CFP Predictions: Our Guide to the College Football Playoff Semifinals  ...Middle East

The College Football Playoff semifinals are fast approaching. Here are the key matchups that will decide which teams move on to the national championship game.

The two College Football Playoff semifinal games have different shapes.

The Miami-Ole Miss matchup is one in which the teams’ strengths counteract each other. The thing Miami is best at? Ole Miss is really good at making that not matter. The thing Ole Miss is best at? Well, scoring points ain’t easy against edge rushers who will rip your QB’s head off. 

Indiana-Oregon is a little bit less specific. Both of these teams are good at pretty much everything, giving this one a real “unstoppable force meets immovable object” feel no matter which team has the ball. 

This will be fun. Let’s go through both semifinals, including the Opta supercomputer’s win probabilities for each showdown.  

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No. 10 Miami (12-2) vs. No. 6 Ole Miss (13-1)

The game-defining matchup: Miami trying to get Trinidad Chambliss on the ground. No disrespect to freshman receiver Malachi Toney, but Miami’s two indispensable game-breaking players are its edge rushers – Rueben Bain and Akheem Mesidor. In each of the Canes’ past four games going back to the week before Thanksgiving, they’ve sacked the opposing quarterback on at least 11% (and up to 17%) of his drop backs. (The national average is 6%.)

The potential problem here is that Ole Miss is tremendous at avoiding sacks: Its 3.1% sack rate given up on offense was No. 6 in the Power Four (one spot behind Miami, ironically) and is trending in a good direction. In two of the past three games, the Rebels didn’t let anyone sack Trinidad Chambliss. Georgia got zero sacks in 120 minutes of football in the quarterfinals.

The Rebels seem well geared to not let Miami do the thing it’s best at. Can Bain and Mesidor break them? 

One very important player: Ole Miss LT Diego Pounds. No. 61 will be the guy most responsible for keeping Chambliss out of trouble. So far, he’s done an admirable job of that, surrendering just three adjusted sacks and 11 pressures while playing 981 snaps.

When you see the big, athletic-looking tackle running in front of Kewan Lacy with dreadlocks flowing, that’s Pounds. 

Wild-card to keep an eye on: Does Miami have a vertical passing game? Lately, not really. The Canes have exactly one 20-yard pass completion in their two Playoff games – a catch-and-run to Keelan Marion on a ball thrown just past the line of scrimmage.

Carson Beck has taken a few shots to Toney, Joshisa Trader, C.J. Daniels and Keelan Marion, but not with any success. In what is almost guaranteed to be a close game, Miami could use a plausible big-play threat to open things up. 

No. 5 Oregon (13-1) vs. No. 1 Indiana (14-0)  

The game-defining matchup: Indiana center Pat Coogan against Oregon’s defensive tackle duo. That’s No. 52 A’Mauri Washington and No. 1 Bear Alexander, who keyed a dominant line-of-scrimmage performance in a 23-0 win over Texas Tech at the Orange Bowl semifinal. (Oregon gave up a 50-yard run to J’Koby Williams, which was bad, but otherwise gave up 64 yards on 25 non-sack carries.)

Meanwhile, Coogan was named the Rose Bowl’s Offensive MVP after Indiana dominated Alabama’s defensive line for nearly the entire game. The Hoosiers gave up sacks on two of their first three plays, then allowed one for the rest of the way while carrying 44 other times for 243 yards.

Something has to give here, and I bet the decisive action will be in the center of the lines. Oregon lost 30-20 the last time these teams played but did get the better of this particular matchup. Indiana’s 3.3 sack-adjusted yards per carry made for one of the lowest numbers the Ducks gave up all season. (Why’d Oregon lose, then? More or less because Dante Moore and the Oregon offensive line gave up six sacks.) 

One very important player: Indiana WR Elijah Sarratt. He was the decisive player in the first meeting, catching eight passes (albeit on 13 targets) for 121 yards and a touchdown. The Ducks tried at least four cornerbacks against Sarratt in that game, and nobody did much of a job. (Watch this video of Sarratt just working over No. 7 Ify Obidegwu for the winning touchdown.)

Sarratt got hurt a few weeks after that, though, and has been much less of a factor since he returned on Rivalry Weekend against Purdue. He has seen exactly four targets in Indiana’s three games since then, and while he’s caught three touchdowns, he hasn’t quite returned to No. 1 receiver status. (That’s been the excellent Charlie Becker.) If Sarratt were to reemerge as a game-wrecker here, it would go a long way. 

Wild-card to keep an eye on: Oregon’s wide receiver depth against a loaded Indiana secondary. Oregon has five healthy-ish scholarship receivers during this Playoff run, unless Texas A&M transfer Evan Stewart makes a miraculous and unexpected return after missing the whole season with a knee injury.

In the win over Tech, Oregon wideouts caught 11 passes for 92 yards, and the Ducks struggled to move the ball. That was against a Texas Tech secondary that doesn’t have close to the level of talent Indiana has on the back end. Oregon was fine anyway, because Texas Tech couldn’t score and tight end Jamai Johnson chipped in with his biggest game of the year (four catches, 66 yards).

But I don’t think Oregon will have great success running on Indiana – it didn’t against Tech, either – and wonder if the downfield playmaking will be there to keep the offense humming. IU has arguably the best cornerback (D’Angelo Ponds) and second- or third-best safety (Louis Moore) in the Big Ten. 

Alex Kirshner co-hosts the popular college football podcast Split Zone Duo. For more coverage, follow along on social media on Instagram, Bluesky, Facebook and X.

CFP Predictions: Our Guide to the College Football Playoff Semifinals  Opta Analyst.

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