10 Teams outside the Top 10 that could reach the College Football Playoff

Multiple of these teams are going to the playoff. You're trying to turn the entire program and make it a winning program. This is a Signetty Indiana mold. What I'm starting to see from Michigan is a team that gets better and starts learning its own identity every single quarter. (upbeat music) I'm Joel Clath, this show is sponsored by Hilton, Hilton for the stay. And we thank them for their support. Really fun show to get into today because, listen, we think we know what's going on in college football, but history tells us that we don't know what's going on. I mentioned this in Monday's program. If you haven't watched that, go back and watch Monday's show, the recap of last week and what we saw in college football. But there are no absolutes. We speak in definitives and shows like this and I get it, fans. We like to be definitive and everything. But the reality is is that we don't know how this is all gonna play out. I have evidence right here to back that up. So here's what we're gonna do. I wanna talk about some teams that are not in the top 10 because history suggests that a lot of these teams are actually gonna make the college football playoff. So today's episode is 10 teams outside of the top 10 that could make a playoff run. And here's the evidence that we base this entire philosophy off of. At this time last year, the exact moment last year, right after the third game of the college football season, seven of the eventual 12, seven of 12 of the playoff teams were outside of the top 10. OU was 11. Ole Miss was 13. Bambo was 14. Tech was 17. Indiana would go on to win it. They were 19. Tulane and James Madison unranked. No votes. None whatsoever. Get it with the group of five. Was it just an anomaly though? Just last year? No, it was also the previous year. So we've seen two versions of this 12 team playoff. And in both years, we've seen basically the identical thing. Two years ago, exact moment in time, we've had six of the 12 teams that were outside of the top 10. So listen, history suggested this is going to change and in a dramatic way. Notre Dame was 17. They would play for the national championship. Clemson was 21. Boise was unranked. Indiana was unranked. ASU was unranked. And SMU was unranked receiving no votes. None whatsoever. So like, I can't wait. And it makes you look at this and grand at the AP poll, but it just makes you look at this totally different. And this is one of the reasons why I get so frustrated with the AP poll is because these voters, even though we've seen games, they're not actually switching or adjusting their evaluation of these teams based on what we've seen. Because I've got some great data of a bunch of these teams. Here are 10 teams that I think could be in the playoff that are not in the top 10 right now. Let's start with number 12. We'll just kind of go in chronological order right from the top 10. Number 12 is USC. Now, if you've been watching this show, you know that I've been high on USC. Now, of the 10 teams, I'll be real honest. I'm having or starting to have a harder time with USC and specifically because of the way that their defense played in their last two games. I'm officially concerned about the defense. They gave up 30 to Louisiana, 35 to Rutgers. Rutgers ran it all over them. And again, it's just kind of the middle of that defensive line. Their tackling was not good. It's all the same problems that we've lamented for a number of years with Lincoln Riley's teams at USC and even going back to Oklahoma. They do not go east and play very well. And it looks like they're just going to have to sit there and outscore teams again. Now, can they do that probably? Now, can they do that against top end opponents? Probably not. It's obviously going to help if they can be on the West Coast. They've also got some guys that are banged up. They lost their freshman, freshman Trent Mosley for a couple of weeks. You know how high I've been on him. They're banged up in the secondary. We have not seen Jakeem Stewart. Although things are trending towards him playing this week against Oregon. The offense looks really good, but I just don't, I don't think that you can look at this team and think to yourself like, yeah, they're definitely going to do it. But they're outside of the top 10 right now. They've got the talent if they can shore up some things on the defensive side. Maybe they need to play much better when they go east and particular on the road. Just real quick. This is their schedule. It's not an easy schedule just as reference of what they've got coming up monster game this week against Oregon. They've got to play Washington. They've got to go to Penn State. That'll be difficult. Host Ohio State. That's obviously tough. Go to Indiana. Again, these going east games, Penn State, Indiana. This is where they've really struggled with Lincoln Riley. So we'll see what they can, they can do. I think that they need to be a 10 and two team. So you're looking at those games and you're like, you got to win four of those games, including UCLA at UCLA, but obviously that's kind of at home as well here in L.A. So USC