mason graham is ol murderglasgow or OMG for short

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: Minnesota was mostly an under-center or shotgun 3-wide with a WR jetting across.

Their 4th down formation was Unbalanced; the guy at the bottom of the line is a TE/eligible receiver.

And Michigan used a weird formation on 3rd & 7 with 3 DEs on the field and Harrell and a LB stacked behind the nose that I called 3-1 stack.

They also split a DE wide on their 5-2s odd formations that I called 5-2 split—the nose is still over the center.

SUBSTITUTION NOTES: There were 40 snaps before Tuttle Time in this one. Graham led the DTs in snaps, playing DT or nose depending on whom he was with. Grant got 14, Jenkins 25, Goode 14, and Benny 16. The DEs were the same except Cameron Brandt got in a bunch after the four starters, signifying he's moved ahead of Kechaun Bennett, who played on the last drive. LB was Colson until Tuttle Time and a split of Hausmann and Barrett. Keon Sabb cycled in with the safeties and got a few snaps in a 3-safety look with Paige at slot. McBurrows returned as the backup nickel. Wallace came off the field for the 5-2 sets and Sainristil shifted outside. Amorion Walker and DJ Waller were the deep backup time CBs, with a few snaps from Keshaun Harris before that, but none of the other CBs played.

[After THE JUMP: Stretch practice.]