PASADENA, Calif. — All week long, the Michigan football team’s defensive line had to field the questions.
The Wolverines were slated to go up against Alabama’s mammoth offensive line — averaging 338.6 pounds per starter — in Monday’s Rose Bowl, and fielded questions questions from approximately 338.6 reporters about it.
By week’s end, one of the nation’s biggest and most dominant defensive fronts all season was sick of being viewed as the David to Goliath.
“Yeah, we’ve heard a lot about how big they are,” Braiden McGregor told 247Sports on Saturday, with a smirk. “We’ll see what it looks like on the field.”
It took McGregor exactly one snap to show the Crimson Tide exactly what he meant, as he opened the game with an immediate, untouched sack. Through Alabama’s first two drives, the Wolverines generated four sacks, and had another one before halftime.
Overall, Michigan generated 12 pressures in the game, including six sacks and a loss of 49 yards. The Wolverines also forced five (two on pressure snaps) scrambles, allowing 42 yards, and allowed Milroe to complete one of three pass attempts for five yards. That means in 15 snaps where the pocket wasn’t clean by the time the ball was thrown, Alabama netted negative-two yards.
“Some of the media were hyping them up,” McGregor said after the game. “‘Oh they were giants.’ Blowing people off the ball and all that. … We had four sacks the first two series.”
The Crimson Tide adjusted their passing game plan as a result in the second half, but it severely limited what Alabama could do as a passing attack. In a clean pocket, the Crimson Tide completed 15 of 20 passes but they went for just 111 total yards, with an average depth of completion of just 2.6 yards. The Crimson Tide attempted just three passes 20 or more yards downfield and three passes 10-19 yards downfield. In its first 13 games, Alabama averaged 9.7 pass attempts at least 10 yards downfield per game, and had 13 such attempts against Georgia in the SEC Championship game.
In other words, the Crimson Tide weren’t able to so much as attempt many passes downfield, let alone complete them.
“We definitely wanted to make a statement, especially to Milroe,” defensive tackle Kris Jenkins said. “Everybody was talking about his ability to get out of the pocket. He’s an amazing athlete, so shout out to him, but we definitely had to set the tone early and let everybody know that we huntin’.”
In fairness to Michigan, the Wolverines have been a stingy defensive front all season. Michigan only ranked 34th nationally in sacks per game entering the bowl game, but was fifth nationally in Pro Football Focus’s pass-rushing grade, suggesting that their ability to affect the play was greater than their sack line would typically suggest.
On a defensive front with size, experience (four players in their nine-man rotation are fourth-, fifth- or sixth-year seniors, while three others are third-year players), the Wolverines have put an emphasis on block destruction this season — one their their four defensive pillars — and on Monday, against and Alabama line with a season-long weakness of pass-blocking, it paid dividends in a big way.
“This is just stuff we’ve been practicing, we’ve been preaching and training since the beginning of the season thanks to Coach Minter and Coach Elston,” Jenkins said. “We’ve been preaching block destruction to all guys, not just linemen. So after every single practice, we’d go back and look at what we did right and what we did wrong. Coach said we probably put in 700 hours into that alone this year. So it just goes to show how seriously we take our technique to dominate.”
To the rest of the country, Monday’s dominance was a statement performance. Players like McGregor, Josaiah Stewart and Mason Graham became household names, and the Wolverines’ defensive line shined on one of football’s grandest stages.
To the Wolverines, however, a statement to the rest of the country was simply confirmation to themselves. Michigan’s linemen carried a quiet confidence with them into the Rose Bowl, and that belief only grew once the game got underway.
“(It proved) that we are who we say we are,” McGregor said. “A lot of people say that we beat up on teams early, stuff like that. That’s a good offense over there. I don’t know about the O-line draft picks or whatever, but those guys are ranked pretty high. We handled business on the D-line.”
That they did, and they punched a ticket to the national championship in Houston as a result. There, they’ll face a Washington team that leads the country in passing yards per game and is fourth nationally in sacks allowed per game, but Michigan’s defensive line will embrace yet another challenge, and aim to make an even louder statement.