would be the first team right there. Let's move down the rankings. How about number 14 Tennessee? Have not talked a lot about Tennessee. And this one's for our old producer Catherine and Miss Becky. Whoo, Miss Becky. Here you are. Tennessee has taken care of business. I'm just telling you right now. They haven't played anybody. And you know how I feel about teams that haven't played anybody. But, but they've done what they should to the teams that they've played. They've taken care of business against Georgia Tech. They had, they beat them by three touchdowns in that game and they've been running the football. See, this is not just Tennessee throwing deep choice and being a pass first team. They've protected their true freshman quarterback phase on Brandon and they've done it really well. They're number one in the power of four rushing the football in nearly 300 yards per game. I think that that's exactly what you should be doing with a guy like phase on Brandon. And there's that you're not putting it all on his shoulders early. I think it's tough to win as an inexperienced young player at the quarterback position. But when you have a run game, now you can insert yourself into the operation and it can, it can do a lot. This week's going to tell us a lot. Obviously they're going to face Texas. I'll just throw this out there. And more on tomorrow's show when we do the picks and previews. Texas has not played well on the road over the last couple of years. And so this is an opportunity here for Tennessee. All of those teams that I mentioned in the last couple of years, you know, your, your Texas Tex Indiana's, your Notre Dame's, your, your Clemsons, your ASU's. They had a big win in a big moment somewhere along the line of their schedule that put them in the conversation. This could be one of those weeks for Tennessee. And if they were able to be Texas or even, let's say, play them really well. Look at the rest of their schedule. It doesn't look quite as daunting as it once did based on some of the things that we have now learned for teams like, let's say Texas A&M, who didn't look great. Now, maybe Kentucky looks a little bit better. I think Bama will be tough. LSU is now, you know, beatable, but obviously that's going to be tough. I'm just saying, you look at Tennessee and you get a win over Texas and, and like, watch out. Then that's all the sudden becoming a playoff team. And that one's for you, Miss Becky. Number 15, I have this team a lot higher in my tie. In fact, they're inside of my top 10, but they're outside of the AP poll right now. That's kind of the, the measure that we're going by at least at this point. And it's Utah. I've had them again in my top 10, each of the last two weeks. I see the comments down there in the, in the YouTube page. If you haven't subscribed to the show, you should subscribe to the show. Leave a comment. And there's a lot of people like, Oh, Utah's opponents are combined one in eight. So are George's, you know, like nobody is playing quality opponents right now. Outside of like the Texas Ohio State game, oh, Miss has played quality opponents. Like, who is anybody beat, right? It's not an excuse. And certainly I'd rather see better games. But what should you do? Then if you're a great team and you're playing a schedule like that and you're out there and, and you're playing Jones junior high school, what should you do? You should be dominant. And that's exactly what Utah has been able to do. They've been the most impressive team in the big 12 thus far. Hands down. The why you fans will be upset at that and Texas tech fans are like, well, what about us? We spent all that money yet. That team is not as good as Utah. In fact, if you look at some of the analytics and if, if you don't like their opponents, that's fine. Just go look at the data in terms of their things like, you know, the way that they control games, their efficiency overall, what are, what are going on, like Bill Connelly does a nice job with S S and P plus and their metric has Utah second right behind Texas. I have another team just taking care of business, which is Georgia. They are number one in college football right now and average game rating. If you're wanting to look at the analytics again, how do we know based on their opponent? We'll look at some of these things. By the way, right ahead of Georgia, who's also taking care of business, their number eight and overall efficiency right now. Georgia is number one. They're top 10 in the country and scoring offense and scoring defense. What should you do if you're a great team against bad opponents? You should kill them. You should be doing exactly what Utah is doing. They've got an experienced quarterback and Devon Damper. They're adding in wrinkles for Bird Ficklin, who's obviously talented. And I touched on this just briefly there. Big 12 is wide open. You know, we thought that all the money that Texas Tech was going to spend is like put them in the championship game. I no longer feel that way after watching what they did on Friday night against Houston. That's a decent win and how Houston was ranked. But Texas Tech doesn't look like Texas Tech from a year ago where they