“Got a real good feelin’ somethin’ bad about to happen.” – Carrie Underwood & Miranda Lambert
We have rankings now, rankings that matter, and looking at those rankings, we see eight of the teams in them are favored by fewer than ten points this weekend against an unranked foe.
And none of those are the main event.
The Big Ones
Eight teams in this country have, per our model, better than a 1-in-20 shot at making the playoff, and six have better than a 3-in-10 shot, and five of the eight and four of the six play games this weekend where the outcome is in doubt.
Tennessee @ Georgia – 3:30 PM EDT Saturday, CBS
It’s what the SEC is supposed to be, Tennessee’s trip to Georgia: Saturday afternoon on CBS, two schools four hours of good ol’ boy apart, each trying to prove themselves the best team in all the land, however far that geographic distinction extends.
The line’s tightened on this, and the over/under’s risen, but Georgia’s still favored by more than a touchdown at home. Tennessee knocked off Alabama by a field goal, and they eviscerated LSU, and they haven’t had too much trouble with anyone else. But their ascent is swifter than we’re accustomed to seeing, and it’s making skeptics out of some—or at least, out of us. Movelor, our model’s rating system, has the Dawgs favored by 13. SP+ and FPI, over at ESPN, each have Georgia favored by 9. This would be a substantial upset if Tennessee pulled it off.
Tennessee, though, as we’ve stressed, doesn’t need to win this game to make the playoff, and neither does Georgia. The loser will need some help, but that help’s likely to come, and for Tennessee specifically may be as simple as TCU losing once more (highly probable, we’ll get to that in a couple minutes). Behind the SEC champion, the Big Ten champion, and even a hypothetical 13-0 Clemson, it’s hard to envision anyone trumping Tennessee at 11-1, especially with the committee saying their 8-0 so far is better than the 8-0 of anybody else. Georgia’s a different story, but only in small part, and what the Dawgs lack in a head-to-head advantage over Alabama they hold in a 46-point head-to-head advantage over Oregon, another theoretical character in the story.
This game, then, isn’t about the playoff. It’s about the national championship. The winner will be one of two teams with a legitimate claim to being the best in the country, alongside presumably Ohio State. This is a high-leverage playoff game, yes. But more than that, it’s a nationwide measuring stick. What a game.
Alabama @ LSU – 7:00 PM EDT Saturday, ESPN
If you aren’t convinced Alabama’s all that good, join the committee, who put them behind a laughable Clemson body of work. The Tide smoked Arkansas and Mississippi State, but they struggled at Texas, and they struggled at Tennessee, and they didn’t have their Heisman-winner quarterback against Texas A&M but that showing was still far from impressive. With Nick Saban their coach and a week off last weekend, this isn’t as dangerous as it could be, but LSU had a weekend off themselves, and the last we saw of them, they were hanging Mississippi from a locker by Lane Kiffin’s waistband. LSU’s been inconsistent and often unimpressive, but when they’ve showed up, they’ve showed out.
Should LSU pull off the upset, it throws a wrench into just about everything. Suddenly, LSU is the leading candidate to oppose Georgia or Tennessee in the SEC Championship, Alabama is almost definitely out of the playoff picture, and LSU’s own path to the first two-loss playoff berth in history probably isn’t there, but is going to get a heck of a lot of attention.
Should LSU keep this close, it probably doesn’t hurt Bama, but it might. Bama is flashing just a 39.0% chance of winning the SEC in our model, but they’ve got a 51.8% chance of cracking the playoff field. There are paths, then, or at least our model believes there are, for an 11-2 Alabama team whose only losses came to other playoff teams.
Clemson @ Notre Dame – 7:30 PM EDT, NBC
Can we pause for a moment and make fun of the people who say Notre Dame’s schedule is too weak because they don’t play in a conference? They played at Ohio State. All three of the current top-ranked teams in the ACC are on their schedule. They’ve got the second-ranked team in the Pac-12 still to play. Notre Dame is playing more top-of-power-conference teams than possibly anyone, and this doesn’t happen every year, but it’s not wholly unusual.
Clemson struggled against Syracuse two weeks ago. They needed to insert their backup quarterback and finish the game on a 20-0 run to get the win. Notre Dame had no such struggle against Syracuse last week, leading by three touchdowns and three extra points midway through the fourth quarter. This isn’t a comprehensive rubric—we don’t solely measure teams based on how they perform against Syracuse—but it’s interesting that Notre Dame was able to protect the ball and beat up Syracuse’s front seven while Clemson dinked around for three quarters and had to break the glass because there was an emergency.
