Notre Dame has CFP format to blame for brutal injury blow ahead of Georgia game

The Notre Dame Fighting Irish dominated in their First Round matchup of the College Football Playoff, blowing out the Indiana Hoosiers in a game that was not as nearly as close as the 27-17 final score would indicate. Now, the Irish will move to the Sugar Bowl in the quarterfinals for a matchup with Georgia.

Unfortunately, Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman announced that the Irish will be moving forward in the CFP without one of their best defensive players.

Pete Sampson of The Athletic reported on X/Twitter that Freeman revealed that defensive tackle Rylie Milles will miss the remainder of the year with a knee injury.

Mills suffered the injury during the team's dominant win over Indiana in the CFP First Round. Prior to the knee injury, the senior had 7.5 sacks on the season with 19 solo tackles as well. The Illinois native suffered the injury in the early part of the third quarter trying to get after Hoosiers quarterback Kurtis Rourke, though the Irish were unable to come away with the sack.

The Irish will certainly feel the absence of their defensive leader, Mills, in the quarterfinal matchup against a Georgia Bulldogs program likely to rely heavily on the run. UGA quarterback Carson Beck has been ruled out for the rest of the year as well, so Gunner Stockton will take over and likely headline a heavily run-based attack.

But it's also hard not to look at what happened to Notre Dame and think that the ill-advised current 12-team format was partially to blame.

Notre Dame could have avoided key injury if given possible rightful first-round bye

Obviously, predicting injuries will always be impossible. That is to say, there's no guarantee that Mills could've avoided the ailment if the format was different. However, we can say with certainty that he wouldn't have been playing in the Indiana game because Notre Dame would've, instead, been awarded a first-round bye in a more proper format.

Notre Dame's status as an independent program currently works against them in the CFP format. The four byes and automatic bids are awarded to the four highest-ranked conference champions. The Irish simply don't have a chance to achieve one of those seeing as how they aren't in a conference!

Yes, the format does protect conference title games from becoming completely meaningless but the inability of the Irish to qualify for a first-round bye in this format puts them at an obvious disadvantage. No other program in this year's 12-team College Football Playoff was guaranteed to have to win four games to win a national championship no matter how their season ended except the Irish.

Changes may be coming already, but a key injury for a program that arguably should've earned a first-round bye to begin with could be more fodder to help spawn change.