were head and shoulders above everybody else in the big 12. I think they're a talented team, but I don't think they're head and shoulders above a Utah or a BYU in particular with some of these experienced guy guys on their team. Utah only has two ranked opponents left. They play at home against Houston and then they've got the Holy War against BYU winner of that game likely in the big 12 championship game. By the way, they could just rematch in the big 12 championship game depending on how the schedule all falls out. So you. talk, uh, watch out for the youths death taxes in Utah football. Uh, here's another weekend check in. Let's get a little weekend check in presented by Hilton. When you need a winning team on and off the field, it matters where you stay. So let's get a weekend check in presented by Hilton and look in at Michigan. All right. Michigan is 18th in the country right now. And I know we all kind of threw them off the cliff after the debacle that was the Western Michigan game, but they win the game. Western Michigan is actually not a bad opponent. They beat Oklahoma. Maybe Oklahoma is not great. They come out and last week kind of fiddle around in the first half great second half. And what I'm starting to see from Michigan is a team that gets better and starts learning its its own identity every single quarter. And they get more confident in who they are the way that they want to win every quarter. You know, and that's a dangerous thing because this is still a talented team. Um, what I did like about last week's game, they got Andrew Marsh going. They needed to get him going. The young wide receiver. He's now a sophomore. I thought he was outstanding as a true freshman. Um, and for underwood, having those targets on the outside that he trust the JGB cannons of the world, the Andrew marshes of the world. That's a big deal. Marsh went 10 catches for 105 and a touchdown. So now they've got a legitimate one and two punch on the outside to throw the football to you can always incorporate the quarterback into the run game, which they didn't really have to do last week in in their contest. So he only had four design runs underwood did against you, tap after the week prior against. Oh, you run 16 times on design runs. They will pick their spots where Bryce needs to affect the run game last week. They didn't need it. Their defense is outstanding. One of the best in the country last week. They allowed two touchdowns. You could say like, well, that's not great. Joel. Yeah. I mean, circumstantial. They had a short yardage where you tap executed an incredible play, fake and got a big play. And then another one was a fumble that gave you, tap the ball in the red zone on a short field. So the chances that a team is just going to drive the length of the field against Michigan are pretty low. If they can play that Kyle Woodingham field position style of game and underwood continues to play well, I think he's improving every week is numbers last week. We're very good. So Michigan could be one of those teams. There's no doubt we're looking at teams outside of the top 10 that could make a run. And any one of these teams could do it. They've got Iowa up next. And they're the next team on my list. The Iowa Hawkeyes. Let's not forget that they beat everybody's darling. My goodness over there, you know where they loved Vanderbilt last year. Oh, Diego Pavia for Heisman. I mean, like, come on. What what are we doing? And Iowa beat them in the bowl game. And by the way, you don't give me the whole like, oh, they let down. No one played Diego was out there. Iowa scored 55 points last week. I say, I say that to be like, this is a very good program. They're a very consistent program. They know their philosophy. They don't need extraordinary quarterback play. They know that they can win with defense and run game. And that's exactly what they're doing. I get it. It was northern Iowa, but 55 points is 55 points. They use the portal this offseason to go into kind of a sign, a signeti mode production over potential. So a bunch of veteran smaller school guys, which I think is actually perfect for Iowa. They're defense as of right now. Number one in the country. So far, has allowed only one touchdown through three games. Offensively, they are running the rock very similar to Tennessee. Right. How do you minimize quarterback play? You run the rock. And that's what they're doing. 