Nick Saban, Jalen Milroe explain final play of overtime in Rose Bowl

Alabama fell to Michigan 27-20 in the College Football Playoff semifinal on Monday night, stoned cold on a fourth-and-goal play from the 3-yard line. The call was a quarterback dive for Jalen Milroe.

Milroe didn’t make it more than a few inches past the line of scrimmage before he was tackled, ending the game in a Wolverines win.

Coach Nick Saban explained the sequence, which had more than a little bit of a cat and mouse feel to it, following the game.

“We called three plays,” Saban said. “They called timeout, we called timeout and the last one didn’t work. So the fact that it didn’t work made it a really bad call, you know what I mean? But we called timeout because we had a bad look. We had a good look on the first one. They must have known it.”

After each team had traded looks and timeouts, Alabama lined up with no more timeouts and one chance to extend the game. Offensive coordinator Tommy Rees opted for a play to put the ball in the hands of Jalen Milroe.

“Tommy just felt like the best thing that we could do was have a quarterback run, which was kind of our two-point play, one of our two-point plays for this game,” Saban said. “And the ball was on the 3-yard line, which is just like a two-point play. But we didn’t get it blocked, so it didn’t work. We didn’t execute it very well and it didn’t work, and they pressured. We thought they would pressure, but we thought we could gap them and block them and make it work. And it didn’t.”

Simple as that. No real excuses, just a lack of execution on the most important play of the game.

And so Alabama’s season ended with a 12-2 mark, as well as an SEC title.

Jalen Milroe, for his part, seemed frustrated by the lack of execution on the final play but willing to chalk it up to the normal ebbs and flows of a game.

“First thing I’m appreciative of my coaching staff for believing in me for me to have the ball in my hands on that last play,” Milroe said. “You win some, you lose some. It’s all part of the game. With anything all it came down was fall back to your level of training, and we just failed on that play. That’s all it was, because at the end of the day I just trusted in the guys up front for believing in me on the last play to have the ball.

“And unfortunately we just missed and we just didn’t get in the end zone.”