Although Georgia's chances of making the College Football Playoff are quite high, the Bulldogs are going to need some help to get to Atlanta. Since they lost the head-to-head tiebreaker to Alabama, the Crimson Tide will need to lose two more conference games for the Dawgs to effectively take their spot. While there are a slew of teams with one SEC loss like Georgia has, there is another with zero...
That would be the Texas A&M Aggies, who are ranked No. 3 in the country at 7-0 on the season and 4-0 in SEC play. One would think that the Aggies are a shoo-in to make the playoff, right? Not so fast... Although they do have a slightly better FPI percentage chance to get in than even Georgia, the Dawgs have the far easier road ahead. This is perhaps best illustrated by what Mark Schlabach had to say...
He wrote the SEC blurb for ESPN's post on Friday previewing Week 9 in terms of overall conference contenders. While Schlabach did write that Alabama, Georgia and Texas A&M are the teams to beat to get to Atlanta out of the SEC, he did mention that Texas A&M has three tough road games left to be played. The Aggies will play at LSU this weekend, followed by at Missouri and at Texas later on as well.
Georgia's two toughest games left are at home to Texas and then vs. Georgia Tech down in Atlanta.
Georgia may be able to surpass Texas A&M to take Aggies' spot in Atlanta
This seems to play a part in what is reflected in this week's FPI rankings for ESPN. Texas A&M may have the fourth-best odds to make the playoff at 85.2 percent, which is 3.0 better than Georgia's mark of 82.2 coming. However, Georgia is ranked sixth in the country in FPI at 21.5, whereas Texas A&M is only ranked 10th in the nation at 17.4. Texas A&M is good, but is still somewhat unproven...
Oh, wait! There is every more data working in Georgia's favor here. In terms of winning its conference, Georgia has the second best odds of doing that in the SEC at 19.1 percent. That does not seem like much, but Alabama has the second best odds of doing that in the country with an SEC-best 57.9. Texas A&M has the third best odds of winning the SEC, but the Aggies' mark only comes in at 8.4...
And as far as making the national championship game and then winning it, Georgia has slightly better odds of doing both than the Aggies. The Dawgs have the fifth-best odds in the country of playing for a national championship at 18.9, right behind Oregon at 19.0. Texas A&M has the sixth-best chance at 13.8. Georgia has a 9.1 percent chance to win the national title, while Texas A&M is only at 5.2 now.
To attempt to tie a bow on this, Georgia and Texas A&M are among a group of six teams who can realistically win it all. Anything over 5.0 percent seems possible. Although Alabama, Indiana, Ohio Sate and somehow Oregon have better chances than them, Georgia seems to be beating Texas A&M in every conceivable category when it comes to playoff position. Again, it all comes back to the games!
Georgia and Texas A&M are both playoff viable, but Georgia has the much easier pathway in right now.