Everything you need to know — and we mean everything — about Monday’s CFP semifinal showdown between Michigan (-1.5) and Alabama.
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Oh, thank god. They’re finally playing the game.

It has been one long December in college football, folks. The opt-outs. The portal. The annual exodus of coaches leaving for one school for another, griping about the now-annual exodus of players leaving one school for another. Coaches with multimillion-dollar salaries begging their fan base to pitch in to a completely unregulated dark-money NIL market no one is in charge of or understands. The cursed social media announcements that force you to scan approximately ten thousand words in an unreadable font for the phrase, “With that said …”

Meanwhile, there was the almighty Playoff Committee itself, forced for the first time in its existence into making a meaningful decision guaranteed to enrage some substantial percentage of the American public no matter what and proceeding to do just that. Pundits from coast to coast surveyed the implications for the future of the sport and rendered the verdict: Not good. Corrupt, even, or at least perceived to be. The governor of Florida threatened to sue the committee. The Florida State University Board of Trustees voted to sue the ACC. Elsewhere, the remaining members of the rump Pac-12 sued the departing members, and won. Three FBS conference crowned champions that will play in a different conference in 2024. The commissioner of the Big 12 got booed off the stage by fans of the team he was literally in the process of awarding the trophy.

Lawyers. Injunctions. Grants of rights. Buyouts. More lawyers. When did covering and reading about and just plain old casually engaging with this sport entail having more working knowledge of contract law than the counter trey?

Well, enough. Good riddance to December. Stuff the lawyers in a locker. We are ready for some dang football. New Year’s Day, proper. Pasadena at sunset. The Granddaddy. Wolverines. Crimson Tide. The big one! (To be immediately followed by the other big one!) Now this, after all that, this is what it’s all about: The team, the games, the players, settling it on the world’s most aesthetically flawless field. All that money coursing through the sport, distorting it almost beyond recognition? This is what the money is for.

So: The game. I’m not going to attempt to defend the committee’s decision to tap 12-1 Alabama for the final ticket over 13-0 Florida State, other than to re-emphasize that there was no solution that would not have alienated half the country. (And to say thank god the format was already scheduled to expand to 12 teams next year.) Undefeated is undefeated. But you won’t catch me saying the Crimson Tide don’t belong here on the merits of their 11-game winning streak, either.

Strictly from a competitive standpoint, the committee has engineered as compelling a matchup as any CFP semifinal to date, on multiple levels. If it holds, the 1.5-point spread in Pasadena will be the 2nd-narrowest of any Playoff game, coming in just below the 1-point spread for Clemson/Ohio State in 2016. And for two teams so evenly matched on the field, the Crimson Tide and Wolverines’ respective seasons could not have felt much more different.

For Michigan, 2023 was The Year, right from the jump. A quarter-century removed from their last national crown, the Wolverines finally had all the pieces in place: The imperious coach, Jim Harbaugh, who’d rebuilt a contender from a dead stop after the initial momentum of his tenure had seemed to run out of gas; the blue-chip quarterback, JJ McCarthy, entering his second full season as a starter; a largely intact lineup stacked with future draft picks; the experience of back-to-back Playoff disappointments in 2021 and ’22; and the schedule, which presented a straight shot to the only games that mattered, Penn State and Ohio State in November. In a season that began with all of the other usual suspects facing one looming question mark or another, the Wolverines arguably checked the most boxes of any preseason contender.

Four months later, here they are, all systems go as the No. 1 seed. They looked the part throughout the regular season, handling the Nittany Lions and Buckeyes in business-like fashion while dispatching their other 11 opponents by more than 4 touchdowns per game. No suspiciously close calls, no dramatic comebacks, no miracles, no doubt. They haven’t even trailed at any point after the first quarter. The drama, such that it was, unfolded entirely off the field.

For Alabama, on the other hand, the 2023 campaign was defined by doubt — about the fate of this team, specifically, and the future of the Saban dynasty, in general. The Crimson Tide opened the season as wild cards, and quickly descended into crisis mode following a Week 2 loss to Texas. They slogged their way through the SEC slate, winning in what felt like (for Bama) uninspired and chaotic fashion; 4 of their 9 conference wins came by 6 points or less, and in 3 others they trailed in the second half. They entered the final Saturday of the regular season ranked 8th in the CFP committee’s weekly rankings, 4 spots back of Florida State, having just barely salvaged their hopes in the the season’s wildest finish.

