College Football Playoff rankings 2022: Projected Week 11 Top 25 after LSU upsets Alabama, Georgia routs Tennessee, Clemson upset

Projected College Football Playoff rankings after Week 10: No. 14-13

14. Utah Utes

With Utah having last played on Thursday in Week 8 in a hard-fought win without Cameron Rising on the field over Washington State, it felt like everyone collectively forgot about the Utes being inside the Top 15 of the rankings. But with Arizona coming to town this week, Utah made sure to remind everyone that they are getting better each week with wins over USC and Oregon State under its belt.

Rising was back on the field in Week 10 and was solid but he got pulled before game’s end as Utah was able to pull away from the Wildcats. While this is far from another signature win for the Utes and there won’t be another opportunity next week as they face a truly bad Stanford team, what we’ve seen from Kyle Whittingham’s group suggests that they might be a formidable foe for Oregon in two weeks.

13. Penn State Nittany Lions

Coming on the heels of a gut-punch loss to Ohio State last week, there felt like a reason to worry when Penn State was tied with Indiana — one of the worst Power 5 teams in the sport — after the first quarter. That, thankfully, was not the case as the Nittany Lions turned up the heat on both sides of the ball, even with Sean Clifford no longer helming the offense, and thoroughly dominate the Hoosiers en route to a 45-14 victory.

If the committee had watched Penn State, they would surely know that they were competitive with Ohio State before basically the final couple of series. Yes, they got torched by Michigan, but this remains a really good Nittany Lions team that is suffering from being third fiddle in a division with the Buckeyes and Wolverines. Alas, James franklin team continues to look as dominant as good teams should in these types of matchups.