Joel Klatt says Notre Dame will make the CFP if it wins out
Published:
Joel Klatt believes Notre Dame will make the College Football Playoff this season.
The FOX Sports analyst included the Fighting Irish in his updated Playoff bracket on Wednesday. He slotted them in at No. 11 in the field, which would have them going on the road to Oxford in the first round to face Ole Miss.
In Klatt’s view, Notre Dame is going to blast the rest of its schedule and ride into the CFP at 10-2.
“I think they’re going to kill people the rest of the year with a really potent offense and maybe one of the best quarterbacks in the country,” Klatt said on his show Wednesday. “I think Notre Dame comes all the way back and they get into this thing.”
The Fighting Irish sit at 2-2 on the season after dropping their first 2 games — both to teams Klatt has in his projected CFP — and then rolling their last 2 opponents.
In Week 5, Notre Dame went to Arkansas and beat the Razorbacks so badly the program was forced to fire its head coach the next morning. The Irish have outscored their last 2 opponents 112-43.
“If they run the table, they would get in,” Klatt said. “The losses would be — remember — at Miami, which was a tied game in the final 2 minutes and (to) A&M. (Notre Dame was) 1 play away from winning that game. … The committee are going to have more metrics and, in particular, not penalize teams for losses to really good opponents. Well, in this scenario that I’m painting, Notre Dame’s losses would be to No. 2 Miami and No. 7 Texas A&M. So, their losses are not going to be held against them as much.
“Do they have great wins? No. They’re not going to have great wins.”
And therein lies the danger in backing Notre Dame to make the CFP (priced +145 at bet365). The Irish could end the regular season without a single win over a ranked opponent.
RELATED: Want to bet on Notre Dame’s playoff future? Grab this bet365 sign-up bonus to get started.
USC is 4-1, though it fell out of the AP poll this week after losing to Illinois. The Trojans still play Michigan and Oregon in conference play. The Irish need USC to be good enough to beat one of those teams but bad enough to still lose on Oct. 18. A 4-loss Trojan team probably isn’t cracking the CFP committee’s top-25 on selection day.
And Boise State, Notre Dame’s opponent this weekend, already has a loss on its record after opening the season in shocking fashion against South Florida. If the Irish blow out Boise State, even a 10-win Boise State team is probably sitting near the bottom of the CFP rankings — at best.
The Irish will be heavily reliant on their opponents helping them out the rest of the way.
“But they’re going to be dominant,” Klatt said of Notre Dame.
And he believes that will be enough.
Derek Peterson does a bit of everything, not unlike Taysom Hill. He has covered Oklahoma, Nebraska, the Pac-12, and now delivers CFB-wide content.
