Throw us a curveball, College Football Playoff committee. Put Utah at No. 5 ahead of Alabama.

It’ll be astonishing if Alabama isn’t at No. 5 on Tuesday when the next rankings come out. Utah, which beat Arizona handily on Saturday night, will likely be at No. 6 after Oregon’s loss to Arizona State. With Alabama easily handling business against FCS opponent Western Carolina, there’s no impetus for the committee to put Utah ahead of Alabama.

But maybe it should.

This is an Alabama team that’s obviously at less than full strength without Tua Tagovailoa following his season-ending hip injury. And Utah is at full strength. QB Tyler Huntley is playing at a high level and star RB Zack Moss is healthy and running roughshod over opponents.

Moss got injured in Utah’s only loss of the season, a 30-23 defeat on Sep. 20 to USC. After coming back on Oct. 12 against Oregon State, he’s been almost unstoppable. Moss has rushed for 100 yards or more in all but one of the six games he’s played in after injury. The one game he didn’t hit 100 yards was a 99-yard effort in a 21-3 win over Arizona State. That’s the same Arizona State that beat Oregon on Saturday night, by the way.

Utah isn’t sexy. Huntley has thrown for 2,608 yards and just 14 touchdowns to two interceptions. The team has ran the ball 478 times and thrown it 252. It’s not an offense that will wow you like LSU’s or Alabama’s with Burrow or Tagovailoa slinging touchdown passes to the best group of wide receivers in the country.

But the Utes simply get the job done. And, to be frank, they get the job done in a more efficient fashion than No. 4 Georgia does.

View photos Utah quarterback Tyler Huntley (1) and Zack Moss (2) in the first half during an NCAA college football game against Arizona, Saturday, Nov. 23, 2019, in Tucson, Ariz. (AP Photo/Rick Scuteri) More

The 2019 Bulldogs may be the most boring top-four team in the College Football Playoff era. It can be excruciating at times to prevent yourself from flipping to another game while watching Georgia. Yeah, Georgia is 10-1 and has wins over Notre Dame and Florida. But no one who isn’t a UGA fan is lauding the entertainment value of this season so far.

If Georgia can be a boring No. 4, why can’t Utah be a less-boring No. 5 as Alabama is without its starting quarterback? We already know that the Tide won’t be heading to the SEC championship game and can, at best, finish the season at 11-1 before the postseason. A win over Colorado on Saturday and a victory over Oregon in the Pac-12 championship game could easily be enough ammunition for Utah to move ahead of the Tide before the final rankings. And, quite frankly, it should.

But what else does Utah have to show at this point to make the case that it’s better than Alabama? It’s played a schedule that’s no worse than Alabama’s and it has a better loss than Georgia. While the Crimson Tide is outscoring opponents by over 30 points per game, Utah is outscoring teams by 24 and running six fewer plays per game.

Alabama has a rock-solid case at No. 5 with Tagovailoa. That’s undisputed. But that’s also not reality. If Utah is on a path to pass Alabama with two more wins, the committee has little to lose by putting the Utes ahead of the Crimson Tide now. It can always drop Utah if the Utes lose.

The teams that have resurrected their seasons

The early part of the season was a significant struggle for some prominent programs around the country. Some schools had losses so bad that coaching changes not only seemed possible, they seemed likely. But it’s a long season, and some of those same programs have bounced back in a major way over the second half of the year. And that is worthy of praise.

Michigan

Things looked dire for Michigan back in September when it was completely dominated in a 35-14 road loss at Wisconsin. That loss came on the heels of a near-disaster double-overtime win over Army. Those performances, especially following an offseason of hype about a revamped offense, resulted in bleak times in Ann Arbor. But Jim Harbaugh’s group picked up the pieces from there.

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