College Football Playoff: Projecting playoff teams after Week 4

By Patrick Schmidt | Sep 26, 2015

The first College Football Playoff rankings are still a few weeks away but here’s how they should look after the first month of the 2015 season.

Plenty of football remains to be played as we’re only one month through the season and several teams we think are going to be great are still waiting to realize that. That includes the No. 1 Ohio State Buckeyes who haven’t looked like the dominant force many anticipated this season after returning several players from last year’s national championship team.

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Meanwhile, teams are nipping on their heels as they wait for them to trip and open the door for someone to claim the No. 1 spot from them. While Ohio State has the No. 1 spot in the AP and Coaches Poll and will again this week after beating Western Michigan, that doesn’t necessarily mean they’ll be No. 1 in the eyes of the Playoff committee.

We saw Florida State fall victim to that last year when they were the undefeated national champions but only No. 3 in the Playoff rankings. Plenty will change between now and the first Playoff rankings so this is a very fluid situation, but here’s how I would rank the four teams for the Playoff after Week 4.

On the outside looking in are TCU, UCLA, Georgia, LSU, Notre Dame and Florida State.

The conference schedule will do a lot of the decision-making for us as TCU or Baylor will make it. Michigan State or Ohio State will make it and whoever wins the SEC from Ole Miss, LSU, Alabama, Texas A&M and Georgia will get in.

The guess-work comes with UCLA and whether they can get through the Pac-12 with so many injured stars on defense. Can Florida State get past Clemson? Is it Clemson who has the best chance at the Playoff? Can Notre Dame overcome the loss of Malik Zaire at quarterback and get to the Playoff?

How would your foursome look after Week 4?

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