The first year of the 12-team College Football Playoff revealed a few flaws with the format and Penn State was one of the main beneficiaries. As two of the four highest-ranked conference champions, Boise State and Arizona State earned a top-four seed and a bye through the first round of the CFP, which means that while No. 1 Oregon is playing Ohio State in the Rose Bowl on Wednesday, Penn State is a double-digit favorite over Boise State in the Fiesta Bowl on Tuesday night.
The tournament doesn’t re-seed, so the winner of Boise State and Penn State will play the winner of the Sugar Bowl, which features SEC Champion Georgia against Notre Dame. But what if the Nittany Lions could pick? Well, of the eight teams left, there probably isn’t a team they’d rather play than the Mountain West champs, but who would come next?
With Penn State playing first of the CFP quarterfinals, consider this ranking as your rooting guide for New Year’s Day.
The Broncos' only loss of the season was by a field goal to Oregon in Eugene, but the Ducks have one particular weakness that the Heisman Trophy runner-up was able to exploit. Oregon ranks outside the top 100 defensively in EPA/rush, while Penn State is sixth. The Nittany Lions will easily be the toughest run defense that Jeanty has faced and if they can slow him down, it’ll be tough for quarterback Maddux Madsen and his receivers to exploit Tom Allen’s questionable secondary.
Penn State got the ideal draw for a perfect path to the CFP semifinal, so James Franklin has to take advantage of it.
Arizona State has a very similar build to Boise State. The offense is centered around a Heisman Trophy candidate at running back, Cam Skattebo, and while they Sun Devils defense doesn’t have the ferocious pass rush of Boise State, they have a quarterback who is more capable of pushing the ball downfield if his run game is shut down.
Redshirt freshman QB Sam Leavitt was an unproven commodity when he transferred from Michigan State, but then so was the entire Arizona State program. However, the former four-star recruit blossomed into an underrated star who gets the ball out quickly, attacks the deep areas of the field off play-action, and creates very few negative plays. He’s the ideal complement for Skattebo but can do more than Madsen on his own and even with a questionable receiving corps, could attack Penn State’s secondary.
Despite having a big-name quarterback, like the first two teams, Notre Dame leans heavily on the run game. In his first year after transferring from Duke, Riley Leonard has left a lot to be desired as a passer, but he’s run for a career-high 751 yards and 15 touchdowns in a backfield with Jeremiyah Love, a true home-run hitter. Love has cracked 1,000 yards and averages 7.4 yards per carry. As a team, Notre Dame is ninth in EPA/rush with a 10.5% explosive rush rate, but Leonard’s struggles as a passer, especially under pressure could allow a defense like Penn State’s to make the Irish one-dimensional.
After Boise State and Arizona State, you could argue that each of the six other teams are capable of winning the national championship, and that certainly includes Notre Dame, but with an elite run defense, the Nittany Lions would have a slight edge in this matchup.
Georgia will be without its quarterback in the Sugar Bowl against Notre Dame and for the rest of the season. Carson Beck tore his UCL in his throwing elbow in the SEC Championship Game, so backup QB Gunner Stockton will lead the Dawgs. From the limited sample against Texas, Stockton isn’t the passer that Beck is, even with the latter’s turnover problems, but he’ll add something to the run game with his legs and Georgia’s lack of talent at wide receiver means the offense could be best suited as a run-first outfit.
The concern about playing Georgia would be on the other side of the ball. The Bulldogs' secondary isn’t elite, but it’s good enough to prevent Harrison Wallace III and Omari Evans from getting open downfield and Kirby Smart is always going to have an elite defensive line. Mykel Williams and Jalon Walker will be a handful for a good, but not elite Penn State offensive line, and with a two-time national champion standing across the field from Franklin, who has struggled to win any big game, it’ll be hard to pick against the Dawgs.
Oregon beat Penn State 45-37 in the Big Ten Championship Game and the Nittany Lions didn’t have any answer for Dillon Gabriel, Tez Johnson, and the Duck’s passing game. Without a quality slot cornerback and an infuriating lack of adjustments from defensive coordinator Tom Allen all season, it’s hard to expect a different outcome on that side of the ball in a rematch, but the Nittany Lions proved they were built to hang with the No. 1 team in the country in a shootout.
The Oregon defense is outside the top 100 in EPA/rush and allowed both Kaytron Allen and Nicholas Singleton to average over eight yards per carry a few weeks ago in Indianapolis. If Allar can cut down on the turnovers, this contest might come down to which team has the ball last.
If there’s a defensive line in the country that is better than Georgia’s, it’s Texas’s. While the Longhorns don’t have a superstar up front, they have absurd depth and as far as interior defensive linemen go, Alfred Collins is pretty close. The Longhorns could overwhelm Penn State upfront in this matchup, and the Nittany Lions don’t have the type of wide receivers to even the scales on the outside. Tyler Warren would need to be a superstar for Andy Kotelnicki’s offense to function, which is usually the case, but even more true against a group like Texas.
The reason that Texas isn’t higher on this list is because Quinn Ewers has struggled since sustaining oblique and ankle injuries this year. If Abdul Carter & Co. can move him off his spot, they can stall a Texas offense that hasn’t been able to run the ball all season (excluding a very favorable first-round matchup against Clemson). However, Ewers looked healthier against the Tigers and could be closer to 100% if the Nittany Lions were to meet the Longhorns in the national championship game.
There are two reasons why it would be a nightmare matchup for James Franklin and the Nittany Lions to meet Ohio State with a national championship on the line. First, there’s a whole lot of history that they would need to overcome. Franklin has just one win over Ohio State in 11 tries and it came on a blocked field goal returned for a touchdown. The Buckeyes have his number and there is no sign of that changing any time soon.
The other reason is Ohio State’s advantage on the outside. Penn State has the better quarterback, equivalent running backs, and played the Buckeyes to a stalemate in the trenches at Beaver Stadium in Week 10, but on the outside, they’re completely outmatched. Penn State’s wide receivers created no separation in the 20-13 loss and AJ Harris, Jalen Kimber, and Zion Tracy struggled to slow down Emeka Egbuka, Jeremiah Smith, and Carnell Tate.