Notre Dame’s goal of returning to the College Football Playoff this season is in serious jeopardy following Saturday night’s 41-40 loss to No. 16 Texas A&M, a devastating setback that essentially amounted to a must-win for the No. 8 Fighting Irish.
While it’s prudent to never say “never” in a season overflowing with parity and to be careful when using “eliminated” this early in the campaign, the likelihood of this Notre Dame squad climbing out of an 0-2 hole and winning out from here to finish 10-2 is slim. The Irish were one of three teams to drop out of CBS Sports’ updated playoff projections coming out of Week 3 and no longer control their own destiny in the postseason conversation.
If Notre Dame catches fire and runs the table, the Irish would be vying for one of only seven at-large spots in the bracket since five auto-bid conference champions will assume nearly half of the total seeds. In the expansion era, five multi-loss teams appeared in the playoff last season as a non-conference champion and all of those entries managed at least one regular-season win over a ranked opponent to help boost respective resumes.
Bowl projections: Texas, Notre Dame fall out of College Football Playoff spotlight, Texas A&M emerges
Brad Crawford
At-large playoff entries Texas (11-2) had four top 25 wins last season, Tennessee (10-2) had three, Ohio State (10-2) had two, SMU (11-2) had two and Penn State (11-2) had one.
Moving deeper into the strength of schedule conversation, here are the factors that must go in the Irish’s favor to be considered for playoff inclusion:
- The selection committee’s new scheduling metric gives extra credit for beating quality teams while lessening the impact of losses to elite competition. While Notre Dame’s setbacks against Miami and Texas A&M would qualify, the remaining slate offers only three potential opportunities at wins that would fall under “quality” by the selection committee’s definition — NC State, USC and Navy.
- As it stands, none of those three unbeaten opponents left on the schedule are ranked inside the AP Top 25, but that will change if the Wolfpack (3-0) win their next three games against Duke, Virginia Tech and Campbell prior to traveling to South Bend on Oct. 11.
- USC will only be ranked when the Trojans go to Notre Dame the following weekend if they’re able to take out Michigan State, unbeaten Illinois and Michigan over the next four weeks.
- As for Navy, the Midshipmen have the longest runway to be ranked at the time of their matchup with the Irish on Nov. 8. Last season, one of Notre Dame’s quality wins during its run to the playoff was a 51-14 victory over Navy in October. However, that Irish team finished 11-1, not 10-2.
There’s also the “what happens elsewhere” element to Notre Dame’s playoff hopes. If five spots are secured by the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC and Group of Five’s respective champions, those other seven seeds will likely include — at minimum — runner-up finishers from the SEC and Big Ten.
Eleven SEC teams were ranked in last week’s AP poll, a new record. The conference is going to beat itself up over the next 10 weeks and change, but we’re expecting multiple finishers with at least 10 wins. In the Big Ten, unbeatens Penn State and Oregon play each other on Sept. 27, while top-ranked Ohio State’s remaining matchups with ranked competition come against Illinois, Penn State and Michigan.
Looking ahead, let’s say the Big Ten puts at least two others behind its league champion in the playoff with the same number coming from the SEC. Now, a potential 10-win Notre Dame squad is battling for three at-large spots with possible second-place finishers from the Big 12 and ACC.
And what happens if South Florida and Tulane win out, then face off in the American title game? If the Green Wave’s lone loss comes to the Bulls during conference championship weekend, the Group of Six chaos scenario would unfold with possibly two entries in the playoff.
Tulane travels to nationally-ranked Ole Miss in Week 4, a pivotal matchup for Jon Sumrall’s team and an opportunity for a quality win. This is a numbers game for Marcus Freeman and the Irish moving forward. Notre Dame’s best-case scenario is a 10-2 finish with ranked victories over NC State, USC and Navy the rest of the the way along with a logjam near the top of the SEC and Big Ten with multiple losses from those in the playoff discussion.
Rooting for Miami and Texas A&M to continue hot starts wouldn’t hurt. When the playoff expanded to 12 teams ahead of the 2024 season, the new format looked advantageous for the Irish, who were almost assured a spot annually as long as they reached 10 wins.
That may no longer the case a year later, not with the updated “record strength” addition for sorting teams from the selection committee and Notre Dame unexpectedly losing consecutive games in the fourth quarter to open the 2025 season.
