CFP Quarterfinals Primer: Can the SEC’s best handle the heat? ...Middle East

Sizing up and breaking down all 4 quarterfinal matchups in the 2025-26 College Football Playoff. We start with Wednesday night’s Cotton Bowl before moving to a full, SEC-heavy Jan. 1 slate. (A bold • indicates Matt Hinton’s pick ATS. Hinton went 4-0 ATS in the opening round.)

Cotton Bowl: No. 10 Miami vs. No. 2 Ohio State (-9.5)

Kickoff: 7:30 pm, ET, Wednesday night, Dec. 31 (ESPN).

Nearly 20 million people watched Ohio State’s loss to Indiana in the Big Ten Championship Game, the largest audience for any game this season and a record for the event. Apparently it didn’t shake their faith in the brand one iota. The Buckeyes remain clear betting favorites to go all the way, with virtually no change in their odds of winning it all in the major sportsbooks since the goose egg in the loss column was replaced by a 1. And with all due respect to Indiana, why shouldn’t they be? Memories are still fresh of last year’s title run in the wake of a season-ending flop against Michigan, which briefly felt like a crisis for the Ryan Day administration before it was hastily rewritten as a test of championship resolve. Nobody is lining up to make the same mistake twice, least of all the faction of the OSU base that was calling for Day’s scalp 12 months ago. In that sense, the Buckeyes are still the most bankable team in the field.

Then again, this year’s team is not last year’s — which, remember, lost a school-record 14 draft picks — and for an outfit that just spent 14 consecutive weeks atop the polls this group has quite a bit to prove in its own right on the big stage. Chalk up any lingering doubts up to the schedule, which prior to the Big Ten Championship offered little incentive to shift out of cruise control. Between the opener against Texas and the finale at Michigan, Ohio State faced just 1 ranked opponent as of kickoff (then-No. 17 Illinois in mid-October), and none that finished better than 8-4.

Unless you were under some kind of obligation as a fan or beat writer, there was rarely any reason to watch any of those games for any longer than it took for the Buckeyes to snuff out hopes for an upset, which usually did not take long. Their 27-9 win at Michigan was their 11th straight by 18+ points, and left the distinct impression that their real season was only just getting started. Then they went out and put 10 points on the board against the first Playoff-caliber opponent they’d faced.

Of course, as season-ending upsets go, the loss in Indy was not nearly the psychic blow/wakeup call that losing to Michigan in Columbus was a year ago. Still, the response should be revealing. If nothing else, the Hoosiers left at least a flicker of doubt that accelerating across the finish line for the second year in a row is going to be as routine as the 2024 team made it look.

The most obvious concern coming out of the Indiana game was the offensive line. The OL was not “exposed,” or anything as dramatic as that, but IU’s defensive front seven gave Ohio State all it could handle, keeping a lid on the ground game while putting more pressure on QB Julian Sayin than any opposing pass rush this season. Keeping Sayin upright is a priority on Wednesday night opposite the most disruptive edge-rushing tandem in the college game, Rueben Bain Jr. and Akheem Mesidor, coming off a thoroughly dominant outing in Miami’s first-round win at Texas A&M. Per PFF, Bain and Mesidor combined for an astounding 19 QB pressures against the Aggies, including 5 of the Hurricanes’ 7 sacks. (Not to mention a blocked field goal by Bain.) Adding to the Buckeyes concerns up front, they’ll likely be without veteran guard Tegra Tshabola, who is listed as doubtful to play after leaving the Big Ten Championship Game in the first half. That matchup may be the only one on the tale of the tape that seems to clearly favor the ‘Canes, but as we’ve seen on both sides it’s one that can level the playing field all on its own.

Miami’s defense will have to grind the proceedings to a halt to give the offense a chance, and probably come up with a takeaway or 2 in the process. No opposing offense yet has inflicted more than incidental damage on Ohio State, and the ‘Canes almost certainly aren’t going to be the first in the wake of a 10-3 slugfest in College Station. Statistically, the Buckeyes lead the nation in total defense, scoring defense, yards per play allowed and defensive SP+, picking up right where last year’s defense left off atop each column. Athletically, they boast 6 first-team All-Big Ten picks, 3 consensus All-Americans, and at least 2 of the most coveted defenders in next year’s draft, LB Arvell Reese and DB Caleb Downs. 

Meanwhile, Miami QB Carson Beck is coming off a dreadful outing in the first round despite being well-protected opposite an A&M defense that came into the game tied for the national lead in sacks – per PFF, Beck faced pressure on just 3 of his 24 drop-backs but averaged a meager 4.6 yards per attempt when kept clean. His overcame a lackluster effort in the game’s final 26 minutes with the late TD toss to dynamic freshman Malachi Toney.

The only touchdown drive in that game (by either team) was the culmination of a breakout game by Miami RB Mark Fletcher, who went off for a career-high 172 yards on 10.1 per carry. If he makes it halfway to that number against OSU, it will be the best game by an opposing back this season. The ‘Canes are going to need significantly more from Beck to make up the difference, and another heroic effort from the defense for it to even come close to being enough.

Prediction: • Ohio State 26 | Miami 13

IN BONUS BETS!

• • •

Orange Bowl: No. 5 Oregon (-2.5) vs. No. 4 Texas Tech

Kickoff: 12 pm, ET, Thursday, Jan. 1 (ESPN).

