What Texas’ path to the SEC Championship and the College Football Playoff looks like after the loss to Georgia

Georgia hasn’t just turned Darrell K Royal Texas-Memorial Stadium into a trash-strewn field of tattered, undefeated dreams. The Bulldogs even went so far as to move Austin’s calendar from October to December as they left Austin with a primetime win.

Call it Kirby Smart magic. Not even Culture Secretary Matthew McConaughey can break this spell.

“It really feels like as of now,” Texas coach Steve Sarkisian said Monday during his weekly press conference, “we’re in an SEC championship game, so to speak.”

What it means: The No. 5 Longhorns (6-1) are one loss away from near disqualification from the conference title game in December after Saturday’s 30-15 loss to Georgia. In return, as Sarkisian said, “every game matters to that extent.”

As for the College Football Playoff? It’s just a little less drastic. The previous four-team format was particularly tough on teams that suffered just one loss. Undefeated teams Florida State, Georgia (one loss) and Ohio State (one loss) were each eliminated from the postseason last year, and Texas had to win its last seven games to earn third place after losing to Oklahoma last season to secure.

ESPN’s playoff projection still gives the Longhorns a 78 percent chance of securing a spot in the 12-team postseason field. The Athletics Model gives them a 75% chance. That’s the beauty of the expanded format: Yes, it theoretically allows for a more diverse group of competitors, but it also gives blue-chip programs — like Alabama (which lost to Vanderbilt), Tennessee (which lost to Arkansas) and Texas — a larger one Fault tolerance. Saturday’s loss to Georgia didn’t help Texas’ postseason chances. It hardly disqualified them either.

“I would much rather go down in the sixth round than be eliminated in the 12th round,” Sarkisian said. “We’ve got to get off the mat, we’ve got to get back to work the way we know how, and that’s what we’re going to do. “We’re going to fight like crazy and make this a 12-round fight for the season.”

It’s just a question of where Texas will be when the 12th round comes around. The four highest-ranked conference champions each receive a first-round bye to the quarterfinals of the College Football Playoff. The remaining eight programs in the field will play first-round games on the higher-seeded teams’ campuses. Texas, it looks like The Athletics Model, would host currently undefeated Indiana in the first round and play likely ACC champion Miami in the quarterfinals.

Or, to avoid that, the Longhorns could simply win the Southeastern Conference Championship on Dec. 7 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.

This could be, as Sarkisian suggested, a more exclusive ticket than one to the playoffs. The SEC eliminated divisions this season, effectively creating a larger pool of potential conference championship candidates. The Longhorns are one of five teams – along with Vanderbilt, Georgia, Missouri and Tennessee – with a conference loss. Texas A&M and LSU, who play each other this week, are both undefeated in SEC play. There is a six-step tiebreaker that begins with head-to-head records between tied teams and ends with a “random draw of tied teams” if necessary.

The Longhorns could endure losing a second game of the regular season and still clinch a playoff spot. ESPN’s SP+ statistic – a “predictive and forward-looking” metric that measures a team’s offensive and defensive efficiency – still ranks Texas second best nationally behind Ohio State. Objectively, things still look good in Austin. But to secure a spot in the SEC Championship Game (and thereby increase their chances of a higher playoff spot), the Longhorns may need to win their final five games, as was the case in the Big 12 last season .

“We have to move to Atlanta, right?” Sarkisian said. “If we want to be that, we have to put ourselves out there every Saturday, that’s what we’re fighting for.”

According to College Football Insiders’ win probability metric, the Longhorns are currently the favorite in each of their final five games of the regular season. This Saturday’s opponent – ​​No. 25 Vanderbilt (5-2) – doesn’t place much emphasis on odds. The Commodores used their upset win over Alabama earlier this month to launch themselves into fringe postseason discussion.

“It’s a very good Vanderbilt team, man,” Sarkisian said. “Trainer [Clark] Lea did a great job building this program. He is in fourth grade. They’ve done a good job, on the one hand building up within, but also in the transfer portal… They play really, really good complementary football, and you have to maximize your possessions offensively.

Texas needs to maximize its final five games overall.

His spot in the SEC Championship — and the playoffs — depends on it.

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