ESPN reacts to Tennessee at No. 5 in updated playoff rankings

Tennessee football doesn’t control its own destiny moving forward in the race for the College Football Playoff. The Vols don’t need all that much help, though.

In Tuesday’s updated rankings, Tennessee fell four spots to No. 5 following the 27-13 loss at Georgia on Saturday. The Bulldogs are the new No. 1, ahead of No. 2 Ohio State, No. 3 Michigan and No. 4 TCU.

TCU moved up three spots from No. 7 to No. 4, jumping Tennessee, after coming back to beat Texas Tech at home on Saturday to remain undefeated.

“I think Tennessee is in a great spot,” SEC Network college football analyst Greg McElroy said Tuesday night. “Obviously, it’s never very comforting to not be in control of your own destiny, but ultimately that’s where Tennessee is at right now. They played their way into that spot.”

Tennessee (8-1, 4-1 SEC) hosts Missouri (4-5, 2-4) on Saturday (Noon Eastern Time; TV: CBS) for Senior Day at Neyland Stadium. The Vols close the regular season with road games at South Carolina and Vanderbilt.

“I’d be shocked if Tennessee is not sitting there at 11-1,” McElroy said, “with a very strong argument to be an at-large consideration there on selection day, assuming there’s a little chaos there in some of the other leagues.”

TCU will be an underdog Saturday against No. 18 Texas. The Horned Frogs play at Baylor next week before closing the regular-season schedule at home against Iowa State. Ohio State hosts Michigan on November 26.

ESPN’s Football Power Index this week gave the Vols a 76.0-percent chance to win their remaining three regular-season games and a 62.6-percent chance to make the four-team College Football Playoff field, the third highest percentage behind only Georgia (91.2) and Ohio State (86.6). 

TCU is ranked No. 14 in the FPI with just a 17.2-percent chance to make the playoff.

“I would just say I want to see how Tennessee responds,” ESPN’s Kirk Herbstreit said on Tuesday. “For eight weeks, they were the story in college football was buzzing about Tennessee — Hendon Hooker, Josh Heupel, that offense. They lose a game. How do they respond? Because whether we want to admit it or not, style points will matter for Tennessee in their remaining schedule. 

“If they skip Atlanta (the SEC Championship Game), they want to win and get back to who they were the previous five weeks and not mess around with anybody left on their schedule. Because they don’t have a lot of wiggle room. They’d have to … look like it.”

During a conference call with reporters after the releasee of the new rankings, College Football Playoff Selection Committee Chairman Boo Corrigan explained TCU at No. 4 and Tennessee at No. 5.

“Looking at the Alabama win, looking at the LSU win, looking at the Kentucky win, we do value wins,” Coorigan said, citing Tennessee’s resume. “TCU with their record, six wins over .500 teams, teams above .500, what they’ve done, what Max Duggan has done at TCU.

“Again, I don’t think it was as much what Tennessee didn’t do as much as what TCU did do, and Georgia played really, really well, as everyone saw, and what they did with their defense versus the Tennessee offense was incredibly impressive.”

One-loss Oregon came in one spot behind Tennessee at No. 6. The Ducks lost to Georgia 49-3 to open the season on September 3 in Atlanta. Coorigan said the committee looks more at “the game itself” than margin of defeat against a common opponent.

“From our standpoint, it’s not this one was X number of points and this one was X number of points from that standpoint,” he said. “You look at the overall game, the flow of the game, and making sure that we’re doing the evaluation on the overall big picture as opposed to a late score or an early score, that type of thing.”

Coorigan added that it’s Tennessee’s wins so far that have the Vols edging out Oregon for No. 5.

“As a committee, as we talk about it, the wins over Alabama, the win over LSU and Kentucky, in looking at that,” he said. “With Oregon you’ve got eight consecutive wins, a win over UCLA, but at this point as we’re looking at it, I think that was the primary reason. 

“As we were looking at two really, really good football teams, we felt that Tennessee was deserving of the 5 and Oregon of the 6.”

“Tennessee is a really good team with big wins at the top,” Coorigan added later. “Hendon Hooker has had a great year to date. Their defense is giving up about 22 points a game and playing well.”