Their 27-24 upset over Georgia in the SEC Championship Game changed all of that. An underwhelming outfit became a champion; a narrative that had been obsessed with decline transformed almost overnight into a story of perseverance, growth, and triumph. Nick Saban’s best coaching job? Sure, why not. The dynasty held. The doomsayers ate crow. And the committee was moved to put its own credibility on the line for the sake of ensuring this Bama team, specifically, got its due.

The time for litigating that decision is over. The opportunity to vindicate it has arrived, in a head-on collision with Michigan’s big opportunity to end its 26-year title drought. Both teams are healthy, rested and good enough to win it all. At long last, let’s play ball.

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When Michigan has the ball

Top 10 players on the field

1. Alabama Edge Dallas Turner (82.4 PFF grade | 14 TFLs | Consensus All-American)
2. Alabama CB Terrion Arnold (89.8 PFF | 5 INTs | 1st-team All-SEC)
3. Alabama CB Kool-Aid McKinstry (88.1 PFF | 5.0 yards/target allowed | Consensus All-American)
4. Michigan RB Blake Corum (82.1 PFF | 55 career TDs | 9th in Heisman vote)
5. Michigan QB JJ McCarthy (90.7 PFF | 89.2 QBR | 19 TDs/4 INTs | 1st-team All-B1G)
6. Alabama Edge Chris Braswell (82.1 PFF | 11 TFLs + 3 forced fumbles)
7. Alabama DB Caleb Downs (87.1 PFF | 99 tackles + 2 INTs | SEC Freshman of the Year)
8. Michigan C Drake Nugent (77.3 PFF | 0 sacks allowed | 1st-team All-B1G)
9. Michigan WR Roman Wilson (81.3 PFF | 662 yds + 11 TDs | 2nd-team All-B1G)
10. Michigan TE Colston Loveland (74.7 PFF | 572 yds + 4 TDs | 1st-team All-B1G)
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In the pocket

On paper, McCarthy has very little left to prove. He was a decorated recruit. He’s presided over a 25-1 record as a starter. He’s aced the Buckeye Test 2 years in a row. He ranks 3rd nationally in Total QBR, 10th in PFF grading, and boasts the best single-season passer rating in school history. (He owns the career record, too, surpassing the longstanding mark set by his head coach in the mid-1980s.) He’s completed 71.9% of his attempts on 3rd down, 62.7% of his attempts under pressure and 54.5% of his attempts of 20+ air yards, all among the best in the nation. If he opts for the NFL Draft after the season — a very real possibility, especially if the Wolverines win it all — he projects as a potential first-rounder. He checks all the requisite boxes for experience, size and mobility, and most definitely for his arm.

Given throws like that, it would be unfair to his skill-set to stick McCarthy with the title of “system QB” or “game manager.” It is true, however, that his team has rarely called on him to transcend that role, for the very good reason that it has so rarely had to. The Wolverines’ resurgence since his arrival on campus has been built from the trenches up, at the expense of allowing their gifted young QB to command the stage. As a starter, McCarthy has averaged a pedestrian 23.3 attempts for a little over 200 yards per game, eclipsing 30 attempts just once this season. With one notable exception (which we’ll get to momentarily), he has yet to face a significant second-half deficit or to find himself in anything remotely resembling a shootout.

The retro blueprint has held up in the big games as well as in the snoozers. Hell, when the Wolverines have their way, the big games are snoozers. In their Week 11 win at Penn State, McCarthy finished 7-for-8 passing for 60 yards and didn’t record an official pass attempt after halftime. (He did put it in the air once in the 4th quarter, resulting in a defensive pass interference penalty that wiped the play from his stat line.) Against Ohio State, he was an efficient-but-restrained 16-for-20 for 148 yards, with a 22-yard touchdown strike to Roman Wilson (see above) going down as his longest completion of the day. His last time out, a 26-0 win over Iowa in the Big Ten Championship Game, he didn’t even attempt a pass of 20+ air yards. Why bother, on a night when the Hawkeyes’ only prayer of cracking the goose egg was cashing in a Michigan turnover?

