mason graham 2024 heisman

UFR GLOSSARY is here. Video note: I went back to Streamable because Youtube's been awful lately.

FORMATION NOTES: Saban got creative in his last coaching appearance. I called this one "Pistol TTBy (X)" for Trips to the Boundary with a covered X-receiver.

Reminder that "RB" means the halfback set up on the same side as the strength and a letter in parentheses means that player is covered. For example I called this "Single-Wing RB (Y)." There's a WR on the far left covering #45.

Michigan's passing downs exotic was that 30-wide front with a stand-up DE in the B-gap that I started calling "Crable" at some point because I'm an aughts guy.

In the 2nd half Bama started using two-back sets and setting up their RT in the backfield (they weren't calling anything this game) to give Milroe more protection. Speaking of respect…

[Patrick Barron]

Out of respect for your time and our photographers' skills I'm going to refrain from inserting too many screenshots of the Rose Bowl being gorgeous. Going from this to soulless NRG with its "Sports go sports! Who knows the words to Journey?" hype man that every person in the building wanted to defenestrate shifted my position from "It would be cool if they played the championship every year in the Rose" to "I am ready to rip up the streets of any host city that's not Pasadena."

[After THE JUMP: Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh SEE-YUH!.]

UFR GLOSSARY is here.

FORMATION NOTES: There's no way for me show them all. Here's Eagle Zero:

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: Slight tightening of the rotations. Graham and Derrick Moore had the most snaps of the DL, with Jenkins, Grant, Stewart, Harrell out there about half the time, McGregor a bit less, a couple drives of Benny and Goode. LBs were mostly Colson and Barrett, with a dozen snaps for Hausmann in place of Colson and two disastrous snaps for Jimmy Rolder. Rod Moore went the whole way (no Sabb) with Paige giving a quarter of his snaps to Q-Jo. Will Johnson came off a snap after the one he overran Harrison; McBurrows got some nickel time before that, and M put Sainristil outside when Johnson went out.

VIDEO NOTES: In recent weeks Fox has been abusing YouTube's awful policies for copyright control to harass anyone with clips from the game without regard to Fair Use. The best you can do is dispute the claim and wait 7 days for them to even bother to check if they violated the law when they blindly issued a strike on your account, and then if Fox denies your dispute you have to escalate to the legal system. This is the plan, and we've been through it before, but it's not very conducive to visual aids in an article that comes out a few days after the game. I put some of the clips on Streamable and will move others over if Fox issues further strikes.

[After THE JUMP: The Greatest Game of Football Ever Played.]

UFR GLOSSARY is here.

FORMATION NOTES: Maryland mostly stayed in 11 personnel even when they went to twins formations like the below. I called this defensive front from Michigan "Nk Over!" with the exclamation mark denoting extra wide splits between the DL.

Also for those of you who weren't around when I was doing the FFFFs, "TaTa Time" is a Maryland-specific play where Taulia Tagovailoa abandons the pocket and runs around 15 to 40 yards behind the line of scrimmage with various slow linemen in pursuit. Results of TaTa Time vary.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: The big thing was Sainristil playing cornerback—I had him for 14 snaps at CB and PFF had him for 10, which I take for a difference of assignment (corner/nickel) vs. alignment (outside/slot), and Ja'den McBurrows coming in for a dozen snaps at nickel. Mike Barrett went out for a quarter and Hausmann got in as much as he did, with Rolder getting half a dozen snaps near the goal line. Jenkins/Graham/Grant and the four DEs got about equal snaps, with Harrell and Graham leading the way. Benny and Goode were out there about a third of the time. Paige got some time in the nickel as well, with Quinten Johnson or Keon Sabb added. They each got about a third of the snaps in rotation as well. Will Johnson went the whole way; Wallace got pulled for McBurrows when Sainristil went outside.

[After THE JUMP: Vanilla bean.]