Will DJ Uiagalelei actually start this game? Will he play all four quarters? I really don’t know. Dabo Swinney was quick to pull Kelly Bryant back in the day for Trevor Lawrence, but he’s stuck with Uiagalelei so far, and Cade Klubnik only dropped back a handful of times against the Orange. This would seem to indicate it’s Uiagalelei trying to repeat his 2020 performance. This is not that Clemson team, though.
Clemson did outgain Notre Dame against this Syracuse proxy on a per-play basis, both on the ground and through the air. It was close, but Clemson moved the ball better against Syracuse than Notre Dame did. Turnovers really were the issue. Notre Dame, though, kept the Syracuse ground game far more in check, and a thing that’s not being acknowledged about Clemson is that though their defense is still good, it isn’t anything close to what it was last year. This is a program in decline. It stepped back from 2018 to 2019. It stepped back further from 2019 to 2020. It stepped back in a huge way last year. And while the offense has rallied a bit this season, the defense’s recession hurts.
Still, the spread feels like a reach. Notre Dame has beaten up the ACC, this is true. But Notre Dame has played its best games against the ACC, and that’s probably a coincidence. The average of Notre Dame’s performances is not very good, and for as uninspiring as Clemson’s been, they’ve been more or less consistent, even if they’re arguably trying to do the thing where they peak late (this was a theory in 2019 and 2020, but if there was a final peak, it was still low). Clemson should win this game.
The question is: What happens if Clemson loses? Are they still alive? They were one of this week’s noteworthy recipients of positive FPA, meaning the committee overranked them relative to committee precedent, but losses have a way of provoking the committee to change its stance in a bigger way than wins. Does Clemson, with a loss, fall far enough to effectively wipe the ACC out of the playoff? Or do they have a loss to give? There are likely scenarios—in this game and over the rest of the season—that lead to either.
Texas Tech @ TCU – 12:00 PM EDT, FOX
In Fort Worth, TCU’s trying to keep the magic going, and if it’s any indicator of where this team stands, markets have the Frogs favored by hardly a touchdown, at home, against a team Movelor, SP+, and FPI agree is either the seventh or eighth-best team in the Big 12. The Big 12’s good, but that’s bad, and while it’s possible TCU won’t be an underdog in a single individual game from here out, they’re an underdog to get to 10-0, let alone 13-0. This is the same way craps works. Eventually, someone rolls a seven.
On the other side, if TCU does win, they would like to win big. They’re almost definitely in if they finish 13-0—it would be a thorough shock if the committee kept out a 13-0 Power Five team, though it’s certainly possible (ask yourself if Tennessee or TCU is better at football)—but they’re lacking style points, and they don’t have the power of habit that seems to be a buoyant force upon Clemson’s ship. Clemson is evidently allowed to dink around with mediocre teams. TCU is not. They nearly lost to West Virginia, and they had a relatively tough time with SMU, and the committee doesn’t like that, even if the overall TCU résumé is nearly identical to that of the Tigers.
The Good Ones
A whole bunch more, and for these we’ll go league by league:
Liberty @ Arkansas – 4:00 PM EDT, SECN
Liberty’s probably on the cusp of the committee’s top 25, undefeated but for a narrow loss at Wake Forest. Arkansas may also be close, and they’re a fairly big favorite here at home. In another weird scheduling quirk, like the ND/Clemson/Syracuse one, each of these teams recently played BYU, but unlike that one, with this one Arkansas’s 17-point victory on the road is about equal to Liberty’s 27-point win at home.
In terms of impact, we don’t fully know if top 25 wins will matter to the committee’s playoff selections, as a statistic, but there’s a chance they do, and there’s some circularity. If Clemson’s best win is against Wake, and Wake’s ranking is driven up by Liberty being ranked, Clemson wants Liberty ranked. That kind of thing. It hasn’t really mattered before, but it could theoretically matter, if you’re looking for national stakes in these medium-impact games.
Iowa @ Purdue – 12:00 PM EDT, FS1
Maryland @ Wisconsin – 12:00 PM EDT, BTN
Have we told you about the Big Ten West?
If Illinois doesn’t win the Big Ten West, it’s probably Purdue, though all of Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Nebraska retain a shot (Illinois still has to play both Purdue and Michigan, in addition to theoretically losable games against Michigan State and Northwestern). Who wins the Big Ten West matters for the Big Ten Championship, and it could potentially matter for the Michigan/Ohio State loser depending on who beat whom, though each of those has work to do before that game becomes all-deciding.