268 yards per game. That's number one in the country. In terms of yards per carry, seven and a half. Iowa plays Michigan on Saturday. Of these two teams, the winner of that game, they are thrust into this conversation of a non top 10 team that could absolutely make a run to the college football play. If it just so happens that Iowa plays Ohio State in the game following that, they also have a road trip out on a Friday night to Washington. Those three games, if they can go two and one in those games, it'll be, I mean, listen, it'll be tough, but they go two and one kind of like Tennessee, you all the sudden knockoff Texas and their schedule looks a little bit different. Iowa goes two and one in these three games and even just split Michigan and Ohio State somehow somehow. They're right there. Their last six are Minnesota, Wisconsin, Northwestern, Purdue, Illinois, Nebraska. They could win all those games. Iowa, sneaky inside track, 10 and two season, maybe 11 and one season for the Iowa Hawkeyes. So watch out for Iowa. How about number 21, Florida? Do you guys watch that game? I know all of us were watching LSU and Ole Miss. Rightly so. Rightly so. That was a great game. But summer all is off to a very, very good start at Florida. The offense looks excellent. Excellent. Buster Faulkner, the OCs got Aaron Filo at quarterback, two really good receivers in Brown and Wilson. But the reason I love this team right now and they're just quietly sitting there and I'm like, man, they could absolutely do what we're talking about. We've seen it. Indiana has done it two straight years outside of the top 10 into the playoff. And in one of those years, they ended up winning the whole thing. We had teams that were not ranked all over the place a couple of years ago. Here's Florida sitting at 21 and Jaden Baugh is the reason who wants to play against Jaden Baugh. He's one of the best backs in the country. I love watching him run the football. Really? He's outstanding. So Florida's got something going here now and they've got a big game. Obviously this Saturday against Ole Miss more on that in a second. Their defense isn't great and they gave up a lot of points against Auburn, but they also had seven sacks, right? So it might just be a high risk, high reward style of defense when you're just trying to go get as many stops as you can, give the ball back to your offense and more specifically that run game. And can the run game and Jaden Baugh protect their defense? That's another part of this equation. They've got Ole Miss on Saturday and guys, like, have you seen the line in that game? Florida is favored. Vegas is telling us something very specific, not just about Florida, but also the human nature of what it's going to be like to try to get back up for Ole Miss after last weekend. That was like super bowl type of stuff. Kiffin coming back, you want to beat him so bad. This has all the elements of a letdown game for Ole Miss this week. Florida is favored. If Florida wins that game, look at the rest of their schedule. You could make a very strong case that this Florida team will be a ten and two team if they're able to beat Ole Miss this weekend. They've got at Missouri. I'm not a big buyer of Missouri at this point. They've got at Texas in Georgia, but then OU in Kentucky. You you beat Ole Miss in theory, you could still lose to Texas in Georgia and be a ten and two team. I think it's real for Florida. This is one of those teams I'm high on and this weekend will tell us everything. This is a prove it weekend in college football. I can't wait for tomorrow's episode. Pics and previews are going to be fired tomorrow. You've got to make sure you come back because we've got a ton of huge games and these are the games that are going to send us on our trajectory to what our playoff ultimately will be. This is why I wanted to front load you guys on all of these teams that are not in the top 10 and candidly don't get a ton of discussion around the country. All of us want to discuss everything up top. You know, it's the LSUs. It's the Ole Miss. It's the Texas. It's Ohio State and I've all trapped to that. I'll raise my hand right here, but this is where the playoff is made. Like these are the ingredients to the playoff. Of all these teams I'm going through, I'm going to give you 10. Number 20, Oregon. Oregon is this year's Clemson. Everyone, you know, throwing that out there. I'm not ready to go that far. I'm just not. I think Oregon is in a unique spot where they got a giant wake up call early in the season. Now Dan landing can go out there and fix some things. Granite. I don't love the fact that they're dealing with a lot of injuries. You saw Jeremiah McClellan. He broke his foot and pregame warmups last week. Jamari Johnson hasn't played for the last couple of weeks. His status for this week's game against USC is a bit up in the air. But man, there's still a lot of talent on this team and Dan landing has gotten better every single year. Do we really think that Oregon is all of the dang it. It's not the sudden. All of a sudden. I think I did it guys. All of a sudden, you think they're going to fall off a cliff? The answer is no. The answer is no. They will not fall off a cliff. This team will write the ship. I'm confident in that. I think if they can win this week against USC, get back on track, fix some of those tells that they had and their offensive alignment and specifically quarterback posture. They could easily be a seven and one team going to Ohio State in November, right? So like Oregon is absolutely going to be in this mix. How about 16 Louisville? I talked about Louisville on Monday show. I'll double down Jeff Brahms. One of the best coaches out there in America. Remember the equation we talk a lot about the guys that do the most with the most. We don't talk a lot about the guys that that get the most out of less. And I think I worded that differently on Monday, but that sounded fine too. Brahms is one