LSU has two losses and a brutal November ahead, but ESPN College GameDay host Rece Davis believes first-year coach Lane Kiffin’s Tigers are the team nobody should want to see if they reach the College Football Playoff.

Davis repeated the comparison on the College GameDay Podcast this week: “If you’re looking for this year’s Miami, a team that, if it gets in, can win the national championship, it’s LSU.”

What makes LSU this year’s Miami?

Last season, Miami entered the playoff as the final at-large team and No. 10 seed after losing two of three games in October. The Hurricanes then won at Texas A&M, knocked off Ohio State and beat Ole Miss before falling 27-21 to Indiana in the national championship game.

Davis first made the comparison last week on The Pat McAfee Show, where he said quarterback Sam Leavitt is “taking care of the football a little better than he was earlier.”

On the podcast, he doubled down: “I think LSU’s found itself. And I think LSU is one of these teams that, as long as they don’t step on a rake someplace, if they get in the playoff, they’re really dangerous.”

The Tigers (6-2) have outscored Mississippi State and Auburn by a combined 69-17 since a 35-34 overtime loss at Kentucky. Both of their losses came on the road, with the other a 32-24 defeat at Ole Miss in Kiffin’s return to Oxford.

Lane Kiffin’s rat poison response

Kiffin didn’t let the praise go to his team’s head. Davis said Kiffin sent him video of the McAfee comments playing inside LSU’s football building with text over it that read: “Don’t listen to the rat poison. You haven’t done crap.” Davis noted the message used a stronger word than “crap.”

College GameDay Podcast co-host Dan Wetzel sided with Kiffin’s sign. “I am going to agree with Lane. No rat poison here,” Wetzel said. “They haven’t done anything. They have not beaten a great team.”

None of LSU’s six wins came against a team in this week’s AP Top 25, but Wetzel also laid out the upside: “If LSU wins out, they’re going to make this playoff.”

Alabama vs. LSU playoff stakes

That path starts Saturday, when No. 15 LSU hosts No. 9 Alabama with both teams at 6-2. The Tigers then host Texas before closing at Tennessee and Arkansas.

Davis called the Alabama game “as close to an elimination game as you’re going to get” and said “the biggest thing they have to do first is beat Alabama at home, which has not been easy for LSU historically.”

Kiffin sees it the same way. “We’re going to have to play really well because I do think this is the most talented team when you take the 22,” Kiffin said Monday. “This is the most talented team that we’ve played so far.”

The committee releases its first College Football Playoff rankings Tuesday at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN, and Alabama vs. LSU kicks off Saturday at 3:30 p.m. ET on ABC.