The Miami Hurricanes moved down in this week’s College Football Playoff rankings after losing to Notre Dame, as expected. But Miami is still in a good position to make the playoffs for the second year in a row.

The Hurricanes are No. 7 this week after losing on the road to the Fighting Irish.

“Miami didn’t look great early in the game — give some credit to Notre Dame’s defense — I think Miami found their way without Malachi Toney, came back and made that a very competitive game,” CFP selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek said Tuesday night on the ESPN broadcast. “So credit to them.”

Miami still has a clear path to the playoffs. If the Hurricanes do not lose more than one of their final three games, they will make the ACC title game (which will be the conference’s final title game due to playoff expansion). If UM wins the ACC title game, it receives an automatic berth into the playoffs.

If the Hurricanes do not win the conference, they would still be on the bubble with a shot of making the postseason as long as they do not lose a second regular-season game.

If the rankings were to stay the same, the Hurricanes would host BYU in the first round of the playoffs.

Miami does not have another team on its schedule that is currently ranked.

The Hurricanes moved down six spots after a one-score loss to a top-five team on the road, but Yurachek said other teams’ performances vaulted them ahead of Miami.

“Some things that happened around Miami in the rankings — and we talked about that — is Georgia had their big win at Ole Miss, Utah, they win over BYU, Alabama won at LSU, Texas at Missouri, UCLA at Minnesota,” Yurachek said. “So you have that combination of Miami losing as a No. 1 team and then five teams behind them having some really signature wins. And the committee thought that moving those teams ahead of Miami was the right thing to do in this ranking.

“We still have a lot of respect for Miami. They have a lot of talent. Their offense seemed to find their way. They hit the tight end, I think, for nine receptions in that game and had another receiver that caught seven. A lot of talent on that team with or without Malachi Tony.”

The committee has taken major injuries to players into consideration, memorably leaving FSU out of the four-team playoff in 2023 after starting quarterback Jordan Travis suffered a season-ending injury. Yurachek said the committee has just one game as a data point to evaluate UM without Toney, who Miami hopes will return for a possible trip to the ACC title game.

“We only have one game to evaluate Miami without Malachi Tony, and so we can only use that metric,” Yurachek said.

Here are this week’s College Football Playoff rankings:

1. Georgia

2. Utah

3. Alabama

4. UCLA

5. Notre Dame

6. Texas

7. Miami

8. Tennessee

9. Indiana

10. BYU

11. Kentucky

12. Texas Tech

13. Wake Forest

14. Houston

15. Iowa

16. Oregon

17. South Carolina

18. USC

19. Ole Miss

20. Ohio State

21. LSU

22. Missouri

23. Arizona

24. Boise State

25. Oklahoma State

Source: Yahoo Sports