Breaking down final play of Rose Bowl from Alabama offense, Michigan defense

Alabama came up about three yards short in the Rose Bowl against Michigan, stopped on fourth-and-goal from inside the 5-yard line on the game’s final play.

On3’s Andy Staples spent some time breaking down that final play on the Andy Staples On3 show, illustrating exactly where it went wrong. And it’s hard to look past the very outset of the play.

“Start out and we’ll just take a look at the snap,” Staples said. “I think every play starts with the snap. The snap was a big deal here. Seth McLaughlin is Alabama’s center. I’m not going to pile on him too much, he’s been piled on enough as it is. But he had issues snapping all season. There were a lot of issues with snaps in the Rose Bowl where they were low, and they were coming in at Jalen Milroe‘s shins, sometimes his shoe-tops.”

That type of snap can seriously disrupt the entire offense’s rhythm, because it forces the quarterback to take his eyes off the defense temporarily.

“And you’ve got to understand when a snap comes in low like that, the quarterback has to get his eyes down and concentrate on catching the ball,” Staples said. “Typically in the shotgun the quarterback is getting the ball in basically the same spot every time and he and the center kind of work out what that’s going to be in the offseason. And the center is usually going to hit that spot almost every time. There will be times when it will move a little bit, especially given the quality of the player in front of the center. But usually it’s coming in about the same place and the quarterback does not have to drop his eyes to catch the ball or concentrate on catching the ball. It just becomes a matter of instinct.

“And in this case Jalen Milroe spent a lot of time reaching down to catch the ball, looking down to catch the ball. And when you do that, you lose a fraction of a second. And when you look back up then you have to adjust your line of vision to everything you see. And as you saw on that last play, things got muddled very quickly and so when he looks up it’s a problem.”

Staples then went on to break down the exact angle where the play was supposed to hit and where it ultimately failed.

The run was supposed to be a designed quarterback run somewhere up the left side of the line.

“This was probably Jalen Milroe was supposed to run this ball in,” Staples said. “And if you look at the way they were blocking it, the hole probably was supposed to be to the left. So you’ve got the right guard pulling, supposed to clean out the last man on the line of scrimmage. Then you’ve got guys blocking down.

“So CJ Dippre‘s the tight end, he’s No. 81. So you look on the left of the line of scrimmage, you’ve got CJ Dippre and then you’ve got Kadyn Proctor the left tackle and you’ve got Tyler Booker the left guard. Those guys have good angles. They should be able to move their guys or at least shield them off, and then (Jaeden) Roberts is going to come in and clean that out, which should open a hole.”

Of course, the play didn’t play out that way.

“What messes that up is CJ Dippre trying to block Derrick Moore,” Staples explained. “Now Derrick Moore’s the Michigan EDGE on the left side of the screen. Derrick Moore senses that he’s supposed to get blocked down upon and he gets real big and real low and he does not move. He clogs that hole up. It’s a pretty impressive job by him because CJ Dippre has a great angle on him and he just gets in there and clogs it up and that makes it a big problem when you have what’s going on to his left.”

In other words, credit Michigan’s players for winning up front in their one-on-ones. The Wolverines even substituted personnel during the timeout just prior to the play, making sure they had the right guys on the field.

Clearly that paid off.

“So you’ve got Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant, the two Michigan defensive tackles,” Staples said. “Graham is being blocked by Tyler Booker, Grant is being blocked by Seth McLaughlin. Now Mason Graham and Kenneth Grant are fantastic defensive tackles. You get this thing where Graham’s not moving, Grant’s not moving, and then Josaiah Stewart deposits JC Latham on the ground in front of Jalen Milroe. There’s no chance this play’s going to work. No chance whatsoever.”

Ultimately, the game came down to one final play. But that play was mostly representative of what happened throughout the game.

Michigan’s defensive line was better equipped to take on Alabama’s defensive line, plain and simple.

“I think these teams were very close in talent. But I would give the Michigan defensive line an edge over the Alabama offensive line,” Staples said. “It felt like both defensive lines maybe were a little better than both offensive lines. But I would say that Michigan’s offensive line held up better against Alabama’s D-line than Alabama’s O-line held up against Michigan’s D-line. And on that particular play, with the game on the line, it made all the difference. Michigan’s D-line came up huge and that’s why that play got blown up.”