Tennessee’s loss at Georgia last Saturday proved costly in the latest College Football Playoff rankings.

The Vols’ tumbled in the rankings on Tuesday in the wake of their second loss of the season on the road, falling four spots to No. 11.

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That spot has Tennessee (8-2) inside the top 12 but out of the bracket. Both Boise State and SMU, which were ranked behind the Vols at No. 13 and No. 12, respectively, have the edge as of now.

The Mustangs (9-1) sit atop the ACC standings, and if that holds, they would play in the conference championship game where they could clinch an automatic bid.

The Broncos (9-1) are currently the highest ranked team from a Group of Five conference, which is another automatic qualifier.

That leaves Tennessee on the outside looking in and in need of help around college football over the next two weeks to change its standing.

The Vols will be watching a number of SEC matchups closely, too perhaps even more closely after playoff committee chair Warde Manuel dished on the reasons behind Tennessee’s spot in the rankings.

"Well, one, (Tennessee) just had a loss to Georgia, and they had the loss at Arkansas. It's really splitting hairs," Manuel told reporters during a teleconference on Tuesday night. "They have great offense, great defense. They play hard. The committee just had a hard time. You're talking about four really good teams, when you look at Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia and Tennessee. I think the committee, we debated it, as I said earlier, quite a bit as it came down to how we saw those teams. But they have beaten each other at different times. So we have to look at Alabama the last three games, particularly the two before they played Mercer, they won in dominant fashion, and we were really impressed with their win at LSU two weeks ago.

"It is close. There's a lot of conversations. We'll continue to monitor the performance of all these teams as the season progresses towards the end."

MORE FROM VOLREPORT: Where Tennessee stands in latest College Football Playoff Top 25

Tennessee sits behind three other two-loss SEC teams in No. 10 Georgia, No. 9 Ole Miss and No. 7 Alabama in the rankings.

The Vols beat Alabama, 24-17 at Neyland Stadium last month and the Crimson Tide lost to Vanderbilt earlier this season. Ole Miss' two losses are to now 6-4 LSU on the road and 4-6 Kentucky at home.

Georgia lost to Alabama in September and Ole Miss two weeks ago. Both games were on the road.

The Bulldogs finish the regular season against UMass and Georgia Tech, while the Rebels have to play at Florida this week before their regular season finale against Mississippi State.

Alabama plays at Oklahoma and against Auburn.

Tennessee plays out of conference this week against UTEP (2-8) and is a 40.5-point home favorite on Saturday (1 p.m. ET, SEC Network+), though the result will hardly move the needle unless there are some shakeups nationally.

The Vols play at Vanderbilt (6-4) in Nashville next week, their last opportunity to impress the committee.

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