With the regular season approaching the halfway point, the College Football Playoff picture is starting to come into focus.
In what was expected to be a wide-open year, preseason No. 1 Texas and No. 2 Penn State are now both unranked after taking stunning losses Saturday.
Defending champion Ohio State, perhaps a bit disrespected by its No. 3 preseason ranking, looks like a juggernaut and now resides at No. 1.
Miami is No. 2, with three top-20 wins already under its belt. Oregon, Ole Miss and Texas A&M round out the top five, and 10 of the top 12 teams come from the Southeastern Conference or the Big Ten.
But as the season kicks into full gear over the next month ahead of the first CFP rankings being released Nov. 4, who could be the disruptors? Which teams that aren’t at the top of people’s minds right now could steal playoff spots or ruin the aspirations of teams that appear to be playoff bound?
Missouri (5-0, 1-0 SEC)
Missouri is probably the least-discussed undefeated team in the country.
The Tigers are the lowest-ranked undefeated team in the SEC or Big Ten at No. 14, below four teams that already have a loss.
Sure, they haven’t played the toughest schedule to date. Their best nonconference result was a rivalry win over Kansas and their first SEC win was against a slumping South Carolina team.
Missouri’s offense has undeniably looked legitimate, though. Ahmad Hardy leads the country in rushing yards (730) with nine touchdowns. Penn State transfer Beau Pribula has completed 75.9 percent of his passes for 1,203 yards, nine touchdowns and three picks.
While the Tigers haven’t proven it much so far against top competition, they’ll have plenty of opportunities the rest of the way. Starting with this weekend’s home game vs. No. 8 Alabama, three of Missouri’s next six games are against top-10 teams with another against No. 20 Vanderbilt.
That leaves plenty of chances for Missouri to both boost its resume and spoil the seasons of other SEC contenders.
Notre Dame (3-2)
A program of Notre Dame’s prestige isn’t often a disruptor, especially in a season it began ranked sixth in the country.
And yet, that’s just where the Fighting Irish found themselves after starting the season 0-2 with losses to Miami and Texas A&M that nearly dropped them out of the poll entirely.
That left Notre Dame — a true college football unicorn as the only high-level independent team — without any mulligans.
Since starting 0-2, the Irish have rattled off three straight wins and are back up to No. 16 in the AP poll. The defense, which got off to a rough start, has rounded into form the last few weeks, and new quarterback CJ Carr (1,280 yards, 11 TD passes) has been turning it on.
Notre Dame will be favored in each of its final seven regular-season games, most of them by a significant margin. If the team wins each of those games to finish 10-2, the CFP committee will have an interesting dilemma that could easily end with the Irish taking a playoff spot from a viable Power Four contender.
Virginia (5-1, 3-0 ACC)
Not much was expected of Virginia in Tony Elliott’s fourth season leading the program. It was picked to finish 14th out of 17 ACC teams.
And yet, the cardiac Cavaliers won their second straight overtime game Saturday vs. Louisville to match their win total from any of Elliott’s first three seasons and rise to No. 19 in the AP poll.
They already have a top-10 win over then-No. 8 Florida State. They have a transfer quarterback in Chandler Morris who is balling out (1,428 passing yards, 11 passing TDs, four rushing TDs) and a great lead running back in J’Mari Taylor, who leads the ACC with eight rushing scores.
They also have a soft schedule the rest of the way, facing just one ACC team that has a winning conference record in Duke.
In a heated race to face (most likely) Miami in the ACC championship game, could the Cavaliers be the odds-on favorite? If they get there, they’ll have a playoff case to make.
