Podcast: Michigan's top 10 plays of 2023, top 10 players in 2024
On this episode of The Wolverine Podcast, Clayton Sayfie and Anthony Broome break down the top 10 plays from Michigan Wolverines football‘s 2023 season and the top 10 players on the team ahead of the 2024 campaign.
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The No. 1 play of the 2023 season according to Sayfie and Broome was Michigan’s 4th and 3 stop on Alabama in overtime to come away with the 27-20 victory in the Rose Bowl.
“The 4th and 3 play is a bad snap by Seth McLaughlin, the center that was snapping it poorly all day and all season, I might add, to [quarterback] Jalen Milroe. It’s low. It’s a designed run. Michigan said they knew they were going to put it in Milroe’s hands. That’s what they did in every big moment of the season, and we wrote about that coming into the game after watching some film of Alabama.
“He basically had nowhere to go, gets absolutely stonewalled. [Junior EDGE] Derrick Moore made the tackle. I remember talking to a few Michigan defenders after the game in the locker room, none of them knew who made the tackle at that point. I think [junior defensive tackle] Mason Graham told me, ‘I think we all did.’ Well, that’s not necessarily possible, but you pretty much all did. I’d say [senior EDGE] Josaiah Stewart probably made the play. He blew up 6-foot-6, 360-pound second-team All-American at right tackle JC Latham of Alabama. And by the way, Stewart stands 6-foot-1, 245 pounds.
“There’s nowhere to go for Jalen Milroe, and once he’s done, everyone just starts running and celebrating. I don’t know where they were going, but they were going. And the celebration was long, long into the night, and a week later they got to play Washington in the national championship game.”
“Just incredible,” Broome added. “I mean, it’s just the ending of one of the most insane college football games, one of the craziest comebacks, I think, on that stage you could have, against an Alabama. Usually, when Alabama has you in kind of a headlock, they tend to put you to sleep. But Michigan was able to out-last that. They just had to make one more play, and they did.
“It felt, in a lot of ways, kind of like the 1980 U.S. hockey team taking down the Russians. There was still one more game to play, but the euphoria of getting it done on that stage, in that moment, listen, you wouldn’t trade what happened the next week for the world — but that celebration just had a different feel to it.”