Of course, the outlier in McCarthy’s charmed tenure as QB1 is a big one: Last year’s wild, 51-45 loss to TCU in the Fiesta Bowl, the first and as-yet only game that has nudged him out of his comfort zone with the points and the pressure mounting. McCarthy made his share of plays against the Horned Frogs, throwing for a career-high 343 yards with 2 touchdowns, plus a third score on the ground and another apparent TD pass overturned when the receiver, Wilson, was dubiously ruled down short of the goal line on review. (Michigan promptly blew the opportunity by fumbling the ball into the end zone; don’t even get the fans started on that sequence.) The offense as a whole had one of its most productive outings of the past two seasons in terms of both yards and points.

But McCarthy also took his turn as the goat, serving up 2 pick-6 interceptions that dramatically altered the course of the game — one early, putting the Wolverines in a 7-0 hole in the first quarter, and one late, ensuring the hole was too deep for them to dig their way out in the fourth.

McCarthy has played too much winning football to be defined by the lone entry in the loss column. Still, with so few other meaningful data points in high-stakes situations a couple of killer giveaways in a CFP semifinal inevitably loom large, and Michigan’s lo-fi offense is specifically designed to avoid putting him in that position again. As someone who scrutinizes college quarterbacks for a living, it’s a little bit disorienting to suss out a spread-era QB of McCarthy’s caliber at the wheel of an offense so reluctant to let him hit the gas.

Then again, the fact that he’s made it this far in one piece might justify the means all by itself. Aside from their run-first mindset in general, another factor in the Wolverines’ reluctance to put the ball in the air is their wavering confidence in keeping McCarthy upright.

Both starting tackle spots have been in flux all year due to injury and inconsistency. On the left side, the job ultimately fell to Arizona State transfer LaDarius Henderson, who started 8 of the past 9 games after entering the lineup in Week 5; although he was tabbed as a first-team All-Big Ten pick by league coaches, Henderson was not nearly as highly regarded by PFF, which rang him up for 17 QB pressures and 2 sacks allowed in his last 4 starts alone. On the right side, Michigan is on its 3rd different starter of the season, senior Trente Jones, whose role prior to starting the Big Ten title game consisted largely of serving as a jumbo tight end. This might be the area where Michigan’s relatively marginal standing in the Team Talent Composite and Blue-Chip Ratio is most clearly borne out.

At any rate, there are few tackle combos in the country against whom Alabama’s Dallas Turner and Chris Braswell would not represent a severe mismatch. The Wolverines have survived their previous encounters with elite edge-rushing rotations this season, in wins over Penn State and Ohio State, by successfully avoiding must-pass situations. (Or, in the case of the Penn State game, by abandoning the forward pass entirely.) Opposite Turner and Braswell, aspiring first-rounders who have combined for 106 pressures, 23 sacks and 5 forced fumbles, allowing them to pin their ears back is a recipe for a very long, sobering afternoon.

Key matchup: McCarthy vs. The Scoreboard. Is McCarthy capable of beating Bama with his arm? I’d wager that he is. But there’s only one way we’re likely to find out, and that’s if the Wolverines’ night has already gone sideways enough that he’s left with no other choice.

On the ground

Why spend so many words on the quarterback of a team determined to make its living between the tackles? With respect to Michigan’s rep as a gritty, old-school running team, this season’s running game was nothing to write home about. Compared to 2022, the Wolverines’ output on the ground in Big Ten play plunged by more than 80 yards per game (including sacks) and by nearly a yard-and-a-half per carry. Over the second half of the season, they topped 200 yards rushing just once (against Penn State), and 4.0 yards per carry just twice; against Iowa, they managed a meager 66 yards on 2.0 per carry, their worst outing in both categories since the pandemic. Not coincidentally, that was also their first game without their best lineman, All-American guard Zak Zinter, who suffered season-ending injury in the win over Ohio State.

The good news is the availability of a healthy Blake Corum. Last year, Corum was conspicuous in his absence in the semifinal loss to TCU due to a lingering ankle injury, and his decision to return for his senior year — an unheard-of move for an All-American running back in the 21st Century — was largely driven by his feeling that he had “unfinished business” on the CFP stage. The big question this time around is whether he remains the same dynamic presence he was before the injury. Like the team’s as a whole, Corum’s 2023 production declined virtually across the board, and in two categories, in particular: Broken tackles and explosive runs. Per PFF, he forced just 23 missed tackles on the season, down from 73 MTFs in 2022, with 7 runs of 20+ yards, down from 15.

