Tennessee football fell four spots to No. 11 in the College Football Playoff rankings on Tuesday night following its loss at Georgia. The Vols dropped about as far as expected and are now the first team out of the projected playoff with Boise State and SMU in line to earn automatic bids behind them.
Josh Heupel’s fourth Tennessee team is fifth in the SEC pecking order entering the final two weeks of the season. Georgia, Alabama, Ole Miss and Tennessee all have two losses and the Vols are currently the lowest ranked of the group.
“They just had a loss to Georgia, and they had the loss at Arkansas,” committee chair Warde Manuel said of ranking Tennessee at the bottom. “It’s really splitting hairs. They have great offense, great defense. They play hard. The committee just had a hard time. You’re talking about four really good teams, when you look at Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee.”
No. 9 Ole Miss and No. 10 Georgia came in directly above Tennessee while No. 7 Alabama was slightly ahead of all three teams.
All four teams have different pros and cons in their favor. Georgia and Alabama have the best resumes of the group while Tennessee beat the Crimson Tide and Ole Miss beat the Bulldogs. The Vols loss at Arkansas was a bad one but not nearly as bad as Ole Miss’ home loss against Kentucky. The Rebels loss at LSU is likely the fourth worst loss in the group behind Alabama’s loss at Vanderbilt and Tennessee’s loss at Arkansas.
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The committee noted that a part of its rankings are eye test and how teams are currently playing. That line of logic adds extra importance to the games remaining on each team’s schedule.
“We debated it, as I said earlier, quite a bit as it came down to how we saw those teams. But they have beaten each other at different times,” Manuel said. “So we have to look at Alabama the last three games, particularly the two before they played Mercer, they won in dominant fashion, and we were really impressed with their win at LSU two weeks ago. It is close. There’s a lot of conversations. We’ll continue to monitor the performance of all these teams as the season progresses towards the end.”
Ole Miss has the most challenging remaining schedule with a game at Florida this week before hosting Mississippi State in the Egg Bowl. Alabama has a road trip to Oklahoma and a home game against Auburn to conclude the regular season. Georgia has wrapped up SEC play and has matchups against UMASS and Georgia Tech remaining.
Then there’s Tennessee who hosts UTEP this week before traveling to Nashville to face a solid Vanderbilt team to conclude the regular season. The Vols likely need some help to make the College Football Playoff but they can help themselves out by winning in convincing fashion the next two weeks.
