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It may not seem like it now, with May only on its 12th day. But I promise you… before we know it, the leaves will be changing, a chill will be in the air and we’ll be gearing up for the second year of the 12-team College Football Playoff.
On Sunday, I predicted that Boise State would earn the No. 12 seed in this year’s field. The Broncos have perhaps the most-loaded roster of any of the non-Power 4 schools, a great head coach in Spencer Danielson and the opportunity to make some noise with their schedule.
Today, I’ll take a look at my predicted 11-seed out of the ACC.
A few things are worth noting before we break down individual Playoff paths. One is that while we’re still in the 12-team era, I’m anticipating a change in 2025. I believe that we’ll get rid of the stipulation that the 4 byes/top-4 seeds will go to the 4 highest-ranked conference champs. One year in, I predict that all parties will get on board with changing that. These rankings, which I’ll roll out over the next 2 weeks, will reflect that anticipated change.
In other words, I won’t try to confuse you with seeding. This will just be based on where they’ll show up in the final Playoff poll. Just in case you forgot what Playoff field entails, here’s a refresher:
- 5 highest-ranked conference champs
- 7 at-large teams
- Seeds 1-4 get a 1st-Round bye
- Seeds 5-8 get a home Playoff game in the 1st Round
- Seeds 9-12 get a road Playoff game in the 1st Round
Does that all sound good? Good.
Here’s the projected 12-team field so far:
- No. 12 Boise State
Let’s continue with the 11-seed … Louisville:
Why the Playoff path exists
Do I need to expand beyond “Jeff Brohm is a darn good coach” or not?
I do? OK, let’s start with Brohm recording 8-win regular seasons in each of the last 4 years with a 24-10 mark in conference play. Two of those seasons were at Purdue and 2 were at Louisville. Brohm became the first Purdue coach to accomplish that feat in the 21st century, and all he did at Louisville was deliver its best 2-year stretch of the Playoff era. Yes, that bested the Lamar Jackson era. Brohm did that with quarterbacks like Aidan O’Connell, Jack Plummer and Tyler Shough, all of whom blossomed into NFL quarterbacks under his tutelage.
So now, Brohm will inherit Miller Moss from USC, where he couldn’t hold onto Lincoln Riley’s QB1 status. It’s not far-fetched to predict that Moss will also turn into an NFL quarterback with Brohm. It helps that he’ll have one of the top returning ACC receivers in Chris Bell. Plus, Moss will have ACC Rookie of the Year Isaac Brown to hand the ball off to. That could be the biggest strength for a Louisville team that had a robust transfer portal haul (30 incoming), which included multiple expected offensive line starters.
Even if he doesn’t have a slew of former blue-chip recruits, Brohm has shown that he can overcome that. He has yet to have a roster that ranked in the top 25 of the 247Sports talent composite, and yet, he’s established himself as one of the top 12-15 coaches in the sport.
Of course, he also still has arguably the best soundbite in the history of the sport.
Brohm gives Louisville a 2025 Playoff path on the heels of a season in which the Cardinals trounced eventual-ACC champ Clemson in Death Valley, and all 4 losses were by 7 points or less. That 9-win season also included a breakthrough blowout win against Kentucky, who had beaten Louisville in 5 consecutive years. This year, Louisville has the benefit of just 4 true road games, plus Clemson and Kentucky are both home games. It also won’t have to travel for some weird West Coast game like it had last year when it blew a 14-point lead late at Stanford.
It’s perfectly realistic to predict a 10-win regular season for Louisville. I’ll take it a step further and say that an 11-1 Louisville squad’s lone regular-season loss comes vs. Clemson, and it gets a chance to avenge that in the ACC Championship Game.
The potential roadblock
It’s an entirely new secondary a year removed from finishing No. 100 in FBS against the pass and No. 87 in opposing quarterback rating. Louisville essentially took a page out of 2024 Tennessee‘s playbook by overhauling that unit in the portal, which worked out well for the Vols, but it’s probably not an ideal formula. That passing defense was the Cardinals’ undoing in their losses last year, 3 of which saw opposing quarterbacks throw for at least 290 yards and 9.5 yards/pass attempt.
Ron English has been Brohm’s defensive coordinator for all 4 of those aforementioned 8-win regular seasons, so clearly, there’s trust there that he can troubleshoot the issues on the back end. While it’s not necessarily a schedule that features weekly matchups against top-10 quarterbacks in the sport, there are at least a handful of guys who can pick apart an overmatched secondary:
- Kyron Drones, Virginia Tech
- Carson Beck, Miami
- Cade Klubnik, Clemson
- Kevin Jennings, SMU
Three of those games are on the road, too. If there’s a knock on the Brohm era so far, it’s that in each of his first 2 seasons, he had at least 1 game in which Louisville’s defense completely fell apart in the second half against an offense that previously looked like it was lost (2023 vs. Kentucky, 2024 at Stanford). If that happens again in 2025, it could be the difference in getting to an ACC Championship Game, which feels like the Playoff prerequisite for the conference after a horrendous start to the decade.
Odds that they win a Playoff game
I’ll set the win probability line at 19.3%.
We’re going to need to see some road Playoff victories in the first round before we get those probabilities a bit higher for the double-digit seeds. As an 11-seed, winning a road game vs. a 6-seed could mean going into Ohio State or Texas and pulling off an upset. As great as that win at Clemson was, beating a potential top-6 team is a different beast. The last time Louisville beat an AP top-6 team in a true road game was … never. The Clemson win last year marked the program’s first true road win vs. an AP top-15 team since 2007 when it beat a Brian Kelly-coached Cincinnati team (Jason Kelce started for the Bearcats’ offensive line that day).
Brohm has also never coached in a New Year’s 6/Playoff bowl, so this would be unprecedented in a variety of ways. Does that mean it’s impossible for Louisville to advance to the quarterfinals? Nah. Brohm is too good a coach to ever count him out of any game. He’d empty the bag on that stage, and in many ways, he’d be an ideal coach to see as the underdog in that spot.
If Brohm took the field after a “let’s play football” callback in the pregame locker room, that 19.3% win probability would multiply.
Predicting the Playoff will continue on Tuesday with No. 10 … a Big 12 school.
Connor O'Gara is the senior national columnist for Saturday Down South. He's a member of the Football Writers Association of America. After spending his entire life living in B1G country, he moved to the South in 2015.
