Essentials

Overview

This has to be the largest gap between the Vegas line and the SP+ line I have entered into the above table since I started putting both in the game column. These days it is rare to have a gap of more than a couple points. More than a touchdown is unheard of without a plague of locusts hitting one team.

What's the deal? Well, Alabama beat Georgia. The end. That win has turned the Crimson Tide from a talented but wobbly team into a juggernaut in the eyes of the public, which has bet massively on Alabama. The books have barely moved the line; it opened at Michigan –2.5. They're taking a position on Michigan.

And, you know, it's not too hard to see why. The week before Bama won the SEC championship game they required one of the all-time escapes, converting a fourth and 31 to beat a bad Auburn team. In addition to their season-opening loss to Texas and the Auburn escape, Bama also put up one-score wins over bad Texas A&M and Arkansas teams. They're 7th in SP+. Michigan is first by some distance.

Let's act like it.

[AFTER THE JUMP: Alabama, but not quite ALABAMA]

Run Offense vs Alabama

[Barron]

Michigan should be able to do some work here as long as they put the pedal to the metal. Alabama has a couple holes on defense and they're directly up the middle. The Tide does not have a defensive tackle who rates out better than Just A Guy at PFF. Tim Keenan, Tim Smith, Jaheim Oatis, and Damon Payne are all in a range from 61 to 68 as run defenders. Two of the three linebackers who play regularly grade out slightly worse than that range.

Bama has one legitimately excellent run defender in their front seven. That's jumbo anchor edge Justin Egoigbe, who is more or less Chris Wormley. Deontae Lawson, the other linebacker, is also a solid player. Everyone else is kind of eh. Alex:

As for the conventional rushing game, the unusually ordinary nature of Alabama's defensive tackles is something that the Michigan offense has an opportunity to target. Georgia had a mixed day on the ground but there were definitely moments where they got good push on the interior, an OL reached the second level, and a chunk gain developed:

I don't have many individual notes on the DTs, be it starters Tim Keenan III and Tim Smith, or reserves like Nate Oatis. They are all pretty similar in caliber, though Damon Payne Jr. might be the weakest at this time. One thing I believe Alabama did well on the ground against UGA was have their LBs in the right spot + DB help to make up for some of their vulnerability at tackle.

That said, Alabama is coming off its best performance of the season relative to opponent strength. They held Georgia to 3 yards a carry on 29 attempts in the SEC championship game, a 36th percentile performance in EPA/play. Because their defensive tackles got help against a team featuring a pocket passer.

This is a stark contrast to Alabama's previous game against an Auburn team that put it all on the table in the Iron Bowl, running QBs Jarquez Hunter and Peyton Thorne a whopping 24 times for 177 yards, with actual running back Damari Alston picking up another 85 yards on 10 carries. Other mobile QBs have had success as well: KJ Jefferson put up 6.4 YPC on 10 carries and Jayden Daniels 139 yards on 9 carries before getting knocked out. Even Joe Milton, who Michigan fans will remember as more of a pocket guy, put up 94 yards on 12 carries.

Michigan has to run JJ McCarthy. They have to run him more than they've run him all year, and they might as well bring in Alex Orji a bit and grind with him as well. Bama linebackers have struggled with misdirection all year and while there's a dead certainty they've been given a crash course over the last three weeks that's not going to fix the issues all in one go.

Is Michigan going to do this? A frustrating lack of McCarthy runs late in the year was explained away by McCarthy's injury in the Penn State game, but at the same time Michigan was refusing to have designed runs for him against Ohio State he was slaloming through defenders on scrambles to pick up 20 yards. When Michigan did decide to have some designed QB runs they brought Orji to run the same bash QB counter they'd run all year. There's been a disappointing lack of weapon utilization, and a corresponding collapse in Michigan's rush offense numbers.

To some extent that's because Michigan was able to keep their powder dry, but as I will complain in the following section about Michigan's bizarre aversion to play action I am increasingly uncertain that the "Michigan doesn't take this opponent seriously" narrative that I and others have promulgated is, you know, real. It might be that this is just all there is, that what we see is more or less what we get.