At his best, Corum is the complete package: Shifty in tight quarters, powerful enough to run through arm tackles, durable enough to handle a full-time workload, and capable of scoring from anywhere on the field — long-range or close. He put his 5-8, 213-pound frame to effective use this season as short-yardage closer, with the vast majority of his FBS-best 24 touchdowns coming on goal-to-go plunges. Meanwhile, game-clinching TD runs against Penn State (from 30 yards out) and Ohio State (22 yards) were reassuring glimpses of the week-in, week-out explosiveness that made him a star in ’22. But there is real concern amid an otherwise workmanlike campaign that that’s all they were: Glimpses.

Anyway, Corum’s slightly diminished stat line would be much less notable if it hadn’t coincided with an even more disappointing turn from his understudy, Donovan Edwards. Before the season, the pair projected as the nation’s premier 1-2 punch, with Edwards due for a significant increase in touches coming off an injury-plagued 2022. Not so much, as it turned out: In Big Ten play, Edwards averaged 8 carries per game at 3.5 yards a pop — a huge drop from his 7.5-yard average as a sophomore. His long gain, a 22-yard touchdown at Penn State, would not rank in the top 10 over his first 2 seasons.

Make no mistake: Edwards, like Corum, is a blue-chip talent with an abundance of evidence of his home-run potential on file, both as a runner and a receiver (see below). The dude is a big play waiting to happen. It’s just that, as it stands, you have to scroll back a lot further than you’d expect to actually find them.

For its part, Alabama’s defense is not the irresistible force against the run that it’s been for most of the Saban era. The Tide are coming off arguably their best game of the season on that front, a vintage effort against Georgia in which they held the UGA to 92 yards (excluding sacks) on 3.4 per carry. But that came just a week after they were gashed for 272 yards on 7.4 per carry by Auburn, an attack that — unlike Georgia’s — prominently involves its quarterback in the run game. Auburn’s Payton Thorne, hardly an electric athlete, contributed 85 yards to the effort on 11 carries despite posing virtually no threat whatsoever to beat the Tide with his arm. Notably, nearly all of that total was the result of designed reads, not scrambles.

On that point, although Michigan doesn’t call on him to do it very often, McCarthy is a more capable runner than the stats suggest. As a freshman, he was conscripted into a “change of pace” role that largely involved running a zone-read package off the bench, and given the green light he has some dual-threat ability, as TCU found out last year the hard way.

Obviously, this is a green-light game. The Wolverines don’t need their quarterback to run for 85 yards; that’s not their offense. But they do need to force Alabama to respect McCarthy as enough of a threat to keep the linebackers honest. That split-second of indecision on routine handoffs can be the difference in finding a sliver of daylight and banging your head against a wall.

Key matchup: Michigan RG Karsen Barnhart vs. Alabama DT Tim Keenan III. Zinter’s injury isn’t the headline-grabber that Corum’s was last year, but it might be the bigger loss. Zinter is a 4-year starter, unanimous All-American, and potential Day 2 pick in next year’s draft. In his place, Michigan will turn to Barnhart, a 5th-year senior with 29 career starts at 4 different positions — the only station along the line he hasn’t manned (yet) is center. His battle with Keenan, a massive presence at 6-2, 315 pounds, will go a long way toward setting the tone at the line of scrimmage and determining just how much of the Wolverines’ playbook remains viable as the game unfolds.

Down the field

Michigan has boasted its share of high-profile wideouts over the years, and someday it will again. In the meantime, the Harbaugh-era Wolverines will continue to rely on the likes of Roman Wilson and Cornelius Johnson: Good, not great, and generally lacking in the volume necessary to make the leap from the former category to the latter.

Between them, Wilson and Johnson were among the more productive receiving combos in the Big Ten, accounting for a combined 1,229 yards on 83 catches. (Marvin Harrison Jr. aside, it was not a banner year for B1G receivers.) Wilson is the resident burner, averaging 16.1 yards per catch with 11 touchdowns; Johnson is the possession guy, hauling in a conference-best 75% of his targets. Sophomore Semaj Morgan is a reliable option in the slot, albeit a relatively little-used one in a scheme that spends the majority of its time in two-tight end personnel.

Do any of the above strike fear into Alabama’s blue-chip secondary? They do not. The Crimson Tide’s corners, Kool-Aid McKinstry and Terrion Arnold, are highly decorated vets with a serious shot at being the first 2 cornerbacks off the board next spring. Per PFF, they held opposing QBs this season to a combined 50.9% completion rate with 23 forced incompletions and only 3 touchdowns allowed. The nickel, senior Malachi Moore, is another future pro who has seen it all at the campus level. This is one area, along with the pass rush, where the mano-a-mano matchups decisively favor the Tide.

