Tarleton State might get the 1-seed. Montana State might be the best team in the country. The Dakota Marker game is three days away.
True. True? True.
It’s North Dakota State vs. The Field, but right now The Field’s a three or four-headed monster. What our model’s seeing:
Moving In: Yale
Yale crushed Stonehill, which doesn’t mean much by itself but does make the Bulldogs at least a touchdown favorite in all of their next four games, per our model. Would they get in at 7–3? We don’t know. But the chance is high enough that they’re on the right side of the cut line right now.
Moving Out: Abilene Christian
Southern Utah had been threatening for weeks, leading all of Tarleton State, Northern Arizona, and West Georgia in the fourth quarter. They finally finished a win, toppling Abilene Christian to move to…2–5. An understandable loss but a bad loss for the Wildcats, who are now .500 with Tarleton still on the schedule.
Moving Up: Tarleton State, Rhode Island
Rhode Island moved up into a home game with its dominance at Albany. It’s unfortunate that those guys aren’t scheduled to play Monmouth, the other undefeated team in CAA play.
Elsewhere, in a main story: Tarleton State’s back into the 1-seed.
Is this for real?
Kind of.
Looking at current probabilities teams go undefeated, Tarleton’s the likeliest 1-seed. NDSU’s got South Dakota State on the road this weekend, and they still have to go to Grand Forks to deal with another top-five team in North Dakota. Tarleton has some challenges left—they play ACU on the road next week—but nothing like those two games.
That said, Tarleton’s only 46% likely to get the 1-seed. NDSU’s at 36%, and that rises to 49% in simulations where the Bison take care of business in Brookings. Tarleton doesn’t control its fate. NDSU does.
Playoff Probabilities, Average Final “Rankings”
Four playoff teams are locks. Three more are very close. Thirteen are 90% likely or likelier to make the field.
As a reminder, these “rankings” aren’t about any poll. They’re how our model projects the committee to seed teams. In reality, the committee will only seed the top 16. But if they kept going and ranked the whole FCS? Our model would be ready. Really, we do this because it helps our model form a bracket, and it helps illustrate how far teams like Youngstown State have to climb to make the field.
The lists…
Playoff Probabilities, Average Final “Rankings” (Continued)
One of our favorite demonstrations of playoff certainty/uncertainty is to look for the point on the playoff probability list where our model starts expecting one or more teams to miss it. In almost every simulation, all of North Dakota State, Tarleton State, South Dakota State, and Montana State make the field. In almost no simulation do the current 24 teams in the bracket all make the real eventual bracket. Where, in between, does it flip from likely to unlikely?
The answer right now is “14 teams deep.” In more than 50% of simulations, all of NDSU, Tarleton, SDSU, Montana State, Lehigh, Tennessee Tech, Montana, UC Davis, Harvard, Stephen F. Austin, North Dakota, Monmouth, Villanova, and Mercer make the field. Add Presbyterian to that group, and our model starts expecting at least one team to miss out.
Of course, it’d still be unsurprising if one of those top fourteen missed it. It’s only 53% likely that they all fit. But it’d be more surprising if one missed than if they all made the cut.
Other things of note:
- We should stress how uncertain we are about the committee’s treatment of the Ivy League. Our model heavily weights total losses, and it’s easy to avoid those if you play fewer games. Will the committee view it this way? We don’t know. But take all of Harvard, Dartmouth, Yale, and Penn’s numbers with a grain of salt.
- Jackson State’s most likely playing in the SWAC Championship and therefore missing the playoff. With only one expected pure automatic bid (the NEC champion), the at-large cut line is therefore 24th.
- Some of Montana State’s average ranking is that they still have to play both UC Davis and Montana (plus the utterly terrifying Northern Colorado Bears). That South Dakota State loss does hurt, though, and it doesn’t help to have another number in the loss column from losing to Oregon. Would they be seeded behind an undefeated Lehigh? I don’t know. But a one or two-loss SDSU is a pretty safe bet to wind up ahead of the Bobcats.
How Good Is Everybody? (Movelor’s FCS Top 25)
Plenty to talk about here:
How Good Is Everybody? (Movelor’s FCS Top 25, Continued)
Part of why NDSU dropped this week is that they only beat Indiana State by 31 as 43.6-point Movelor favorites. This is silly, of course, but these data points are important. They’re part of what makes Movelor so accurate in December.
With North Dakota turning in maybe its most impressive game of the season in Carbondale, the results put NDSU within reach of The Field. NDSU is a 7.3-point favorite in Brookings. They’re currently set to be a 10.8-point favorite in Grand Forks. Against Montana State in Frisco, they’d only currently be favored by 6.0.
These are still large numbers. Ohio State would only be favored by 5.7 against Oregon right now. A whole touchdown is a lot between two of the best teams in the country. But it’s worth watching North Dakota, because they’ve so consistently exceeded our model’s expectations this year. There’s a chance our model’s still low on the Fighting Hawks. It’s also worth watching Montana State, who seemingly continues to improve the longer the season goes on, something that would track as Brent Vigen gets more and more time with his overhauled roster. And South Dakota State, while more a known quantity, is capable of knocking off their archrival this weekend. It’s the FCS’s answer to Alabama vs. Georgia. There’s a chaos factor there from all of the emotion.
Tennessee Tech keeps making strides towards that top five. Bobby Wilder’s in his second year in Cookeville. He had plenty of success at the FCS level way back at Old Dominion. It’s weird to see the eastern half of the country’s best team playing in that OVC–Big South hybrid league, but the SoCon already came calling, so order may be restored soon. Anyway, our bracket currently has TTU hosting North Dakota in the second round, which could be a classic.
Abilene Christian’s still eleventh, even with that 4–4 record, and Southern Utah’s up into the top 25 despite being 2–5. The UAC is vicious right now, and that’s without accounting for any potential slights from the committee due to the league being a little newfangled.
Teams don’t usually move more than three points in a week in Movelor’s ratings, at least this far into the year. Only 5.4 points separate the edge of the top 10 from the edge of the top 25. This is a tight, tight pack.
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