Round 2 Preview of the College Football Playoff

In this episode Nate talks about whether the bye hurts or helps college football teams and discusses all the matchups in the second week of the College Football Playoff. Nate gives his picks, what are yours?

Transcript

This is sports takes with Nate skates. No spin, just straight sports. All right. Hope you guys had a merry Christmas. Welcome to our round two preview show for the College Football Playoff. I'm going to talk about all those round two matchups. But before I do that I want to talk about a narrative that's been going strong since last year's round two of the 2024 College Football Playoff. And that is whether or not the bye week, whether having the extra rest these for these top four seeds is more of a hindrance rather than a help. We saw last season all four teams. Who had the bye week. All four teams who were top four seeds lost their very first game in the second round. So there's been a lot of talk about is that time off? Too much time off? Are these teams so rusty, or have the competitive edge waned so much that having that extended layoff is actually hurting these teams? So with this being only the second year of the 12 team playoff format, we only have four data points to pull from in this discussion. And that is the Arizona State Texas game last year, the Boise State Penn State game, the Ohio State Oregon game, and the Georgia Notre Dame game last year. Now, having all four of the top seeds losing seems instructive for how this playoff would go, but it's important to remember a few things about those games. One, the playoff format has changed. We no longer have Boise State Arizona State type teams as top four seeds. When you look at those games last season, both Arizona State and Boise State were double digit underdogs, very big underdogs. So you had two of those top four seeds expected to lose. That's not how this year's playoff is really going. And Arizona State put up a really tough fight against Texas. Boise State was maybe a little bit overmatched in their game. And then the other two games you have Georgia and Notre Dame. In that game, you had Georgia had lost their starting quarterback, Carson Beck. In the SEC Championship game. Gunnar Stockton was making his first career start in the College Football Playoff, and you also had other mitigating circumstances off the field that you certainly wouldn't expect any of these teams to be dealing with this year. Really, the only game you had last year that would be similar to what we would expect to see this year, would be the Oregon Ohio State game last year. That was also a little bit different than what you typically would expect from a lower seeded team. Ohio State had lost a very close game to Oregon earlier in the year. Ohio State really was probably the favorite to win the national championship last year. I mean, people were referring to it as the best roster money could buy. You had Quinton Jenkins, you had Will Howard, you had Caleb Downs. These are all guys coming from other schools to an already really talented Ohio State roster. So typically you're not going to have probably the favorite as the sixth seed like you saw last season. And so that is a situation that's even different than what we have now. So just drawing a conclusion from four playoff games last year, that's not really enough data to make a decision based off to make any prediction based on how these games are going to go this year. You can try to look to other sports. Okay. How does the bye week work in the NFL playoffs? Well, typically in the current and previous NFL playoff formats, the number one seed advances to the Super Bowl. About 50% of the time. Now that's a different sport. It's a little bit different format. And the number one seed has home field advantage all throughout the playoffs. You don't have that in the College Football Playoff. You saw Dan Lanning recently said Texas Tech should be hosting this game. And I agree with that. I talked about that last episode. The top four seeds should have a home game in the second round of the playoffs, but they don't, so they don't have that same advantage. But you can say, okay, typically that bye week has been good for NFL teams. Uh, if you try to extrapolate this to a different sport, that's really difficult to kind of do. We saw Major League Baseball have a lot of concern over whether the bayou was hurting top seeded teams in the playoffs last year. That was kind of put to bed. The teams with the byes really did well, performed well in the playoffs. Dodgers won the World Series And baseball is a totally different sport. It's every day. It's staying in a rhythm. So look, the question for the College Football Playoff is what does the bye week have any drawbacks? It probably does. I am concerned I've been somebody who said I am concerned about the teams being rusty or the competitive edge being off of these teams. So the question