Michigan does have other ways to skin the cat. Sophomore TE Colston Loveland is a plus athlete who frequently operates from the slot and makes plays vertically — per PFF, he’s 9-for-11 career on targets of 20+ air yards with 5 touchdowns. The “big” tight end, 6-6 Indiana transfer AJ Barner, is a handful on contested catches. And Donovan Edwards, while he’s struggled to gain much traction on the ground, has flashed his speed on the receiving end, both out of the backfield and out wide.

Again, the Wolverines are not out to make a living through the air; if the ground game holds up, a couple of splash plays and/or timely conversions in the passing game might be all they need. If not, moving the chains consistently is going to be an uphill battle.

Key matchup: Loveland vs. Alabama DB Caleb Downs. Downs is the rare 5-star freshman who arguably exceeds the hype. A Day 1 starter, he overcame a harsh initiation against Texas to finish with the top overall PFF grade among SEC safeties and earn a first-team all-conference nod from league coaches. (A real achievement considering that, as a rule, coaches are always loathe to honor freshmen.) Downs draws opposing tight ends in coverage more down than any other Bama defender, including Georgia’s Brock Bowers, who came down with a 20-yard gain at Downs’ expense but nothing else. Loveland, like most tight ends, enjoys a significant height advantage at 6-5, but as for creating separation? Unless the Wolverines manage to catch Downs on his downhill skis against play-action, good luck.

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When Alabama has the ball

Top 10 Players On the Field

1. Alabama QB Jalen Milroe (90.5 PFF grade | 83.6 QBR | 35 total TDs | 6th in Heisman vote)
2. Michigan CB Will Johnson (82.5 PFF | 3 INTs + 0 TDs allowed | 1st-team All-B1G)
3. Michigan DT Mason Graham (87.0 PFF | 6.5 TFLs | 1st-team All-B1G)
4. Alabama OT JC Latham (80.8 PFF | 1st-team All-SEC | Projected 1st-round pick)
5. Michigan DB Mike Sainristil (82.9 PFF | 5 INTs + 6 PBUs | 2nd-team All-B1G)
6. Michigan LB Michael Barrett (90.6 PFF | 52 tackles + 3 forced fumbles | 33 career starts)
7. Alabama WR Jermaine Burton (82.1 PFF | 777 yards + 8 TDs | 22.2 yards/catch)
8. Michigan LB Junior Colson (81.5 PFF | 240 career tackles | 2nd-team All-B1G)
9. Michigan DT Kris Jenkins (79.3 PFF | 30 career starts | 2nd-team All-B1G)
10. Alabama OG Tyler Booker (76.0 PFF | 1 sack allowed | 2nd-team All-SEC)

In the pocket

Upon further review, the initial panic over Jalen Milroe‘s growing pains is doomed to go down in infamy. With a full season under his belt, Milroe is clearly on schedule to fulfill his destiny as the next great Alabama quarterback and the frontrunner for the 2024 Heisman. (He’s already confirmed he’ll be back next year.) Let the record show, though, that his ascent was anything but inevitable.

Quite the opposite: For a while there, Milroe led the list of reasons the Tide were on the brink of an existential crisis. He was the goat of the Week 2 loss to Texas, benched as a result, and reinstated only after the backups flopped in a dismal Week 3 outing at South Florida. From there, he continued to alternate between “promising” and “reckless” in a series of close, defensively driven wins against the middle rungs of the SEC slate, and didn’t really begin to shed his boom-or-bust reputation until well into the home stretch.

What changed? On the plus side, not much, at least statistically: There’s no moment on the stat sheet where you see the light suddenly flicker on. The real growth as a passer came on the opposite side of the ledger, with big declines after the Tide’s open date in Week 9 in sacks and interceptions.

Same boom, substantially less bust. Milroe was picked off just once after the open date and slashed one of the nation’s highest sack rates by more than half while facing almost exactly the same degree of pressure. His pressure-to-sack ratio — a PFF metric that tracks the percentage of QB pressures that result in sacks — plummeted from 35.8% before the break (worst in the entire country up to that point) to 18.6% on the other side. Meanwhile, he also cut his fumbles from 7 to 2. His pocket sense and ball security improved across the board.