of those guys though. He did it at Purdue. He started to do it at Louisville. They made it through the Ole Miss SMU stretch of their beginning part of their season. This was the tough part of their season. Everybody else, generally speaking, has a tough conference road. They've got a tough November. There's all these road trips. Louisville's done with that. the the remaining part of their schedule is quite easy. They did exactly what they needed to do and split those games and namely beat SMU because now they're going to be on a collision course with Miami the ACC championship game. Keen holds is playing really well. I like the run game and they got it going against SMU. Isaac Brown, along with the other guy also named Brown, the duo combined for 230 yards on 20 carries and three touchdowns. That was excellent. Now they don't have to play Miami in no ranked opponents left on their schedule. They've got Wake Forest, NC State, Florida State, Syracuse, Stanford, Georgia Tech, UNC, Pitt, Kentucky to finish. I think Kentucky actually looks like their toughest game in the rest of their schedule. Well, Stein gets that win over Texas A&M. That's their toughest game. Louisville, if I was to pick one team from this list that I'm like, yeah, they're they're almost definitely. I think it's Louisville. College football season is almost here and if you're like me, this is the best time of year. You're looking at the schedule, checking the matchups and circling the big games you have to see in person. There's just nothing quite like that Saturday Stadium atmosphere. Now, once you pick your game, the next step is finding the best deal on tickets. And that's where seat geek comes in with over 35 million download. Seek geek is the number one rated ticketing app featuring more than 70,000 events across sports, concerts and live shows. I use Seek geek because they make the entire process effortless. The app makes it super easy to search for your team, compare seats across the entire stadium and grab your tickets in just a few taps. Everything is sent directly to your phone. So getting through the gates on game day is completely seamless. Plus every single ticket is backed by their buyer guarantee. So you can shop with total peace of mind. And of course, I have a code for you guys. You can use code clat 10 for 10% off your next set of college football tickets at Seek geek. That's 10% off any college football tickets with promo code clat 10. Make sure you click on the link in the description to download the app and have the code automatically added to your account. So you can use it later on. We just want to thank Seek geek for their support of the show and all of college football. They played Ole Miss tough. If Ole Miss continues to be one of the better teams in the country then watch out. Speaking of Mississippi, how about the other school in Mississippi? Mississippi state. Guys, they're 24th. And if we weren't talking about Trinidad Chamoulos, we'd be talking about Camario Taylor. If you guys watch Camario Taylor play, he's outstanding. Now, Chamoulos is going to get all of the love as he should. You guys know what I said on Monday. Go back and listen to that program. But dang, man, Camario Taylor, I don't want to see Camario Taylor if I'm an opponent. I think that their schedule is certainly tough. And this is not one that I have a high degree of faith in that they could actually run the table, get themselves into the playoffs. But it's possible when you've got a quarterback like that, they went down 16, nothing at South Carolina, roared back. Now they're three. Mississippi state had lost nine. Nine of their last 10 SEC road games and they corrected that. I think their quarterback gives them not only a chance, but I think that they believe. And that's a big part of trying to do what these teams are going to be trying to do, which is get themselves into the playoff race. Taylor's a real deal. 12 total touchdowns already in just three games. The schedule is very tough though. They face three top 10 teams in their next five games. But with Taylor, like who knows who knows? And I've got one more. And I'm going unranked with this one. Remember each of the last two years, we had, let's see, last year we had Tulane and James Madison. That makes sense. Indiana was 19th. The year before we had Boise, Indiana, Arizona state and SMU all unranked at this point in the season. They went to the playoff two years ago. So of the unranked teams, Joel, who is it? You. See. Look, watch out for UCLA. I'm just like I get excited because we talked about this in the preseason. This was one of those teams that we all kind of had our eye on. At least certainly we did. And we brought them up in the preseason because their coach is real. Their quarterback is real. And some of those players that came with them from JMU are real players. Bob Chesney is a heck of a football coach. And now they're, they, they're off to a three no start. They beat Cal, San Diego state and Purdue all by at least two possessions, 14 points, some strong fourth quarters. It wasn't always pretty. But again, you're trying to turn the entire program and make it a winning program. Like this is