Notre Damea tough start to the season against Ohio State Saturday is full of bullishness.
Only one other scheduled competition all year can raise a team’s chances of reaching the College Football knockout round with more wins than the Fighting Irish’s trip to Columbus – second only Michiganown with the Buckeyes – according to the Allstate Playoff Predictor. And no scheduled match has faced a team with higher total playoff leverage — the difference between its chances of making it to the playoffs with a win and a loss — than Notre Dame’s Week 1 contest. .
A win over Ohio State No 2 would overtake Fighting Irish No 5 from a 30% chance of making it to the playoffs to a 56% chance, while a loss would reduce them to just 25% – resulting in a total of 31 percentage points. . use.
And that’s why the game is almost upside down. In giving Notre Dame a 30% chance of making it to the playoffs in Marcus Freeman’s first season running the show in South Bend, the Allstate Playoff Predictor was likely to lose to the Buckeyes. The FPI estimates Ohio State has an 84% chance of winning, so if Notre Dame can win it will shake the landscape while winning Buckeye will only slightly strengthen the status quo.
Let’s back up for a second. For the uninitiated, the Allstate Qualifier Prediction is our statistical model that – well, you guessed it – predicts the likelihood of each team making it to the College Football Knockout Qualifier. It was an effort that required two separate phases:
• Projected the rest of the season based on each team’s strength and schedule. This episode is handled by ESPN Football Power Stats.
• Forecast the selection committee’s decision in each simulation, based on the committee’s past behavior.
Put it together and you’ve got the Allstate Playoff Predictor – which we’ll be using to write about the playoff scene in this space every week. And even better: Friend can use Allstate Playoff Predictor on ESPN.com to run scenarios yourself. Is there a two-time loser SEC champion? Georgia into the playoffs? As for the score 12-0 Oklahoma the losing team in the 12 Grand Championship Game? Playoff predictions can tell you the odds.
Less Threatened to the State of Ohio
Make no mistake: Week 1’s Round 1 matchup is a very important competition for both teams. However, the stakes are lower for Ohio State. The Buckeyes’ playoff leverage ranges by 24 percentage points – as opposed to Notre Dame’s 31 – with one win and one loss.
It’s also, unlike with Notre Dame, not the Buckeyes’ highest-leverage scheduled game (meaning conference championships excluded) this year. Ohio State actually has six games with more playoff leverage than their Week 1 game, although some of those are games where the Buckeyes are heavily favored – such as a 95% chance of winning. their win Iowa. Still: Ohio State games against Michigan, Penn State and the state of Michigan all have slightly higher leverage than the team’s Week 1 competition, and the Buckeyes have an 83% to 85% chance of winning individually, as was the case with Notre Dame.
Higher leverage in other competitions exists because losing to the Wolverines or the Nittany Lions would greatly reduce the Ohio State division’s chances – and thus, the conference championship -. By contrast, the loss to Notre Dame kept the potential 12-1 generals championship — with a playoff spot almost certain — entirely within Ohio State’s control.
Pac-12 needs a big win in Week 1
Pac-12 has crashed. That’s partly due to the weakness of the conference in general and partly because FPI doesn’t really buy right away USC rotated with Lincoln Riley at the helm.
The conference’s best shot at the knockout was Utah with a 7% chance. And Utes face an important non-conference game in Week 1 – one of only two where Utah is not a priority this year – at Florida. Meanwhile, the second most likely playoff team of the conference – Oregon – had a brutal opening game against Georgia that FPI estimates Oregon has only a 9% chance of winning.
If both Pac-12 teams fall in Week 1, the conference’s chance of the entire conference to make any team into the knockout stages drops to less than 4%. Unlike the example above with Ohio State, Pac-12 teams don’t have to shoot to qualify for the knockout stages with a 12-1 record and conference championship. In fact, as The Predictor sees it: Each person would have less than 50% of the shot selected in such a situation.