is not really is there any drawback to a bye week? The question is does the potential rust? Does the potential being out of season outweigh the benefit of time to rest and prepare that the top four seeds got going forward? Like as I make my predictions, I am operating from the standpoint that no, it does not outweigh the benefits. I don't think we're going to see all four top seeds lose this year. There's not really any way for us to certainly know whether the bye week is good or bad. We're going to get a lot more information about that this year, but as I make my predictions, I'm operating under the standpoint that that is not going to be the case. It is not going to hurt these teams to have a bye week. I do think there needs to be a discussion about. It is too long of a layoff. These teams played their conference championship games on what, December 7th? And now they're going to play their second round games on December 31st and January 1st. That is too long. That is not a seven day. Bye. And these second round games are ten days after the first round games. So I think the layoff is too long. I think it needs to be shortened, but I don't think it's a negative. But we'll find out this year. I mean if you see another sweep, if you see all four teams lose or you see three of these teams lose. The questions are only going to get louder about if this is too much time off. So let's get into breaking down these games. The first game is Wednesday night, New Year's Eve in Jerry world Miami versus Ohio State. So I think this game is going to be pretty similar to Miami's first game against Texas A&M. And what I mean by that is I think this is going to be a defensive led game. I don't think there's going to be a ton of points scored. These are two really good defenses. They really good pass rushes. We broke down Miami's defense. Um, in the preview for the first round game. I won't get into that a whole lot, but you saw the havoc that Reuben Bey and JR, Hakim, Isidore, some of these other guys on Miami's defense wrought on Texas A&M offense and held Texas A&M to three points. So Ohio State is not going to be Texas A&M. Ohio State has a better defense than Texas A&M has. Uh, and the biggest difference in the game compared to the Texas A&M game to me is they have a Ohio State has a much more efficient, much less turnover prone quarterback than Texas A&M has in Marcell Reed, Julian saying only through six interceptions the whole season. Three of those interceptions were in the first three games against Grambling in Ohio in weeks two and three. When he's just getting his feet under him, he's got a very high completion percentage. You're looking at a guy who completes 78% of his passes. He did have an interception in both of his last two games against Michigan and Indiana, which were two of the really the only good teams that Ohio State played all year other than maybe, say, Washington and Texas. But we're going to have a lot of questions about how is saying going to do under the pressure that will be brought by Miami's front. Uh, you look at how Ohio State performed against Indiana. They only had ten points. This Ohio State offense can be stuffed. And what you're not going to have is saying is not going to run like Marcel Reed. Uh, he's not a running threat. On the flip side of this, okay, what is the Miami offense going to be able to do? Miami was not really able to throw the ball against Texas A&M had about 100 passing yards. Ohio State has a much they have a better defense than Texas A&M. They had the best defense in the country. They have a much better run defense than Texas A&M has. You saw Miami in the fourth quarter really lean on its running game, which was the weakness of the Texas A&M defense. They're not going to be able to do that against Ohio State. I do not think Fletcher is going to run for 170 yards again. Uh, Ohio State has is the first rated in yards per game defense, first rated passing defense, first scoring defense and sixth in rushing defense. I mean, on Ohio State's defense, they have three first team All-Americans. That's just the first team. So the question for this game is going to be can Miami move the ball. Yes. You have Malachi Toney. Yes. You have a good quarterback at Carson back. Yes you have Fletcher. Are they going to be able to move the ball on my on Ohio State's defense. And I don't really think that they're going to be able to I think Miami can win this game. I'm not going to be at all shocked if they win this game. I think if you get enough pressure on saying if you can shut down this offense, which yes, they have Jeremiah Smith, first team All-American, they have Carnell Tate, second team All-American. They have running back Bo Jackson, but they've been shut down at times. This has not been a dominant offense, so if they are able to do that, I think that Miami could win. But you only scored ten points on Texas A&M. Yes. This is a neutral site rather