Alabama is a team that is lethal in passing downs and has given up big chunks of yards to every rushing quarterback they've faced this year, and also Peyton Thorne. The gameplan should be an 11-on-11 running game on every play with live reads and play action off of it, with Edwards and Morgan threatening jets on the perimeter while Michigan attempts to grind it inside against lighter boxes caused by forcing Bama to account for the QB on every play. I'd feel a lot better that this would be the case if Michigan had, you know, done any of that this year.

The opportunities are there as long as Michigan evens up the box. We'll see.

KEY MATCHUP: JJ MCCARTHY vs READS. He's been good for most of his career, but wobbly of late. This is likely because of a lack of game reps, but too late to fix that now.

Pass Offense vs Alabama

[Barron]

This looks like a brutal matchup. Kool-Aid McKinstry entered the year with a bucket of hype but it's probably his bookend Terrion Arnold who's the better Bama corner. This is a fine distinction: both guys are ticketed for the first round of the draft. The nickel and safeties aren't quite at that level but aren't far back, either. True freshman Caleb Downs walked right into the Alabama defense and leads them in snaps. His 86 PFF grade is insane for a true freshman. Nickel Malachi Moore is another fine player; worth noting that all four of these guys have monster grades as run defenders so screens are probably off the table.

The only relative weak spot is Jaylen Key, a UAB transfer who plays free safety. He is just okay, but if PFF grading is anything like mine free safeties on defenses like Alabama have a hard time diverging from zero because they're just never on the screen.

On top of that, Alabama has a couple of 90-graded edge rushers. One saving grace from Alex: 

Alabama tends to go with two DTs and their beefy SDE on standard downs, with only one of the two star rushers on the field. Only on passing downs do you see the SDE kick inside and be replaced on the perimeter by the other rusher.

Chris Braswell and Dallas Turner both have win rates around 19-20% and resemble the Penn State defensive ends that gave Karsen Barnhart the business a couple months ago. Barnhart has since kicked inside, but it's unlikely Trente Jones is a quantum leap beyond Barnhart or he would have been starting. (This space has pounded the table for Jones for the past season and a half but must concede that even if Jones is actually the better tackle the difference can't be great.)

It is possible that Michigan will be able to implement some routes that take advantage of Bama's pattern-match and pop guys open; it is also possible that Roman Wilson has the kind of speed that allows him to get a step or two on Bama players, particularly if he's operating out of the slot and Colston Loveland is flanked out wide. I don't think Michigan's going to pass for four yards an attempt. But straight dropback passing seems like a bad way to attack this defense.

What does seem like a good way to get after this defense is a bunch of misdirection and play action. I have been frustrated with the seemingly near-total lack of play action this season, and here is a stat to confirm my priors:

Play Action Rate, 2023 Playoff Offenses
Texas 50.2%
Washington 33.5%
Alabama 30.8%
Michigan 20.2%

Play Action Rate Faced, 2023 Playoff Defenses Alabama 32.9%
Washington 27.3%
Texas 27.0%
Michigan 22.6%

— parker fleming (@statsowar) December 29, 2023

Michigan should be Texas, IMO, running play action on virtually every standard down pass. For whatever reason, they have not been. The most logical explanation is that play action takes longer to develop than a straight dropback and could expose McCarthy to hits if the protection breaks down, but in this game in particular the play action is going to happen with one lethal edge guy instead of two. I assume Michigan is going to run right at lethal edge guy du jour a lot to make him respect the threat of a run. If not now, when?

Also arguing in favor of play action: the weak point of the Bama defense is again right up the middle. They get close to no organic pass rush from anyone outside of Braswell and Turner, and there is always a linebacker on the field with a dismal coverage grade. Sometimes there are two.

As Alex stated on the podcast, it is hugely important for Michigan to stay on schedule and avoid passing downs. Standard down: run play action, chip the one speed rusher on the field, attack the linebackers. Passing downs: throw at two Wills Johnson while trying to block the rough equivalent of Hutchinson and Ojabo. That latter situation is the kind of thing that will lead to McCarthy throwing eight times in a game, if Michigan can get away with it. Since they cannot against Alabama, Michigan would be well advised to keep the third downs relatively manageable.

