5 games with playoff implications in College Football Week 1

1. No.5 Notre Dame at No.2 Ohio State

The best game of the weekend is a top-5 matchup in Columbus featuring Ohio State and Notre Dame.

The Ohio State Buckeyes are hoping to get back to the College Football Playoff after winning the Rose Bowl last season. After longtime Irish coach Brian Kelly departed for LSU, Notre Dame is led by first-year head coach Marcus Freeman, who played his college football at Ohio State.

The Irish defense will have their hands full with the potent Buckeye offense- which features arguably America’s best quarterback and wide reciever in CJ Stroud and Jaxon Smith-Njigba.

Notre Dame lost their star Safety Kyle Hamilton to the NFL draft, yet they replace him with Brandon Joseph, who earned 1st-team Big Ten honors at Northwestern last year.

Marcus Freeman recently announced that sophomore Tyler Buchner will be the Irish starting quarterback, beating out junior Drew Pyne.

In order for Notre Dame to pull out a victory this weekend, they will need Buchner to make big-time throws, a game manager at QB will not be enough to beat Ohio State.

This matchup is the first of many difficult tests for both of these teams. Ohio State has to go to Death Valley to play Penn State, and also has to play both Michigan and Michigan State. Notre Dame has upcoming matchups against Clemson, BYU, and USC.

For Notre Dame to have a case for the College Football Playoff, a split against Ohio State and 4th-ranked Clemson seems like a minimum requirement. Since the Irish are not in a conference, they cannot rely on a potential conference championship game to pick up an additional signature win.

For the Buckeyes, this matchup obviously will have no impact on their standing in the Big Ten. But should the Buckeyes lose, they most likely won’t be able to afford any conference losses in order to crack the College Football Playoff. An Ohio State team with two losses, even if they are Big Ten champs, could easily get left out of the field.