than at Kyle Field. Yes, you've probably shaken the rest off. And at the end of that game their offense really started clicking. And no, you're not going to have the wind that you had in the previous game that stopped them from being very successful in their kicking game. But I just do not think Miami is going to be able to move the ball. On Ohio State's defense consistently. And Julian saying, I do not think is going to turn the ball over three times like Marcel Reed did. I don't think saying is going to help give you the game, no matter how good your pass rush is. So I am picking Ohio State to win this game in a fairly low scoring game. I think it'll be pretty close. I'm not saying it's going to be 10 to 3 like in the Miami Texas A&M game, but I think this is going to be a close, low scoring win for Ohio State. All right. Now I want to talk about the first game on Saturday. It'll be at 11 a.m. the Oregon Texas Tech game. I think this is going to be one of the closer match ups of the playoff. I think it's going to be a lot like how difficult it was to pick a winner in the Miami Texas A&M game. That's how I feel about this game. I think on paper this looks like a really close matchup. We talked about Oregon on the first round game. They obviously came out pretty dominant against James Madison at one point. We're up 27 to 3. That was completely expected I think by most people. So let's talk about Texas Tech going into this game. Texas Tech has been completely and utterly dominant in the big 12. Their only loss of the whole season was a four point loss to Arizona State, when Texas Tech started quarterback was injured in every other game that they played this season. They have won by more than 20 points every game. Texas Tech beat Utah 34 to 10. Houston 35 to 11. Beat BYU 29 to 7 in the regular season, then followed that up by beating them 34 to 7 in the big 12 conference championship game. BYU just won the beloved Pop Tart Bowl over Georgia Tech. These two teams do have two common opponents on the season, in Oklahoma State and Oregon State. Now, in both those games. Oregon won by a larger margin than Texas Tech did, but both teams blew those two programs out. Those programs really struggled this season, so you can't really glean a lot of information from those matchups. Texas Tech is a team that's really going to be led by their defense. They're fifth in yards per game, first in rushing defense, third in points per game. Uh, they also lead the country in forcing turnovers. Texas Tech has 31 takeaways. They have forced 22 fumbles on the season. Now they've recovered 15 or 16 of those fumbles. But this is a team that really turned gets teams to turn the ball over. Really good at taking the ball away. They have two players that are first team All-Americans on defense. Obviously Jacob Rodriguez, we've talked about him on this show when basically every defensive player award he could win an edge rusher. David Bailey on offense. Texas Tech has the fifth ranked offense yards per game, 11th and passing yards per game, and second in points per game. The question for this game is going to be. Can Texas Tech hold up all game long against Oregon? We have seen some of these teams from the big 12 or some of these other smaller conferences throughout the years who were promising but then could not hold up against the big dogs when it came to the end of the season. But I do want to be clear about one thing. Oregon is a good team. Obviously, they have been a good program for the last 20 years, but Oregon hasn't really proved it is a one of the most physical programs that it is a consistently elite top dog in college football. Oregon is not Georgia or Ohio State. I saw this going around on social media and whether it was sarcastic or not, I don't know. But saying that this was an example of a blueblood who had built their program the right way, versus a new money team who just spent a bunch of oil money in nil. Who are we kidding? I mean, Oregon is not a blueblood. Oregon has zero national championships. The program was new money before Nil even got here. They had Phil Knight from Nike spending billions of dollars on the athletic program, giving Oregon probably billions of uniform combinations. Now, by the way, Nike can't bother to give MLB teams a handful of uniform combinations anymore, but they can give Oregon infinite uniform combinations. So that's an aside. I'm really ready for the MLB to get a different apparel manufacturer, but I digress. So talking about Oregon. Oregon lost the 2010 national championship game back to the BCS. They did win a first round playoff game in 2014. However, they then did lose the national championship game by over 20 points, and last year Oregon got dominated by Ohio State in the first round. That is the entirety of Oregon's playoff and national championship game experience from 1916 to 2009. Oregon had two wins in the Big Six bowl games, the Rose Bowl in 