The wild card: what does Michigan do with Donovan Edwards? Edwards has had a disappointing season mostly spent as a between-the-tackles runner, but he is a five star type guy with the athleticism to seriously stress the Alabama defense, whether that's with another running back in the game or not. Edwards has caught 30 of his 33 targets this year but Michigan has been extraordinarily averse to using him as a multi-tool weapon. He has just 22 snaps from the slot and, more disappointingly, just seven as a flanker. His average depth of target is just 1.6 yards. All of this is a huge disappointment, not by Edwards but the coaching staff.

With the wide receivers matched up against guys who are amongst the best in the country, Michigan needs to lean heavily on Barner, Loveland, and Edwards here. All of those guys are capable of ripping up a questionable Bama linebacker corps, and Michigan has shown zero aversion to throwing over the middle of the field. The three non-WRs probably need 150 or 200 yards between them to win this game.

KEY MATCHUP: HARBAUGH and MOORE vs USING YOUR WEAPONS. Yes I am complaining about the coaching approach on a 13-0 team that is the back-to-back-to-back Big Ten champs, but they have to look in the mirror and put the Donovan Edwards year on themselves and fix that. Now.

Run Defense vs Alabama

[Fuller]

QB Jalen Milroe is the headliner and features as a lighter but faster version of the baby Vince Young Michigan played in the 2004 Rose Bowl. He's the kind of guy who throws a couple of picks against Texas, gets benched for Tyler Buchner, and then re-emerges to lead Alabama to the SEC championship. He is a series of mountains and valleys.

At this point most of the high points come, directly or indirectly, as a result of his legs. Milroe has the same kind of defense-warping speed that Mike Vick or Denard Robinson had. To date the Tide has not really featured him as a designed runner. He has 140 carries but just 63 were designed, per PFF's reckoning. The rest are scrambles or sacks. That's 4.8 intentional runs per game.

Some of that is an Alabama version of what Michigan was doing with JJ McCarthy this year: keeping him healthy. A dollar says that Milroe doubles his average of designed runs in this game. In Alabama's toughest games this year Milroe had 11, 13, and 10 designed runs against Ole Miss, LSU, and Georgia, respectively. I would guess he exceeds that average in this game.

Bama's actual running backs are fine but not gamebreakers. Jase McClellan and Roydell Williams split carries about down the middle—McClellan has 166 attempts, Williams 110—and between them average a hair under 5 YPC. (McClellan missed the SEC championship game but should be available for the Rose Bowl.) They do make a fair number of those yards themselves.

This may be an advantage for Michigan. It is nominally good for Alabama that their average yards after contact is 3.8, which is a full yard higher than Michigan and one of the elite numbers nationally, but in this matchup you'd probably want to see a lot of line yards and relatively few yards after contact because Michigan is the #1 team in the country in PFF's tackling metric. They have just 34 missed tackles on the season. If Bama backs are meeting Michigan tackles a yard and half downfield, it is going to be second and seven.

This might happen a fair bit, as Alex issued cyans to a couple of guys on Alabama's line. Maryland transfer CJ Dippre is the most frequently used tight end—it is not good when you are starting a guy who wasn't even Maryland's best TE in 2022. Center Seth McLaughlin has had a very strange year featuring a wide array of snaps too early, too late, too low, and too wide. He was set to be the goat of the Auburn game until Milroe (and Hugh Freeze) pulled his ass out of the fire.

The rest of the line is very talented but the left half is also very young, featuring a true sophomore (Tyler Booker) at left guard and a true freshman (Kadyn Proctor) at left tackle. Booker grades out OK on PFF, for whatever that's worth. There is a pretty large gap in efficiency based on rushing direction: anything to the right of the center averages 5.6 YPC; anything to the left averages 4.4. Michigan might do well to align left/right in this game regardless of formation strength.

The open question for Michigan: will they deviate from this season's All Ohio State Defense All The Time approach? Michigan run defense numbers this season are all the more impressive because for virtually all of it they have been playing even in the box with two deep safeties. I can't see how this is going to work against a QB like Milroe. Michigan will have to drop another guy into the box to deal with Milroe, or run a Dantonio-esque quarters scheme with safeties within ten yards of the LOS. I doubt that latter is the direction they'll go, leaving Michigan still even in the box against an offense that is going to force Michigan to defend the QB on every play.