None of which is to suggest that Milroe is anywhere close to a finished product in the pocket. There’s certainly no question about his downfield arm strength, which has been his biggest asset pretty much from Day 1. Nearly a full quarter of his attempts traveled 20+ air yards, easily the highest rate in the SEC, and he ranked among the national leaders in completion percentage (53.1%), yards per attempt (19.3) and touchdowns (16) on those throws. He will not hesitate to let it rip. It’s the intermediate stuff that still gives him trouble, especially in high-traffic zones over the middle. In contrast to his success throwing deep, Milroe was among PFF’s worst-graded passers nationally on attempts of 10-19 yards, serving up 4 of his 6 interceptions in that range vs. just 4 touchdowns.

At times Milroe has tended to get a little leisurely in the pocket: PFF clocked him at 3.50 seconds per attempt, highest in the nation among quarterbacks with at least 150 dropbacks. (As a point of comparison, McCarthy averaged 2.86 seconds, around the FBS average.) Michigan’s pass rush under first-year defensive coordinator Jesse Minter has been a collective effort. Although their team sack numbers are consistent with the past couple years, there’s no one in the edge-rushing rotation who stands out from the rest of the pack, much less one who’s likely to inspire fear in Alabama’s blue-chip o-line.

The top four edge defenders — Jaylen Harrell, Josaiah Stewart, Braiden McGregor, and Derrick Moore — all split pass-rushing snaps roughly evenly, with roughly similar results. All of them can hold their own; none of them are in any danger of being mistaken for Aidan Hutchinson. Whatever problems they pose for Bama are more likely to be the result of discipline and scheme than overwhelming talent. With Milroe’s mobility, turning up the heat is just as much about shutting down escape routes from the pocket as it is winning around the corner.

The x-factor along Bama’s front line is freshman left tackle Kadyn Proctor, a 5-star behemoth who’s spent his first year on campus in the spotlight for mostly the wrong reasons. By PFF’s accounting, Proctor allowed more pressures (33) than any other SEC lineman, and more sacks (11) than any other Power 5 lineman, period. Like his quarterback, however, he also appears to have benefitted enormously from the Week 9 bye: He’s been singled out on only 2 sacks since, and he’s coming off his highest-graded effort of the season in the win over Georgia. Protecting Milroe’s blind side has been a well-documented issue from Day 1, but if Proctor has finally graduated from weak link to functional starter it figures to be solved for the foreseeable future.

Key matchup: Milroe’s maturity vs. Jesse Minter’s game plan. Minter spent 4 years as an assistant on John Harbaugh’s staff with the Baltimore Ravens, and is quickly earning a reputation for the next-level complexity of the schemes he brought with him to Ann Arbor. Michigan has forced at least 1 interception in 10 of 13 games — 4 of which have been returned for touchdowns — including 2 picks off Ohio State’s Kyle McCord; Marvin Harrison Jr., who finished with 5 catches for 118 yards and a touchdown, said of the coverages the Wolverines threw at him “I’ve never seen anything like it until today.” (You can read more than you can possibly want to know about how Michigan defended Harrison, if that’s your thing.) Milroe has outgrown his worst habits from the early going, but he remains erratic when not dropping bombs. Now comes the advanced exam.

On the ground

The jury is out on the Crimson Tide’s leading rusher, senior Jase McClellan, who missed the SEC Championship Game with a foot injury and remains in doubt for Monday. As Bama running backs go, McClellan has been more of a role player than a leading man even when healthy: His output for the season (803 rushing yards on 4.8 per carry) represents the lowest team-leading totals of the Saban era in both columns. Still, his absence would be significant. Over the course of his career, McClellan has done a little bit of everything, from pulling workhorse duty in a pinch to breaking explosive plays. (He was responsible for both of Alabama’s longest gains in 2022, an 81-yard run against Texas and a 65-yard reception against LSU.) Plus he’s fumbled only once on 379 career touches. The Tide are better with him in the lineup.

If he can’t go, though, the drop-off from McClellan to understudies Roydell Williams and Jamarion Miller doesn’t amount to much; they combined for a perfectly cromulent 124 scrimmage yards and 2 touchdowns against Georgia on 4.6 per touch. And let’s be real: Regardless of who else happens to be in the backfield on any given snap, the runner Michigan is really concerned with is Milroe, a true dual-threat whose impact on the ground far exceeds his box-score production.

