Alabama, still without injured quarterback Bryce Young, survived a down-to-the-last-second thriller against Texas A&M on Saturday, avoiding a potential shake-up in the top four of the College Football Playoff chase.
With Ohio State, Alabama and Georgia each remaining undefeated, the playoff plotline centers around No. 4, and while there are certainly front-runners, there's no shortage of teams that could make a case in the second half of the season. If the SEC has two teams finish in the top four and the Big Ten champion is in, the selection committee's debate for the fourth spot could be controversial.
Tennessee is 5-0 for the first time since 2016. Ole Miss is 6-0 for only the second time in the past 50 seasons. And USC isn't the only team in L.A. that's undefeated. Who will the committee be taking seriously come late November?
It will consider strength of schedule, common opponents, head-to-head results, injuries to key players and conference championships. One statistic that has had a strong correlation to the top four throughout the CFP era has been ESPN's Strength of Record (SOR) metric, which calculates how difficult it is for an average top 25 team to achieve the same record. According to ESPN's Stats & Information, 24 of 28 playoff participants were in the top 4 in Strength of Record entering Selection Day. The SEC currently boasts three of the four best resumes in the country in No. 1 Alabama (an 18% chance an average top 25 team would achieve the same 6-0 record), No. 2 Tennessee (35% chance) and No. 4 Georgia (37% chance).
Considering those factors, there are 10 teams that could make a case for that one final coveted spot, ranked in order of the best chance to finish No. 4: