Defense/ST Notes: Jim Harbaugh, Nick Saban discuss Rose Bowl-deciding goal-line stand

PASADENA, Calif. – The Michigan Wolverines outlasted the Alabama Crimson Tide in the Rose Bowl College Football Playoff semifinal, winning 27-20 in overtime. It came right down to the final play in some of the best sports theater of the season.

In the victory, Michigan held Alabama to a season-low 288 yards of total offense. Defensive coordinator Jesse Minter had pressures dialed up in a ton of different ways, leading to a seven-sack game on college football’s biggest stage.

But to get there, Michigan had to keep pushing and keep fighting. Shortened fields in overtime made things a little tighter for everyone. There was no tighter moment in the game than its final play.

Alabama responded to a Michigan scoring drive in overtime by driving down to the three-yard line. A fourth down stop was going to send the Wolverines to their first national title game of the CFP era if it was able to execute.

Alabama went with a quarterback draw for Jalen Milroe, which was snuffed out and stuffed by the Michigan defensive line.

Ballgame over. Era-defining win achieved. The Michigan Wolverines are going to Houston.

“We just had everybody in there,” head coach Jim Harbaugh said after the game. “It was everybody. We call it twister, and everybody there, everybody to the ball. Similar to Alabama, every time you get inside the 5-yard line, they’re in zero every down.

“Our favorite play, it’ll be JJ’s favorite play, got us in the end zone there when we really needed it. We were just all out, selling out.”

Michigan players discussed the showdown with Alabama in the days leading up to the event as a “strain battle” meaning the team that battled and held its ground the longest was going to walk out victorious. According to junior linebacker Junior Colson, that’s exactly what Michigan did.

“We were playing cover zero,” Colson said. “Coach was telling us all the time, like, this is the moment we were built for. This is the moment we come out here to play for.

“We knew exactly what was going to happen. When the moment gets tough, you go to your best player, and they went to their best player, and we were right there to stop it. We said it’s 4th down, one last play, everybody strained, everybody strained to the ball.”

Alabama head coach Nick Saban saw a Michigan defense that was prepared for whatever the Tide were going to throw at them. Saban and offensive coordinator Tommy Rees dialed up a play that it had earmarked for a potential two-point conversion, and was involved in a bit of a chess match with the Michigan coaching staff toward the end.

“We called three plays,” Saban told the media after the game. “One they called time-out, one we called time-out, and the last one that didn’t work. The fact that it didn’t work made it a really bad call. You know what I mean? But we called time-out because we had a bad look. We had a good look on the first one. They must have known it.

“But 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.

“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. They pressured and we thought they would pressure, but we thought we could gap them and block them and make it work, and it didn’t.”

Miscellaneous Michigan defense/special teams notes

• It was not a banner day for the Wolverines on special teams. The group muffed two punts – one each from Semaj Morgan and Jake Thaw – and had a rough day in the kicking game, too. James Turner missed an extra point, while Tommy Doman averaged only 39.5 yards per punt.
• Graduate cornerback Josh Wallace recovered a fumble in the fourth quarter, which was the second game in a row he contributed to a turnover after forcing a fumble against Iowa.
• Michigan’s five first-half sacks are a single-season best in program history and a CFP record for most sacks in the first 30 minutes of a game. It was only the fourth time an Alabama team under Saban surrendered that meant sacks in a half, and first time since 2021. U-M had seven sacks on the day.