4 teams will make the playoffs. Unless there is substantial chaos, we will not be one of those teams, even if we go undefeated. Unfortunate reality. Let's say that those 4 teams are (currently) Alabama (1), Georgia (2), Oregon (3), Oklahoma (4).

The Rose Bowl then takes the best remaining PAC12 and Big 10 teams. Currently that would be UCLA (24) and Iowa (5).
The Sugar Bowl takes the best remaining Big 12 and SEC teams. Currently that would be Iowa St (14) and Texas A&M (7)

That leaves 4 spots for the next 3 at-large and 1 G5 champ. Currently that would be Penn St (6), Cincy (8), Clemson (9) and Ohio St (10).

Teams like Florida (11) or Notre Dame (12) are left out in favor of Iowa St and UCLA due to conference tie-ins.

The biggest thing that we can root for to get a NY6 bid is for Clemson to make the playoff. The ACC is the only conference that doesn't have an NY6 bowl tie-in for this year, so Clemson taking a spot in the playoff would likely free up an NY6 spot.

We can (and should) also root for Oregon to NOT make the playoff since it seems likely that we'll outrank the #2 PAC team and they'd jump us if Oregon is a playoff team. If it gets to 20 November and Oregon hasn't yet lost, with only Utah and Oregon St left on the schedule, it'll hurt, but BYU fans should likely be rooting for Utah to knock Oregon off.

Similarly (though to a lesser extent) we'd like Oklahoma to NOT make the playoff.  It's much less likely, but there's at least some possibility that we'll outrank the #2 Big 12 team (currently Iowa St at #14)

We'd also want to avoid conference championship upsets. A worst-case scenario would be Clemson or Oregon going undefeated the rest of the way before losing to some mediocre team from the other conference. That would allow the conference champ to steal a bid while Clemson/Oregon would be relegated to at-large competition against us where they might knock us out

Finally, we want to avoid a situation where 2 G5 teams make it.  The most likely/only way I can see this happening is if Cincy beats Notre Dame, looks good, but then loses in the conference championship for their only loss.  In that case some non-Cincy (UTSA?, UAB? Coastal Carolina) would make the automatic bid reserved for the best G% champion, and Cincy would be added to the list of teams competing with us for an at-large spot.  If we both had one loss, we'd probably be ahead, but no guarantees.  So we want Cincy to either lose to Notre Dame or to win out

The ideal playoff mix for our hopes is 2 SEC, 1 Big 10, Clemson.
The worst (realistic) is PAC12,Big12, SEC/Big10, SEC/Big10