College Football Playoff rankings 2022: Projected Week 14 Top 25 after Michigan dominates Ohio State, LSU and Clemson lay eggs

Projected College Football Playoff rankings after Week 13: No. 10-9

10. LSU Tigers

All that LSU had to do to have a great opportunity to make it to the College Football Playoff was go on the road and do the same thing that Appalachian State – a team that had to fight for bowl eligibility on the last Saturday of the regular season – did early in the year: Beat struggling Texas A&M. But Jimbo Fisher finally found some juice with the Aggies while Brian Kelly had precisely no answers on the field.

Jayden Daniels, who was remarkable leading up to and in the win over Alabama, continued to falter with a pedestrian and indecisive performance. But it was the LSU defense that really let them down as they gave up 31 points to an often anemic offense, the first time Texas A&M has eclipsed 30 points since October 2021. Now the Tigers have no shot at the Playoff, though they’ll still be in the SEC Championship Game next Saturday.

9. Kansas State Wildcats

Just looking at the matchup, it seemed pretty simple for what Kansas State needed to punch its ticket to the Big 12 Championship Game for the opportunity to exact revenge on TCU by ruining the perfect season for the Horned Frogs. All the Wildcats needed to do was protect Manhattan and take down rival Kansas, a team that was blown out last week by Texas. With all the chaos rivalry week brought, however, that looked less certain than ever by the time of kickoff.

There have been better days for the KSU defense, but the fact of the matter was that they came up with some stops, which is more than what the Jayhawks were able to do up against the multi-faceted attack of Will Howard, Deuce Vaughn, Malik Knowles and so on. K-State couldn’t be kept off the scoreboard and that was enough for the Wildcats to finish the year at 9-3 and have their chance at redemption next week.