I'd be lying if I told you I knew how this was going to go. Michigan has not faced a mobile quarterback on a functional offense this season. For the last three years they built their defense around defending an NFL passing attack featuring a pocket guy. The closest QBs to Milroe on the schedule this year were Gavin Wimsatt and Heinrich Haarberg, which is like saying the closest thing to a Saturn V rocket we've got is Mentos tossed into a two-liter of Coke. Minter didn't see anything like Milroe last year, either, unless Sean Clifford or Max Duggan count. I don't think they do.

KEY MATCHUP: JUNIOR COLSON and MIKE BARRETT vs MILROE IN SPACE. It's going to happen, and 15 yards versus 50 is going to hang on some tackles in space.

Pass Defense vs Alabama

[Fuller]

Jalen Milroe, as mentioned, both won the SEC this year and was benched for a guy who decided to enter the transfer portal after the season… as a lacrosse player. The peaks and valleys are extreme here. Milroe's legs distort defenses to the point of absurdity. Our dude has to be the most-spied-upon player in the country aside from Jayden Daniels; when Alabama faced a fourth and 31 at the end of the Auburn game, Hugh Freeze rushed one(!?!?) and had two DL sit back as spies(?!?!?), allowing Milroe eons of time to find a guy single covered(??!?!) in the corner of the endzone.

That'll go down as one of the worst defensive playcalls in the history of college football but it does demonstrate the sheer terror opposing defensive coordinators have when facing Milroe, and how defenses have to dedicate extra resources to keeping him from dropping back-breaking off-schedule plays. The conundrum: do you get after him? I think you have to. There is a Kyle McCord-level gap in Milroe's production between clean (92 PFF grade!) and pressured (55) attempts.

There is a similarly large gap between Milroe's performance on deep balls (97!) and intermediate throws (56). His completion percentages on deep balls and intermediate balls are identical; his YPA on deep shots in 10 yards better than his YPA on intermediate ones. If you give Milroe time in the pocket he will kill you.

It is true that Milroe does get himself in trouble quite a bit by holding onto the ball too long. He's suffered 38 sacks this year and is 13th amongst P5 QBs the percentage of pressures that PFF charged to the QB, but as I mention whenever I bring up these stats this has nearly no bearing on how good a QB actually is. Bo Nix, Caleb Williams, Drake Maye, Cam Ward, Mike Penix, and Quinn Ewers are half of the QBs who are "worse" in this regard. His average time to throw is 3.5 seconds, which is second-slowest amongst P5 QBs. Part of the reason he kills you when he sits in the pocket is that he sits in the pocket almost a full second longer than your average QB.

If you get after him, he might kill you. Or you might get him in a passing down situation of any length, whereupon the advantage is now yours.

If I'm Jesse Minter I'm spying rarely, sending extra guys up the middle, stunting a ton, and getting after true freshman LT Kadyn Proctor. Not a mush rush. Michigan has been superb at preventing QBs from finding vacated rush lanes this season, and they should bank on that instead of playing passively. This is likely to lead to a couple of off-schedule plays Milroe makes, but the rest of college football has been so scared of Milroe's legs that they're letting him escape his main flaw as a QB: processing speed. If Michigan speeds up Milroe he will throw picks.

Meanwhile, Alabama's receiving corps is good but not what they've been in recent years. Georgia transfer Jermaine Burton is the deep threat, and one of the premiere ones nationally. He has a Michigan-esque dearth of targets relative to his production: 777 yards on 35 catches; 52 targets. His average depth of target is a whopping 21 yards; he's caught 9 of 16 contested opportunities. Nico Collins. He is Nico Collins.

Look at how rangy that dude is. He gives Milroe, who is actually a relatively refined deep passer, a big target who can make up for some mistakes. In a game that figures to be relatively low-scoring, Burton's output on throws of more than 20 yards is going to be a major determining factor.

Isaiah Bond is the other main target. The 5'11" Bond operates mostly out of the slot and has 624 yards on 70 targets this year; he is the most likely target on third and medium. Bond is slippery and a quality player but he doesn't seem like the kind of nuclear athlete who you'd worry about Mike Sainristil going up against. He'll probably get his from time to time but Michigan seems fairly well prepared to deal with him.

Nobody else on the roster averages more than a couple targets per game. Amari Niblack is the receiving tight end and is just a guy who Michigan should treat as a WR what with his 44 run block grade; Kobe Prentice and Kendrick Law are slot types who end up stuck on the outside most of the time because of Bond and are very infrequent targets. The running backs are dump-off targets only.

