Who are Georgia’s most likely 1st round CFP opponents?

Georgia football only has two regular season games remaining, and with three more weeks until the final College Football Playoff bracket is released everyone wants to know who Georgia could play in the first edition of the 12-team playoff.

This can be a hard thing to project because Georgia could still end up in multiple spots in the bracket. As it stands today, the Bulldogs are the 11-seed, but they could still climb into the top four if they win the SEC. So who are the most likely teams that Georgia could face in their first game of the CFP?

Penn State Nittany Lions

If the season ended today, Georgia would hit the road to take on 6-seed Penn State. It may be unlikely that this is still the case after three more weeks of games, but Penn State is a team that Georgia could realistically face and is one Georgia fans would love to see beause they are about as unproven as any team in the country.

Notre Dame Fighting Irish

Looking at who the current CFP teams play to finish the season, there likely won't be too many more losses from these teams. However, one team that likely will lose and fall behind Georgia in the rankings is Indiana, who travels to Ohio State this weekend.

If Indiana loses, they will likely drop far in the CFP rankings because of how bad their resume and schedule is. So that means every team behind them would move up, giving Georgia the 10-seed. This would potentially match them up with 7-seed Notre Dame for a first round game in South Bend, IN.

Notre Dame would present a bigger challenge than Penn State, but this Irish team did lose to Northern Illnois at home earlier this season. So Georgia fans should have a lot of confidence facing Notre Dame as well.

What happens if Georgia wins the SEC?

There is still an outside chance that Georgia wins the SEC and automatically earns a top four seed and first round bye. In this scenario, it is nearly impossible to predict who Georgia would play, but there are some interesting matchups that could occur.

If UGA wins the SEC, they would likely earn the 2-seed as the second highest ranked conference champion. This would match them up with the winner of the first round game between the 7-seed and 10-seed in the quarterfinals. A large variety of teams could find themselves in this position, including Ole Miss and Alabama.

Now those would be two very intriguing matchups as Georgia would have a chance to get some revenge on one of the teams that beat them this season. And knowing how difficult it is to beat the same team twice, this is an opportunity Georgia should welcome with open arms.

These projections could change drastically as the rest of the season unfolds, so Kirby Smart and Georgia just need to focus on winning their final two games to ensure they are in the playoffs at the end of the season.