Notre Dame Football: Irish have passed every test so far
Notre Dame football has positioned themselves well for their first-ever College Football Playoff berth. And the hardest part of the schedule is behind them.
Six weeks into the 2018 season and Notre Dame boasts one of the most impressive resumes in college football. The Irish have a win over a Top 25 team from three of the five Power 5 conferences. They opened the season with a win over No. 14 Michigan, followed that up by blasting No. 7 Stanford at home in Week 5 and beat No. 24 Virginia Tech on the road in Week 6.
That impressive trio of wins, plus undefeated status put the Irish in the driver’s seat for the College Football Playoff. If they win out, there’s no possible way for the committee to omit them from the final four. Winning out is well within the range of possibility. ESPN FPI gives the Irish at 37.6 percent chance of finishing the season undefeated, projecting their final record at 11-1.
Notre Dame is projected to have better than a 75 percent chance of beating their next five opponents: Pitt (95.5 percent), Navy (97.9 percent), Northwestern (77.6 percent), Florida State (91.2 percent) and Syracuse (81.7 percent). Several of those games could make for resume-building wins of their own, but it’s the final game of the season that could provide the exclamation point on a promising season.
Next. Winners, Losers from Week 7 AP Top 25. dark
The Irish close their regular season with a road trip to USC. Even if the Irish stumble along the way, a win over the Trojans would be hard to overlook. The Irish will get to that eventually. For now, they’ll focus on winning out. If they do that, the College Football Playoff is a virtual certainty. Head coach Brian Kelly couldn’t ask for much better than that.