It's about the two big WRs against Michigan's two big DBs, with a major supporting role played by Jesse Minter's blizzard of coverages.

KEY MATCHUP: WILL JOHNSON vs JERMAINE BURTON. If there was ever a game to match best vs best and let the chips fall where they may, this is it. Burton is hugely productive when targeted, Michigan can't really afford to put a safety over the top because of Milroe, and the other Bama WRs aren't threats on his level.

SPECIAL TEAMS

A land of contrasts here for Alabama, which has an excellent punting unit and finished dead last in FEI's punt return efficiency. The Tide did get a touchdown during SoCon Showdown week, but FEI doesn't count games against FCS teams. They also had 6 returns for 67 yards in the opener against Middle Tennessee. Alabama's other 10 return attempts on the season went for a total of 11 yards. Kool-Aid McKinstry also had a muff against Kentucky and a bizarre fly-by of a punt that had hit the ground for a turnover against Tennessee. McKinstry got replaced by freshman Caleb Downs against Auburn. He doesn't have much of a track record aside from that TD against Chattanooga.

The kicking game has been excellent. Punter James Burnip has as whopping 47 yard average and has largely kept opponents from returning anything. Just 10 of his 52 punts have come back. A&M and Georgia did get chunk returns on him of 46 and 28 yards but outside of that Burnip has had a remarkable ability to punt long distances without giving a portion of it back. He leads the country in hang time.

Kicker Will Reichard is 20/23 on the season and 3/3 from outside 50. Reichard has been around forever; this is his fourth year as the starting kicker, and he's hitting 85% for his career. I wouldn't expect him to miss an extra point in OT.

Kickoffs don't matter.

KEY MATCHUP: AHHH YOU PUT IT THROUGH THE UPRIGHTS

INTANGIBLES

CHEAP THRILLS

Worry if...

• Michigan's letting Milroe sit in the pocket and using spies.
• Michigan's getting stuck in passing downs.
• JJ isn't being used as a runner.

Cackle with glee if...

• Colston Loveland gets 15 targets.
• Will Johnson is winning contested balls to Burton.
• Michigan's duo forces Bama to over-react.

Fear/Paranoia Level: 6 (Baseline 5; +1 for Historic Michigan Rose Bowl Performances, +1 for Nick Saban With Prep Time, +1 for A Quarterback The Likes Of Which We Have Not Seen, +1 for Ye Gods That Secondary, +1 for Ye Gods Those Edge Rushers, –1 for SP+ Is Real, Birds Are Not, –1 for Minter Is Going To Get Milroe Several Times, –1 for The Nation Is Sleeping On JJ McCarthy, –1 for Michigan's Best Weapons Point At The Bama Weak Spot, –1 for Michigan Played Like The Best Team In The Country This Year And Vegas Has Staked A Lot On A Michigan Win, +1 for It's Bama)

Desperate Need To Win Level: 10 (Baseline 5; +5 for Playoffs Playoffs We're Talking About Playoffs)

Loss will cause me to... get infected with hot sauce and start chanting SEC while shuffling towards a Zaxby's.

Win will cause me to... hell yeah.

The strictures and conventions of sportswriting compel me to predict: 

Hang on to your butts. I think Michigan should win this game but to do so they are going to have to deviate from their year-long script. They cannot play Milroe like they played the entire year. I don't even want them to spy. I want them to get after him, Manny Diaz style, and prevent him from sitting in the pocket for 3.5 seconds. Will they? Or will they sit back and bend but don't break like they have all year?

On offense, QBs need 15 carries and to be a constant threat. Bama can neutralize their DT issues by getting nosy in the box with safeties; they cannot do that if it's 11 on 11. Michigan also needs to ramp up the play action against a secondary that looks nigh impregnable on passing downs. All of this is a departure from "who Michigan is" and may be rejected, but I just don't see Michigan winning this game by playing Ohio State for the 14th consecutive game.

I choose to believe this will be a gameplan to remember on both sides of the ball.

Finally, three opportunities for me to look stupid tomorrow: 

• Michigan QBs exceed 100 rushing yards combined.
• Sainristil pick-six.
• Michigan, 29-22.