Abandon Ship: Navy’s dark horse CFP hopes were torpedoed by Notre Dame

While Navy football did not have the most impressive strength of schedule this season, it was clear that the team could conceivably make the College Football Playoff if their strong offense continued to excel.

Unfortunately, the Midshipmen faced their toughest matchup of the season by far at MetLife Stadium on Saturday and were completely overmatched with Notre Dame blowing them out, 51-14, and completely destroying Navy's College Football Playoff chances in the process.

Despite playing on a neutral field against an impressive offense, the Fighting Irish were able to create six turnovers with Navy having virtually no response to Notre Dame's physicality and well-run offense.

Before this game, the Midshipmen looked to be competing for the Group of Five spot in the Playoff. Navy, who had yet to lose a game this season before facing the Irish, was probably feeling good about their chances as the offense has scored at least 34 points or more in every prior game this season.

As the program gets ready to rebound from its loss against the Irish at MetLife Stadium, it's likely that the team's playoff chances were likely dashed with the blowout loss.

Navy's CFP chances are over after losing in blowout fashion to Notre Dame

While Navy can still ruin their biggest rival's season at the end of the year by beating them in the classic Army-Navy Game, it's hard to see a world where midshipmen make the playoff. Yes, it's possible for Navy's only loss to be against a likely playoff-bound Notre Dame. Still, any renewed CFP hopes would probably require the Irish to lose against Army, as well as for other chaos in the Group of Five transpiring for the Midshipmen to have that chance.

Although the Midshipmen might not make the 12-team tournament this season, it's clear that Navy can still make this season special by winning out the rest of the way. In all reality, this would mean that Brian Newberry's squad would probably face off against Army twice at the end of the season (one of them being their scheduled game and the other being the AAC Championship Game).

Even though this entertaining situation could happen, it's clear that Navy's playoff chances are near zero after losing to Notre Dame in blowout fashion. That was the one game they needed to win in order to seriously make a CFP case, and they Midshipmen came up woefully short.