College Football Playoff: Georgia ranked No. 12 in second 12-team CFP bracket
Georgia slide nine spots in the second set of 2024 College Football Playoff rankings. The Bulldogs are now No. 12 after a 28-10 loss at Ole Miss on Saturday, giving them two on the season. Despite being ranked No. 12, the Bulldogs are not yet projected into the 12-team field due an autobid that will go to Boise State as the projected fifth-highest ranked conference champion.
Ole Miss is now No. 11 and Alabama is at No. 10. Miami is ranked No. 9 but as the ACC’s highest-ranked team and projected champion, it gets slotted at No. 4 in the projected bracket. Notre Dame is No. 8 but slotted at No. 9. Tennessee comes in at No. 8. BYU is No. 6 but is seeded third as the projected Big12 Champion. Indiana is in at No. 5. Penn State is No. 4 but slots at No. 6 because it’s the third-highest-ranked team in the Big 12. Texas is No. 3 but slotted at No. 2 as the projected SEC Champion.
Just like last week, Ohio State is No. 2 and Oregon is No. 1. The Buckeyes would be seeded fifth in that scenario as the No. 2 team in the Big12 and Oregon as the projected conference champ.
UGA debuted at No. 3 last week but was projected as the No. 2 seed because the two teams ranked ahead, Ohio State and Oregon, are both in the Big10. Georgia has wins over No. 20 Clemson and the Texas to go with a pair of top 11 losses.
The loss to Ole Miss simply puts Georgia’s back against the wall. The Bulldogs will take on the Volunteers this weekend in their first home game in over a month. That’ll be an opportunity to earn a top five win and climb even higher in the rankings. When the betting line debuted this week, Georgia was a 10-point favorite. That line moved to 8.5 points but has now jumped back to 10 points with ESPN’s Pete Thamel reporting that Volunteer quarterback Nico Iamaleava is in concussion protocol. Thamel says that Iamaleava dressed out and practiced some on Tuesday but that his status for Saturday’s game is still uncertain.
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That might not necessarily be a good thing for the Bulldogs. Georgia was gashed by Ole Miss’ backup quarterback, Austin Simmons, on Saturday. With Jaxon Dart heading into the locker room after the opening drive, Simmons came in and tied the game at seven on his lone drive. Kirby Smart would like to know for whom he needs to prepare.
“Yeah, that’s a dilemma. You know, we don’t know a lot,” Smart said on Tuesday. I’m talking about (Iamaleava’s) injury. Like, we don’t really know what’s going on there. It’s hard to figure. We do have, because they had those games early in the year where they beat teams so bad, you know, that Gaston had to play up quite a bit. Then we obviously have the game that he played in. That kind of happened in the Florida game because I didn’t know a lot about the kid that came in in the Florida game. And, you know, in this situation, we don’t know.
“So, there is a threat there. And Nico’s such a high-level athlete and some of the runs he’s made, I knew the kid was a great thrower, but I didn’t know he was this kind of athlete. And hitting the speeds, he’s hitting GPS-wise. And they made a run on Alabama that was really elite. So, just recognizing his skill set is a lot and trying to prepare for kind of two guys, you know, because philosophically I don’t know how they’ll approach it with the other quarterback.”
Winning out in the regular season isn’t likely to get Georgia in the SEC Championship game but it is a near certainty that the Bulldogs would make the College Football Playoff in that scenario. After Tennessee the Bulldogs host UMass on November 23 and Georgia Tech for Senior Night on November 30.