Meanwhile, Maryland is another one of those teams that’s probably on the edge of being ranked by the committee, and their exclusion could be part of what dropped Michigan below Clemson this week, a thoroughly silly thing by all criteria but a silly thing that happened and might not be meaningless. I don’t think the committee would reevaluate Michigan this week just because Maryland climbed above an arbitrary threshold, but it could start getting baked in again in a few weeks, when Michigan plays Illinois.
Texas @ Kansas State – 7:00 PM EDT, FS1
Oklahoma State @ Kansas – 3:30 PM EDT, FS1
Baylor @ Oklahoma – 3:00 PM EDT, ESPN+
Every Big 12 team save West Virginia and Iowa State (pour one out) is alive in the Big 12 title chase, or at least I think that they are. I haven’t gamed out every tiebreaker scenario. With 25 games to play, there are 33,554,432 permutations of results from here, and that’s about 33,554,400 too many for these hands. TCU’s the only one with a playoff chance, but who they play if they do make the conference title game could matter a lot. More than that, it’s just a good conference race featuring a lot of good teams, and each of these—in decreasing order—is good football. Texas and Kansas State might be the two actual best teams in the league. Kansas could be getting Jalon Daniels back. Oklahoma and Baylor have slipped up all over the place but retain all that strength on paper. Does the Big 12 have brands?
Oregon State @ Washington – Friday, 10:30 PM EDT, ESPN2
There are paths remaining for each of these guys in the Pac-12, and again, it’s a good game. Worthy of a late Friday night. From here, Oregon State has two winnable games before they host Oregon. From here, Washington goes to Oregon and then gets two winnable ones itself. They’re not Oregon, Utah, or the Los Angeles schools, but they’re the next-best America’s fourth-best conference has to offer.
North Carolina @ Virginia – 12:00 PM EDT, ACCN
Syracuse @ Pitt – 3:30 PM EDT, ACCN
Wake Forest @ NC State – 8:00 PM EDT, ACCN
James Madison @ Louisville – 7:30 PM EDT, ESPNU
The ACC! UNC’s prank of a playoff path is still plausible, albeit more than dicey. Win this, and they very nearly clinch the Coastal. Syracuse is a significant character, still standing as Clemson’s best win. Wake Forest and NC State are each trying to stay ranked, and if Syracuse does go down, the winner in Raleigh might be the only Clemson opponent still standing. Even Louisville provides some intrigue, hosting former and future mid-major darling James Madison a week before heading to the greater Greenville area themselves. Fun stuff.
Tulane @ Tulsa – 12:00 PM EDT, ESPNU
UCF @ Memphis – 3:30 PM EDT, ESPN2
Because Kansas State lost to TCU, Tulane isn’t a playoff-influencing character, but they and UCF are each in the top 25, and in a “state of the game” situation, the AAC would love to finish the year with another team in the top 15, especially one—Tulane—who’s sticking around the league for next year. With the playoff changing to include six conference champions, this is the AAC’s time to rise, but they can’t blow it.
BYU @ Boise State – 7:00 PM EDT, FS2
And, lastly, BYU plays Boise State, and it’d be hard for that to not catch our eye. It’s like the committee with Clemson. We don’t really care how good these guys actually are. We will put this on our list.
The Obligatory Ones
Power Five title contenders playing take-care-of-business games:
- Ohio State @ Northwestern – 12:00 PM EDT, ABC
- Oregon @ Colorado – 3:30 PM EDT, ESPN
- Michigan State @ Illinois – 3:30 PM EDT, BTN
- Michigan @ Rutgers – 7:30 PM EDT, BTN
- Arizona @ Utah – 7:30 PM EDT, P12N
- Cal @ USC – 10:30 PM EDT, ESPN
- UCLA @ Arizona State – 10:30 PM EDT, FS1
Of these, UCLA’s the only one the markets see as being in real danger, but they’re a little too big a favorite to find a home in the “good games” category. That said: If each of these seven teams has a 90% win probability, there’s a 52% chance one will lose. That isn’t the exact situation here, but at least some rating systems have it likelier than not that at least one of these seven loses.
The Sleepers
Games that could be fun, but whose impact is muted:
- Air Force vs. Army – 11:30 AM EDT, CBS
- Kentucky @ Missouri – 12:00 PM EDT, SECN
- Florida @ Texas A&M – 12:00 PM EDT, ESPN
- Washington State @ Stanford – 3:30 PM EDT, P12N
- West Virginia @ Iowa State – 3:30 PM EDT, ESPN+
- Houston @ SMU – 7:00 PM EDT, NFLN
- Florida State @ Miami – 7:30 PM EDT, ABC
Is that half the FBS games, in total? It might actually be more. But hey—it’s a good weekend. Let’s enjoy it, and whatever chaos or clarity it may bring.