Look at all that green on the defensive side of the ledger for Texas Tech! What a time to be alive.

For most of this century, Texas Tech was in more or less open rebellion against the concept of defense, inventing a niche for itself as the Shootout Capital of College Football – an eccentric desert outpost defined by its commitment to pushing both sides of the scoreboard to the limit. There were years the gimmick achieved high comedy. Over Patrick Mahomes’ last 2 seasons on campus (2015-16), the Red Raiders went 12-13 while averaging 37.1 points in defeat, including 4 losses in which they scored at least 50. Imagine Mahomes opposite the nation’s No. 3 scoring defense. Inconceivable.

Well, through the portal all things are possible. Especially, it turns out, when a rich alum or two with more oil money than they know what to do with get the itch to invest in the trophy case. The Raiders’ well-documented offseason spending spree prioritized upgrading the talent level on defense – along the line of scrimmage, specifically – and they got what they paid for.

The headliners of the transfer haul, David Bailey (Stanford) and Romello Height (Georgia Tech), are PFF’s highest-graded edge rushers nationally, boasting a combined 135 QB pressures and 22 sacks. Bailey is a consensus All-American and future first-rounder. Inside, tackles AJ Holmes Jr. (Houston) and Lee Hunter (UCF) are the top-graded interior DL in the Big 12. In the secondary, DB Cole Wisniewski (North Dakota State) led the team in snaps, and CB Brice Pollock was a first-team All-Big 12 pick after tying for the conference lead with 5 interceptions. As a unit, Tech led the nation against the run, led the Big 12 in both sacks and TFLs, and forced more takeaways than any other FBS team.

But then, vital as the infusion of cash and talent has been to Tech’s ascent, the portal narrative only goes so far. The home-grown talent under 4th-year head coach Joey McGuire has held up its end of the bargain, too.

That includes the starting quarterback, senior Behren Morton, who was already on campus when McGuire was hired; the team leaders in all-purpose yards, sophomore RBs Cameron Dickey and J’Kobi Williams; and the other half the starting defense, including wildly productive senior LB Jacob Rodriguez, who was a dark-horse Heisman contender. Now in his 4th year in Lubbock, Rodriguez initially arrived as an afterthought after spending 1 season at Virginia as a walk-on. A late bloomer, he led the Big 12 in tackles for the second year in a row, picked off 4 passes, forced an FBS-best 7 fumbles, finished 5th in the Heisman vote, and claimed just about every other piece of hardware he was eligible to win. Along with fellow senior Ben Roberts, MVP of a 34-7 romp over BYU in the Big 12 Championship Game, the starting ‘backers bring a combined 68 career starts as Raiders to the middle of a defense that stacks up statistically against any in the country. 

At full strength, the Raiders have not been challenged. Their narrowest margin of victory was 22 points, in a 29-7 win over BYU on Nov. 8. Their only loss, a 26-22 decision at Arizona State in mid-October, came with Morton sidelined by injury. Otherwise, they have been balanced, consistent, opportunistic and ultimately convincing as potential contenders. 

The question, inevitably, is the schedule, which did not present Tech with anything like the kind of test it’s facing from this point on. The Raiders did dispatch 3 currently ranked opponents with ease, blowing out Utah and Houston in the early going and BYU (twice) down the stretch, for what it’s worth. The Big 12 ain’t the Sun Belt. But their other 5 conference wins all came against the bottom half of the conference standings, and the nonconference slate barely qualified as a tune-up. And while the offense was shorthanded in the lone defeat at Arizona State, the defense wasn’t; not coincidentally, an ASU attack featuring the best pass-catch combo on the schedule – Sam Leavitt and Jordyn Tyson, on the last occasion they were both healthy at the same time — was responsible for putting up more yards and points than any other opposing offense. The Sun Devils were also the only team on the schedule within 10 spots of Texas Tech in the Team Talent Composite.

As a program, Tech has never competed on a stage this big, and its ceiling with actual stakes on the line is a wild card.

For Oregon’s part, while the Ducks are obviously no strangers to the Playoff spotlight, they have some questions to answer about their own staying power. Last year, they entered the quarterfinal round as the No. 1 seed and limped out as victims of a 41-21 massacre at the hands of Ohio State, trailing 34-0 in the 2nd quarter. This year, they dropped their only date against a top-shelf opponent (Indiana), and only beat one other team that finished ranked (USC); their big, validating-at-the-time win at Penn State in double overtime doesn’t look like anything now in light of the Nittany Lions’ ensuing implosion, and their first-round blowout over James Madison might as well have been an early September snoozer on the Big Ten Network.

You know, it wasn’t all that long ago that Oregon was the nouveau riche interloper bankrolled by a free-spending alum. At this point, the Ducks have been idling at the top of the waiting list for their first national championship for so long that the idea of getting jumped in line by a freshly-minted dark horse like Texas Tech probably feels like an insult. But if they’re ever going to get off of that list and onto the podium, there’s no time like the present.

Prediction: • Oregon 28 | Texas Tech 23

Scoreboard

1st Round Record: 4-0 straight-up | 4-0 vs. spreadSeason Record: 110-23 straight-up | 63-60 vs. spread

CFP Quarterfinals Primer: Can the SEC’s best handle the heat? Saturday Down South.

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