1916 and the Fiesta Bowl in 2001, and since then they've won a few, won a few Rose bowls with Fiesta Bowl. But what I'm saying is this is not Blue Bloods versus nil. Oregon spends more on nil than Texas A&M does. I saw the other day, so let's just get that out of here. This is not elite program versus the program. Who did it the wrong way. So the question for this game is will Texas Tech hold up. Well, let's take a look at 2022 when we're talking about big 12 teams. TCU beat Michigan and looked good doing it then got absolutely manhandled by Georgia 65 to 7. Last year, Arizona State had a fantastic offensive performance against Texas. Nearly won that game, but couldn't really stop Texas. But this ain't 2022 Georgia against TCU. This isn't even last year's Texas against last year's Arizona State. This is Oregon versus 2025 Texas Tech. So my gut as a lifelong fan tells me to pick Oregon in this game. Uh, even though Oregon really hasn't proven itself to be elite, I think a lot of fans have given them that moniker that Oregon is an elite program. Look, Oregon's a consistently good program for the last 20 to 30 years. They are not an elite program. They have not proven that they truly are a top dog. They have as much to prove in this game as Texas Tech has, if not more. But while my gut is telling me to pick Oregon, my heart and the stats are telling me to pick Texas Tech. I think that the denial money that they did spend in the off season, and the job that their head coach, Joey McGuire, has done. I don't think this is a cute story. Big 12 team. I think they are legitimately good team with great defensive players. They force a lot of turnovers. That's how you can win these games. So call it wishful thinking. I'm picking Texas Tech in this game. I think it's going to be close. I would expect it to be more high scoring than the Miami Ohio State game. Uh, you know, but I think it's going to be a close win for Texas Tech. Now I'm gonna go out of order here because I'm tired of talking about Alabama. So next up is going to be the Georgia Ole Miss game. That is going to be the last game on the slate at night on New Year's Day. So Ole Miss didn't really look like it missed Lane Kiffin against Tulane. They still had nearly 500 yards of offense, 41 points, a very similar offensive performance to their previous game against Tulane. The defense did actually give up a lot more yards with Pete Golding, the former defensive coordinator, at the helm than they did in the previous matchup, but they still only gave up ten points. They still didn't give up a touchdown till the fourth quarter. This is going to be a lot bigger test for Ole Miss and P Golding in the first matchup between Ole Miss and Georgia earlier in the season. Ole Miss scored a touchdown on its first five possessions, but they couldn't stop Georgia's offense in the fourth quarter. Georgia's defense locked down Ole Miss and the on offense. The dogs ran the ball very successfully. Outscored Ole Miss 17 to nothing in the fourth quarter. Since that game, Georgia's defense has been much better. Uh, Georgia has not given up more than 21 points since the Mississippi State game, and that was with backups in Georgia, was blowing Mississippi State out in their last four games, which includes games against Texas, Georgia Tech and Alabama. Georgia has not allowed more than ten points in any of those. Any of those games we see nationally, and this started earlier in the year and is still going around. There's been a lot of concern about the lack of pass rush for Georgia. Well, if you've been watching Georgia, you know, the pass rush has been dramatically improved over the last few weeks. And that's in part due to the improvement of some young defensive backs that we'll talk about here in a minute. But sacks by the Georgia front is not the stat to focus on. I know that's what everybody's worried about, but that's not that important. What's important is Georgia has only allowed two touchdowns in its last four games. Georgia has only given up 128 rushing yards combined in those four games. That's not just elite. That's historically good. They gave up negative three rushing yards against Alabama. held Alabama to seven points. What did Alabama do against the much celebrated Oklahoma defense? Alabama scored 27 points on offense, albeit with a healthier team than they had in the SEC Championship game and short fields due to problems. Special teams issues with Oklahoma, but Georgia's defense is much better than it was in the first Ole Miss game. I think really the improvement started in the fourth quarter of that Ole Miss game, or at least the turning point for the Georgia defense. I think that Georgia now knows to lean on its advantage in the run. Game over Ole Miss defense in the fourth quarter of that game. Georgia just outmanned Ole Miss. Ole Miss was worn out. Georgia pounded the rock. I think Georgia's going to hopefully do that again. Ole