After Alabama’s loss to Texas last night, the Tide’s path to a College Football Playoff appearance got much more difficult.

On Sunday morning, Paul Finebaum gave his thoughts on Alabama’s legitimacy as a playoff team.

Finebaum believes Alabama will need to be perfect moving forward. The Tide will almost certainly win out, and with teams like LSU, Ole Miss and Tennessee on the schedule, that’s no easy task.

“If you’re looking at Alabama objectively, are they really a serious playoff team anymore,” Finebaum said on The Matt Barrie Show. “I know that sounds really crass in the early morning hours afterwards, but you tell me. They can’t lose again and make the playoffs and what is the likelyhood of that?”

If they want to win out, Nick Saban will have to keep his team together, which Finebaum believes is another difficult task.

“Games that you never gave much thought to, you have to say that they’re in play now,” Finebaum said. “I just think Nick Saban has a real challenge to hold this group together. How do you figure out the quarterback situation? He went all in on Jalen Milroe and he got burned. You had to think there was a moment late in that game that Buckner could’ve come in and maybe made a big play. You knew Milroe wasn’t going to. Milroe’s success was what kept them in there but it ended up costing them in the end.”

Luckily Alabama has a chance to regain its bearings next week as they take on South Florida, but from there the Tide begin seeing some tough SEC opponents.