After losing its first game of the season, No. 5 Alabama will now have to fight its way back into the College Football Playoff picture. This week, that starts with a trip to Starkville, Miss., on Saturday for an 11 a.m. CT kickoff against Mississippi State.

Alabama (8-1, 5-1 in the SEC) has won its past 11 meetings against Mississippi State (4-5, 2-4), including a 24-0 victory inside of Bryant-Denny Stadium last year. Here are five questions to consider heading into the game.

Alabama is expected to win big over the weekend as Vegas Insider currently lists the Crimson Tide as a 21-point favorite over Mississippi State. However, past trips to Starkville, Miss., haven’t always resulted in blowouts for Alabama.

During its last game inside Davis Wade Stadium in 2017, the Crimson Tide needed a fourth-quarter comeback to beat the Bulldogs as Jalen Hurts found DeVonta Smith for a 26-yard game-winning touchdown with 25 seconds remaining. It hasn’t always been that close, but Mississippi State has a way of making games ugly against Alabama, especially at home. Including the 2017 game, three of the past five meetings between Alabama and Mississippi State in Starkville have been decided by 17 points or fewer.

“This game this week is usually a real battle for us when we go over to Mississippi State, to Starkville,” Alabama head coach Nick Saban said earlier this week. “They’re always physical, and it’s always a physical game. We have a lot of challenges in terms of what we need to do to fix the issues that we have.”

Alabama will need a big win as it looks to convince the College Football Playoff committee that it is unequivocally one of the top four teams in the nation. However, the Crimson Tide maintains it's not going to change the way it prepares for future games.

“We’re trying to go out and dominate, but that’s nothing that hasn’t changed over the course of the season,” safety Jared Mayden said. “We feel like we should be able to dominate any team that’s put in front of us. I know everyone’s focusing on that, especially since the mistakes that we made last week. We need to go out and clean up those mistakes so now we can go out and have an even more dominant performance.”