The 2024 season for the Alabama Crimson Tide football team will be an important one. Not only does Kalen DeBoer, formerly of the Washington Huskies, take over for the legendary Nick Saban, but the college football landscape, in general, has changed.
The transfer portal continues to widen, name, image, likeness continues to raise serious questions, the SEC adds the Texas Longhorns and Oklahoma Sooners and the College Football Playoff expands to a 12-team format.
The upcoming regular season for DeBoer and the Tide consists of a handful of matchups that will garner national attention. On the road, Alabama will face the Wisconsin Badgers and the Sooners. At home, the Crimson Tide takes on the Georgia Bulldogs, the Auburn Tigers and the Missouri Tigers.
Alabama didn’t have an issue making the four-team playoffs, so it should be safe to assume the Tide will roll with ease into the top 12 to compete for another national championship in 2024, right? As the great Lee Corso would say, “Not so fast my friend!”
Of the above-mentioned games, a couple are considered to be especially important when it comes to the College Football Playoffs.
ESPN recently revealed its Football Power Index (FPI) rankings for all FBS teams, and they have now revealed a ranking of the top 20 games with major playoff implications. Inside the top 10, the Crimson Tide will play in three of them.
The lowest of the three is in Week 12 when Alabama travels to face Oklahoma in Norman. According to ESPN’s analytics, this matchup has a leverage factor of 34.1%. That’s a pretty big number for only being the third-most-important game the Tide has on its schedule with potential playoff implications.
The game with the second-highest leverage in which teams will make the College Football Playoffs is the Week 8 matchup between the Alabama Crimson Tide and the Tennessee Volunteers. The Third Saturday in October has a 35.6% leverage on the formation of the 12-team CFP, which ranks the game as the fifth biggest contest that can impact the playoffs.
Finally, the most important game for Alabama’s playoff hopes is the Week 9 home contest against the Missouri Tigers. Though many fans may overlook Missouri, this should serve as a wakeup call. The Tigers were a quality program in 2023 and look to build upon that and reach the playoffs in 2024. This game ranks No. 3 on the list and has a leverage factor of 36.3%.
As Saban would say, the most important game on the regular season schedule is the next one. Focusing on a few games that are later on in the season means the team and the fans are looking beyond what’s immediately ahead of them.
The road to reaching the 2024 College Football Playoffs begins for Alabama on Aug. 31, as the Crimson Tide takes on Western Kentucky in the 2024 season-opener in Bryant-Denny Stadium.
Roll Tide Wire will continue to follow Alabama football news as the 2024 offseason progresses.
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