playoff-likely), a solid Group of Five team and one of those one-in-a-thousand playoff hopefuls.
• Pitt (2.3% playoff-likely) is at Western Michigan, one of the MAC favorites. An overtime loss to Tennessee should go down as one of the best defeats in the country, even at home, so Pitt’s not dead.
• Texas (1.3% playoff-likely) welcomes UTSA to Austin, trying to bounce back from heartbreak or exultation (depending on your paradigm) while likely playing shorthanded under center. Like WMU, UTSA is a contender in one of the worse Group of Five leagues. Unlike much of last year, they have no chance to go undefeated.
• Florida State visits Louisville tonight in a game that’s mostly just the best in its time slot but does have a little bearing on the fringes of the ACC race.
• Kansas plays at Houston—the Jayhawks just beat West Virginia, Houston’s played a pair of overtime games against UTSA and Texas Tech as part of a cautious but aggressive nonconference scheduling effort which presents a great case study for Group of Five programs with substantial playoff hopes.
• Arizona hosts North Dakota State. I’m not seeing a line on it on the app I’m referencing, but NDSU should be favored, and possibly by a lot. Arizona’s only got a 0.1% chance of winning the Pac-12 in our model’s eyes. This is a late-night contest. Credit to Arizona for scheduling the Bison.

**

So, those are the nineteen games on our radar for the weekend, and this is where our model stands on the field as a whole. We’ve ordered the table below alphabetically, but to name the teams between 5.0% and 10.0% playoff-likely, to save you sifting, they’re: Kentucky, Penn State, Minnesota, Michigan State, NC State, Iowa State, Arkansas, Wake Forest, Tennessee, and BYU. So behind the top eight, those are our model’s next ten. There is so much football yet to be played.