Jay Harbaugh explains Rose Bowl special teams miscues, and why he's confident for title game turnaround

HOUSTON, Texas – The Michigan Wolverines were able to grit their way through the Rose Bowl against Alabama despite a laundry list of errors on special teams in the College Football Playoff semifinal. Now days away from a national championship game, the focus is on not repeating mistakes in that phase of the game in hopes of getting back to playing complimentary football.

Michigan muffed a pair of punts and missed an extra point in a day that was shockingly off for one of the best units in the country, but they found a way to advance to the national title game in spite of it.

Special teams coordinator/safeties coach Jay Harbaugh spoke about the miscues during the CFP National Championship media day on Saturday afternoon and explained what he saw on film with what Michigan went through.

“Unfortunate that multiple guys had uncharacteristic plays in the same game,” Harbaugh said. “I think pretty much all of them, you can tangibly put on film and say, ‘Okay, this is why this happened.’ I don’t know those players in my experience with them could be guys who struggle with nerves or anything like that.

“That type of stuff is kind of unknowable anyway. I think it’s mostly just mechanics and technical types of things.  And that’s what you hope for because that means you can identify a problem and then work to fix it. We’ve had a good week of prep so far. I feel really great about those guys and they feel good about themselves and they should because they have a lot of reps and great preparation to be able to draw confidence from.”

One of the biggest errors in the game turned into a game-saving play for punt returner Jake Thaw. Near the end of regulation, Thaw muffed a punt near the goalline that could have resulted in a safety had he been knocked back into the endzone. He secured the ball, took a hit and helped Michigan kneel things out and take the game to overtime.

Harbaugh told The Wolverine that while Michigan does not exactly rep those types of situations, the situational awareness it took to make the play is something that they have gone over.

“That sort of thing, I wouldn’t say we explicitly rep it in terms of actually practicing something like that happening,” Harbaugh said. “But it’s certainly a type of thing that we cover. ‘Hey, I dropped the ball and it’s in front of me. I dropped it and goes in the end zone. I touch a kick off and it goes to the endzone. I’m in the end zone and touch a kick off and it goes out.’

“So there’s all those things. You cover them and make sure that everyone understands them. And then there’s a second component to it where you want to be thorough. At some point, there’s a line where you don’t want to be putting a lot of negative thoughts into their head too and practicing bad things happening and it’s like, ‘Oh my god, they really don’t think I’m going to catch the ball.’ There’s certainly try to coach it without negatively affecting their ability to do their job mentally.”

Harbaugh has been on the coaching staff since 2015 with his father and has been at Michigan through all of the ups and downs of the nine-year run. To have a chance to finally play for the biggest prize in the sport has been a long time coming.

“It’s awesome,” Harbaugh said. “I’m just super happy for [Jim] and for the whole team. I have a ton of appreciation for him and admiration and love for him and I think he’s the best in the world at what he does. It is neat to see you have a great plan and you get good people and you stick to it.

“To see that get us to this point with the chance to put an exclamation mark on it and say, ‘Hey, look, it worked.’ That’s, that’s a cool thing, but they’re just excited and excited for the team and to have the opportunity that they have.”

Monday night’s game from NRG Stadium in Houston kicks off at 7:45 p.m. ET on ESPN. Michigan is a 4.5-point favorite with the over/under set at 56.5 points.