Could a 2-loss Auburn crash the College Football Playoff?

No two-loss team has ever crashed the College Football Playoff, but things are setting up nicely for the No. 10 Auburn Tigers.

With under a month to go until selection Sunday for the College Football Playoff, some intriguing scenarios are developing for the committee to think about.

Georgia and Alabama enter week 11 atop the CFP rankings, giving the SEC a great chance to become the first conference to get a pair of teams into the final four. Meanwhile, the No. 3 Notre Dame Fighting Irish have dominated opponents other than Georgia, making it entirely possible that three Power Five conferences could be left out.

One scenario that isn’t being discussed as much is a two-loss team crashing the playoff for the first time. While it would take an incredible effort down the stretch, the No. 10 Auburn Tigers are at least creeping into the playoff picture.

After entering the season with plenty of hype, many wrote Auburn off following a 14-6 loss at Clemson in week two. Losing by one score to the defending national champions isn’t the end of the world, but Jarrett Stidham and the Tigers’ offense looked terrible and racked up just 117 yards of total offense.

Auburn recovered with four straight blowout victories, including a nice 49-10 win over a ranked Mississippi State team. The Tigers looked to add another strong road victory after opening up a 20-0 lead over LSU on Oct. 14, only to see their offense collapse in the second half of an eventual 27-23 loss.

That would have ended Auburn’s playoff hopes in most seasons, but chaos around college football has kept the Tigers alive. Since the LSU loss, Auburn has blown out Arkansas and Texas A&M on the road while moving from No. 21 to No. 10 in the College Football Playoff rankings.

The Tigers’ brutal late-season schedule gives them an opportunity to keep climbing and crack the top four, even with the two losses. Auburn hosts Georgia on Saturday afternoon before taking on Alabama to close out the regular season with the SEC West likely on the line. Winning both of those would lead to a rematch with Georgia in the SEC Championship Game, as the Bulldogs have already clinched the East.

If Auburn somehow manages to win all three games, it would almost certainly qualify for the College Football Playoff. Georgia would be eliminated in such a scenario, and the committee would almost certainly take Auburn over one-loss Alabama due to the head-to-head result and conference championship.

While the Tigers probably won’t need any more help, it wouldn’t hurt to have Clemson win out to take out Miami and help Auburn’s loss look better. There would be heated debates between two-loss Auburn and a one-loss team like Wisconsin, Oklahoma or even Notre Dame, but it’s difficult to imagine the committee leaving an SEC champion with three wins over top-two teams out. No team would have a more impressive resume and with the Pac-12 playing their way out of the playoff, there’s just no chance the SEC champion wouldn’t be included.

Of course, beating Georgia twice and mighty Alabama is going to be incredibly difficult, and the Tigers are down 7-3 in the first quarter of Saturday’s matchup with the Bulldogs. Still, Auburn at least has a glimmer of hope to crash the playoff with two losses, something that looked impossible just a few weeks ago.