Projected final 2020 College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings after Week 16

North Carolina entered Week 16 as the top three-loss team in the country. Sitting at No. 15 in the College Football Playoff selection committee’s Top 25, the Tar Heels will continue to receive that outsized love in the final set of rankings. With the committee so high on the ACC as a whole this season, Mack Brown’s team continues to benefit from that as they sit in front of more teams with better records than can be counted on just one hand.

North Carolina gets a lot of credit for playing within two touchdowns of Notre Dame and then beating Miami in Miami. The committee has been equally forgiving of a pair of three-point losses to Florida State and Virginia Tech, who are a combined 6-13 in games against teams aside from their wins over the Tar Heels. An offense that averages 43 points per game has distracted the committee from those realities.

As a result, expect North Carolina to situate somewhere comfortably in the top 15 again when the final batch of College Football Playoff rankings comes out. While it is unlikely that the committee will jump the Tar Heels over Coastal Carolina after the Sun Belt was forced to cancel its championship game, it also would fit right in with other decisions the committee has made this year.