Before the season, coach Brian Kelly made it clear. LSU wasn’t ready to compete for a national championship before, and now it was. This time, it had the right coordinators — and the right players to fit the schemes they wanted to run.

But that team, Kelly’s fourth in Baton Rouge, has since suffered two losses, including one to Vanderbilt , and now it’s perilously close to falling well short of playing for the title he thought it could win.

Technically, the No. 20 Tigers (5-2) can still crack the 12-team College Football Playoff field. But they first need to win each of the last five games on their schedule, a daunting task for a team that split its first four SEC matchups.

“They’re still in it,” Kelly said Saturday, while he mapped out what's left of their path to the playoff.

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