Miss is a very good team. If Georgia's defense plays like it did in the first half of the first game, Ole Miss might win this game. But I think this is a much matured Georgia defense. And that's really the right word because you had a lot of young players. I mean, look at the defensive backs the beginning of the season. You had a recurring problem of young defensive backs. Think Ellis Robinson, Danilo Jones, some of these other guys having trouble deep. And a lot of times they didn't really have bad coverage. Sometimes they were getting burned. But usually it wasn't that they had bad coverage. They just weren't getting their heads turned around. They weren't playing the ball. How have the defensive backs looked the last several weeks? How has Ellis Robinson looked? The last several weeks they have been drastically improved. You've seen Ellis Robinson make at least three critical interceptions that where he looks like Malachi Starks. I mean making really athletic plays. He's really playing the ball. So this Georgia defense is a totally different unit than either at the beginning of the year or even when they played Ole Miss several weeks ago. So also we talked about the bye week. Georgia's had a month off. They've had nearly a month off and Georgia is expecting to have some guys back. Will Dru Bobo the center be healthy? Will Colby Young play? Word on the street is Colby Young wide receiver will play in that game. When Colby Young is healthy, he has been one of Georgia's best weapons. So with Georgia getting guys back from injury, the defense has been rolling. I think Georgia's going to win this game. I'm not saying it's going to be a blowout, but I think Georgia's going to win this game relatively comfortably. I think it'll start close and I think Georgia will probably win by a touchdown ten points. Now moving on to Indiana and Alabama. To me this game is what Alabama team shows up. Who are we going to see on Thursday when Alabama is really playing well they're getting pressure on defense. They're forcing turnovers. They could pretty much beat anybody. And Ty Simpson Ty Simpson can be phenomenal or he can kind of fade under pressure. But Alabama is not consistent. They are even up and down over the course of an individual game. I mean, yes, they scored 34 against Oklahoma, but some of that was because of Oklahoma. He had the meteor pick, six dropped passes a special teams issues short field for Alabama. So yes Alabama got a lot of pressure on Oklahoma. But they also did benefit from some issues that they were not responsible for. Will Indiana make those same mistakes? Uh, there's some talk going around on social media this week about Fernando Mendoza and that most of his stats came against lower level competition. Yes, he crushed some lower level teams. Uh, yes. He was 21 of 23 for 267 yards and five touchdowns in that blowout over Illinois, but some are noting that he maybe didn't play to the same level against Ohio State, Oregon, Penn State and Iowa in those four games. Mendoza only had five touchdowns to four interceptions. So no, he did not play his best against the better competition he played. Whereas you saw Gunner Stockton for Georgia play the best that he did all season against ranked teams. But you shouldn't think that it's odd that Mendoza didn't have the same stats against better defenses. There's no shame. I mean, I'm not surprised he didn't throw for 300 yards and five touchdowns on Ohio State, the best defense in the country. The point is Mendoza won all those games. He made clutch plays late in those games in crucial situations to lead his team back and win those games. If he gets under a lot of pressure, if Alabama is really dominating the front like they did in the second half against Oklahoma, I still don't think he's going to turn the ball over three times. But if he does start to be under pressure, we saw this in the Wisconsin game where Wisconsin sacked him five times. So it's possible to get pressure. If he does start to turn the ball over and make a lot of mistakes, that's where I see Indiana getting into trouble. Now remember he didn't throw an interception in that Wisconsin game. So I don't think Alabama needs to hang their hat on the Heisman Trophy winner making a bunch of mistakes for Indiana. Even if that offense does struggle, they have the third ranked rushing defense. We've talked about Alabama's rushing woes and they are second in points per game. On defense. They just held Ohio State to ten points. Alabama might be able to throw the ball in this game, but I would be surprised if they're shredding this defense. I don't expect that to happen. I think that Indiana has a good defense. I think they are going to give Alabama some problems more, kind of like what we saw in the SEC Championship game. But here is this game is where we are going to learn is the top of the Big ten. Three good teams who are made to look elite by a bad conference. Or are