First-year offensive coordinator Tommy Rees has been conservative about calling Milroe’s number, limiting him to just 37 designed carries on the year, per PFF, the majority of which were clustered in three must-win games against Ole Miss (6), LSU (9) and Georgia (6). When he does pull it, he’s the equivalent of a full-service running back, complete with vision, power, and the speed to take it the distance.

With or without McClellan, Alabama is going to find pounding out a living between the tackles tough sledding. That’s not a strength of this offense to begin with, and Michigan boasts a couple of NFL-ready run-stuffers in DTs Mason Graham and Kris Jenkins. Rees has to keep them honest, but barring a random chunk or two the Tide’s success in the run game will rise or fall on their ability to get Milroe cleanly to the second level. At which point the rest will be up to him.

Key matchup: Michigan LBs Junior Colson and Michael Barrett vs. Milroe in space. Colson and Barrett are All-Big Ten-caliber vets with a combined 67 career starts and 435 tackles between them vs. only nine missed tackles this season, per PFF. Yet even for them, corralling Milroe in the open field is an unprecedented assignment. A false step or a whiff where No. 4 is involved could prove extremely costly.

Down the field

Alabama has been blessed with a long line of elite wideouts — the roster featured at least 1 future first-rounder every year from 2012-21 — and the position has suffered by comparison the past 2 seasons. Somewhere, the next great Bama receiver is waiting in the wings. In the meantime, what the current rotation lacks in all-around consistency it makes up for in big-play pop. Senior Jermaine Burton has carved out a productive niche for himself as a vertical specialist. A burner with exceptional hands (zero drops, per PFF) and body control on the fly, Burton ranked 4th nationally in average depth of target (21.0 yards), 3rd in average yards per catch (22.2), and tied for 2nd in receptions that gained 40+ yards (9).

Burton is not only a vertical specialist; his dozen 3rd-down conversions were twice as many as anyone else on the team, few of which came on downfield shots. But he’s undeniably at his best stretching the field, as is the rest of the rotation. As a group, Burton, Isaiah Bond, Kobe Prentice and tight end Amari Niblack combined for 18 touchdowns; all but 4 of them came on receptions of 20+ air yards.

On paper, Michigan’s defense is one of the best in the country against the pass by pretty much every relevant measure, as the Tale of the Tape at the top of this section reflects. The caveat is a schedule bereft of quality quarterbacks.

The two best QBs the Wolverines faced, Maryland’s Taulia Tagovailoa and Ohio State’s Kyle McCord, are also the only two who managed to inflict more than minimal damage in a competitive game. (If there was any doubt about where McCord stood at the end of his first season as the Buckeyes’ starter, he answered it by transferring to Syracuse.) You know, it’s not a coincidence that the nation’s top 4 scoring defenses all reside in the Big Ten.

Schedule notwithstanding, though, there’s no reason in particular to suspect the Wolverines are secretly vulnerable. One guy on the back end who requires no asterisk is sophomore cornerback Will Johnson. The most decorated recruit on the roster, Johnson made a big splash late last year as a true freshman and has continued to live up to the hype in Year 2. He’s yet to allow a touchdown in coverage this season while picking off 3 passes, including his first career pick-6, against Minnesota.

His last time out he gave as good as he got in his much-anticipated showdown with Marvin Harrison Jr. At 6-2/202, Johnson’s combination of length and fluidity at a premium position has already made him a virtual lock for the first round in 2025. Assuming he’s back to 100% after resting a sore knee against Iowa, Michigan is banking on him to keep the lid on Burton and force the Tide to find a winning matchup elsewhere.

Key matchup: Alabama WR Isaiah Bond vs. Michigan DB Mike Sainristil. Bond drinks free for life in Tuscaloosa as the hero of the Iron Bowl, but he’s been one of the Tide’s unsung playmakers throughout the season. On top of the season-saving, 4th-and-31 miracle at Auburn, he also housed a 52-yard reception at Texas A&M, a 46-yarder that sparked Bama’s second-half comeback against Tennessee, and accounted for 5 first downs on 5 catches in the win over Georgia, all of them coming on eventual scoring drives.

Although he occasionally lines up wide, Bond is ideally suited for the slot, where he’s been stationed on a little more than 60% of his snaps. That will frequently leave him opposite Sainristil, a converted receiver who has found himself right at home at nickel. After making a smooth transition in 2022, Sainristil broke out in a big way in ’23, chalking up 6 PBUs, 5 INTs (including 2 pick-6s), and a pair of forced fumbles in the Big Ten title game. He’s light in the pants for a pro prospect at 5-10/182, but his stock is on the rise coming off a strong finish to the regular season, and if he can hang with an ankle-breaker like Bond he won’t be having any problems holding the scouts’ attention.

