Florida State’s playoff chances plummet after upset loss to Georgia Tech

It took just one game for college football to deliver its first upset, as ACC favorite and No. 10-ranked Florida State lost by three points to Georgia Tech in Saturday’s Week 0 game in Dublin.

And as a result, the Seminoles’ chances of winning the ACC and reaching the newly expanded College Football Playoff took a major hit, according to one football analytics model.

College Football Power Index is a computer analytics tool and ranking system developed by ESPN that projects a team’s future performance by simulating its games 20,000 times.

Florida State is projected to win just 7.5 games and lose 4.7 more, which, when rounded up, would mean it would finish with a 7-5 record this season, according to the index.

The model favors the Seminoles to win with just a 1.2 percent chance, and the team is no longer the favorite to win the ACC, with a mere 9.5 percent probability.

Clemson is now the favorite with a 23.2 percent chance of hoisting the trophy in Charlotte and thus representing the ACC in the playoffs. Louisville is second at 14 percent and Miami third at 10.6 percent.

Florida State has a 12.3 percent chance of making the new playoffs, which ranks sixth in the ACC in that category. Clemson leads that group at 29.3 percent.

And the Seminoles’ schedule won’t get much easier from here on out.

FSU faces conference rival Boston College in primetime on Labor Day and the following week hosts a Memphis team that is coming off a 10-win season and is earning recognition as a contender to earn a Group of Five playoff bid.

Two weeks later, the Seminoles will travel to SMU before hosting Clemson and then play two road games, against Duke and then Miami.

Florida State plays at Notre Dame on Nov. 9 and hosts rival Florida in the final on Nov. 30.

In total, the Seminoles play three teams in the AP preseason top 25 rankings, a conference champion and an SEC rival.

If they win against that group, the Seminoles will play for the ACC championship and likely the expanded College Football Playoff after that.

But we started 0-1 after one game and there was basically no room for error from the start.

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