those three teams really elite? I don't think Alabama is consistent enough. I don't think they are consistently physical enough. I think Indiana will win this game close. I I've seen some frankly ridiculous predictions on both sides. Alabama is going to win by 50 points. Indiana is going to win by 40 or 50 points. I don't think either of those is true. I think that this is going to be a relatively close game, unless one of the two teams just totally lays an egg, but I don't I don't really see that happening. I think Indiana is now tested after last season, the gauntlet they went through this year. Yes, I know some of those Big Ten teams are not that good, but Indiana went to Oregon and won by ten points. They beat Ohio State in the Big Ten championship game. They have the close wins. I think Indiana has proven that it's a good team, and I don't think they're going to wilt under the pressure of playing Alabama in the second round of the playoffs. So we will see is. The top of the Big Ten. Better than the upper areas of the SEC, or are they just propped up by northwestern, Rutgers, etc.? We're going to find out. And I think now there's this debate has really just gotten absurd between Big Ten and SEC fans. But what Big Ten fans forget is college football did not start in the 2023 College Football Playoff. There has been a long time of football before that, and the SEC was utterly dominant, essentially from what, 2006 to 2022. So that is something I think Big Ten fans are really forgetting about. And this idea that, oh, only SEC teams were paying players and no one else was paying players. And now that the nil is here, it's all fair. Now that's stupid. It's frankly stupid. Uh, the SEC had an advantage in climate. It had an advantage in being in closer proximity to where the best players were, an advantage in coaching, such as Nick Saban. It had an advantage in college football is extremely important, as is high school football in the southeast. That was where the advantage in recruiting, coaching, that's where all that was not in paying players and the perfect Ohio State Michigan, because they have such great clean track records. We're not paying players. That's absurd. I, I don't think I'm personally don't think the paying players was nearly as prevalent as what people make it out to be. Pretty nil. I mean, you had the NCAA coming down. I remember AJ green, okay, AJ green sells his own jersey that he autographed. Then gives the money back. Takes the jersey back. And it was like for 400 bucks or something like that. The NCAA comes down on this guy like he committed a crime and he's suspended for a few games. It was ridiculous. So the idea that these guys were just getting paid under the table constantly to me is, is not realistic. But my point is, I do think the Big Ten has been much improved the last few years. I think that the their the gap that existed between the SEC and other conferences, I don't think really exists anymore. I am taking Georgia to win the national championship. I think overall the SEC is probably still the best conference, but that has not really borne itself out the last few years. And right now the SEC is struggling in bowl games, which, remember the Big Ten cared nothing about how bowl games went until they started performing better than the SEC and those bowl games. But. I think the gap has narrowed, I think with the transfer portal and with nil. I mean, there's not this massive gap between the conferences anymore like there was pre 2023. I do think that the conferences are closer than that. What they were I don't think it's just that Ohio State is the class of the Big Ten, and it's them versus the SEC. But I do think top to bottom, the SEC is probably still better than the Big Ten top to bottom. But that gap has been significantly narrowed. I don't think the whole debate between the conferences hinges on this game, but I do think it's going to tell us a lot about the competition between the two conferences. I think Indiana is going to win the game. I think it's going to be close. I won't be the least bit surprised if Alabama pulls in Alabama and ten crazy things happen in the game and they feel disrespected and they win the game. But that's not how I'm picking it. I think Indiana learned from last year. I think Indiana wins this game. Those are my picks for the games. I pick Ohio State, Texas Tech, Indiana and Georgia to win in advance to the next round. So my question for you on this show is what are your picks? Who do you think is going to advance to the second round? Comment. Let me know. I won't be uploading the reaction show until Friday. I obviously want to see three of the games before I do another show, so we will. Thursday's show will be on Friday, so I hope you'll tune in to that. Hope you enjoy New Year's and the second round of the College Football Playoff and Go Dawgs. This is sports takes with Nate Skates. No spin just straight sports.