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Special teams, injuries and other vagaries

College kickers don’t come much more experienced or more reliable than Michigan’s James Turner and Alabama’s Will Reichard. Turner, a transfer from Louisville, is 63-for-77 career on field goal attempts and 16-for-18 in his first season as a Wolverine, including 3-for-4 from 50+ yards. Reichard, a 5th-year senior responsible for more points than any other player in SEC history, is 82-for-98 for his career, 20-for-23 on the year and 3-for-3 from long distance.

Alabama fans actually trust Will Reichard, which given their often tortured relationship with kickers is saying something. Aside from his one memorable miss — a go-ahead attempt from 50 yards out in the closing seconds of the Tide’s 2022 loss to Tennessee — he has singlehandedly retired the Bama kicker curse. (Knock on wood.)

In the return game, both teams got a jolt from a fresh face late in the season. For Alabama, Caleb Downs replaced a suddenly butterfingery Kool-Aid McKinstry in Week 12 and promptly took his first career punt return for an 85-yard touchdown against Chattanooga. For Michigan, Semaj Morgan got his first crack in the punt return role in the Big Ten Championship Game and responded with the biggest play of the night.

Here is where I’ll note for the record that, by PFF’s stopwatch, Alabama punter James Burnip leads the nation in average hangtime at 4.39 seconds per punt, presumably the main reason that he’s also PFF’s top-graded punter overall. Only 10 of Burnip’s 52 punts have yielded any kind of return, resulting in a very healthy net average of 42.4 yards.

Among the very few transfer portal departures ahead of this game, the most relevant is Alabama’s Ja’Corey Brooks, who fell out of the wide receiver rotation this season but still managed to block a punt for the 3rd year in a row. The Crimson Tide do still have Chris Braswell, who has blocked a field goal each of the past two seasons.

On the injury front, with the exception of the Zinter-sized hole in Michigan’s offensive line both depth charts are essentially intact. Jase McClellan’s availability is shaping up as a game-time decision for Alabama, but the Tide will not have to sweat out the status of McKinstry, who cleared concussion protocol after getting knocked out of the SEC Championship Game and returned to practice last week. Will Johnson dressed against Iowa and probably could have played on his sore knee if the Hawkeyes’ passing game had raised the slightest concern. He should be fine. Barring a late-breaking surprise, it’s about as close as to a good-on-good affair you could ask for at this time of year, as it should be.

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The verdict …

Name an active system for ranking college football teams right now and it has Michigan at the top. Not just the traditional polls — the Wolverines are No. 1 in all the advanced metrics, too, from FPI, FEI, SP+, and SRS to Jeff Sagarin, Ken Massey and Ed Feng, just for starters. You don’t have to understand how any of those systems actually work to get the point: Any way you slice it, Michigan has been the best team in the country in 2023, something it hasn’t been able to say since 1997 and can’t be certain it will be able to say again anytime soon.

As the razor-thin point spread reflects, though, superior consistency over the course of the season does not necessarily translate into the superior performance in the end. The Alabama team that lost to Texas back in September had to travel some distance to become the team that snapped Georgia’s 29-game winning streak 3 months later, and if the Dawgs are who we thought they were prior to that game, then the outfit that sent them packing is capable of beating anyone.

The roster is still the most talented in the country, boasting more former 5-star recruits (18) than the entire Big Ten conference (17). The defense is a standard-issue Saban unit that carried the team for much of the conference schedule. Jalen Milroe is not obliged to wait until next season to complete his arc from the bench to the summit.

From Michigan’s perspective, the game comes down to two questions: 1), can the offense establish the run? And 2), can the defense prevent the big play?

The ideal scenario for the Wolverines is a slugfest that plays to their strengths in the trenches and relegates Milroe to the sideline for long stretches. The nightmare is a rerun of their 2021 semifinal flop against Georgia: An early deficit that forces the offense to abandon the run, playing to Alabama’s strengths on the edges and at both corners. The more often Michigan has to rely on its wideouts to make plays or leave its tackles exposed in obvious passing situations, the longer its night — and its offseason — is going to be. If the defense is as good as advertised, it will hold up its end of the bargain to prevent that from happening.
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• Michigan 24 | Alabama 20

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