the ins, the, the, the signety Indiana mold Wayne Knight is fabulous. This is why he was one of my preseason all American. The country at nearly nine yards per carry so far. Eam Alliava has been very good. He threw it for 275 ran it for 50 last week. They ran it as a team for 369 yards against Purdue. UCLA is number two in power for and rushing so far this season at 287 yards per game. That's real. How did the signety turn Indiana around? He ran the football. They run a very similar structure on both offense and defense that signety took from JMU to Indiana. And now you've got Chesney doing the same thing. JMU now to UCLA. They go to Eugene in three weeks. They've got a buy before the game. And I know that I believe in Oregon. But what's the state of Oregon's roster with some of these injuries? Could UCLA go up there and knock them off? I think that's interesting and even if they don't even if they don't with the way that they've played and looked and the way that they run the football and some of these players that they've got. There is a very good chance even if they lose to Oregon that they could be looking at their last two ball games as a nine and one team look at their schedule. Their final two are at Michigan and home against USC. They could very easily be a nine and one team at that point. And at that point you win one of those and you're ten and ten and two and the big ten. Like you're you're likely going to the playoff. So let's recap. Again, the last two years we had seven of 12 last year outside of the top 10 go to the playoff from this point in the season. Two years ago six of 12 were outside of the top 10 at this point in the season ended up making the playoff. So here's the 10 that I think are are candidly most likely to crash the party this year. I think that we've got a good list going on. We've got USC and Tennessee Utah. Certainly Michigan could do it. I will could do it. Watch out for Florida and particularly in their game against Ole Miss Oregon. Absolutely could could do this Louisville is likely going to be in an ACC championship game winner goes. Mississippi state who knows I know it's a tough schedule. Love their quarterback. Camario Taylor and watch out for UCLA. Even if they lose to Oregon, they could be nine and one facing Michigan late November. So there's your 10 teams. Those are your playoff crashers. I did want to touch on just one other team that I did not include in there and there are a couple. I know I you know Missouri's not in there and there's some others. I didn't include Texas A&M and I know they were a playoff team a year ago and they just lost this game to Kentucky. But it's not just the loss to Kentucky that started to worry me. The reason I didn't include Texas A&M in this list. One is the inconsistency from their quarterback. But two, if you actually watched the game against Arizona State two weeks ago, that was not a game that was an indicative of the score. They beat Arizona State. It looked by like multiple possessions. Oh, they handled their business, but they didn't. Arizona State outgained them in that game and in fact lost it with turnovers. A&M got a defensive score. They got another two short fields and that one, including their first touchdown was set up first and goal from the eight. I believe or just outside of the 10 right around there. So that game wasn't indicative of what this team was or the way that they played that day. Arizona State outside of those few mistakes was actually a better team. And then Kentucky comes in and they beat up Texas A&M and Mike Elko was was not happy about it. Obviously after the game. Kudos to Will Stein. I've known Will for a long time. He learned football under the same offensive coordinator that I learned football. His name is Sean Watson. Sean Watson's now the head coach at Wofford. And means everything to me. He taught me everything I know about about football. Sorry dad. I know I played for my dad in high school football, but like Sean Watson taught me the game. Will Stein played for Sean Watson and Will now has a chance at Kentucky to build something real. And they played great in the first half against Alabama. And then now they go on the road at A&M, which was a playoff team a year ago with their quarterback back and they get a huge win on the road in the SEC. So big ups to Will Stein and Kentucky for that. We've got a huge weekend of games for you tomorrow. It's going to be fire tomorrow. Pics and previews for what I think is going to be at least early. This is going to be the first most impactful weekend in college football. I know, you know, how state Texas is going to reverberate Ole Miss LSU is going to reverberate throughout the season. But this weekend we find out some of these teams in particular that I just talked about, are they for real? Are they going to enter into the college football playoff conversation? We find out this week. I break those games down tomorrow right here on the Joel Clutch Show. Subscribe to the show, follow us wherever you like to social media at Joel Clutch Show. You can rate and review us wherever you listen to these podcasts. We would appreciate that. And most importantly, please tweet.