The College Football Playoff has certainly taken its knocks, but there’s no denying that the last two iterations of the competition completely delivered on the promise of the system that replaced the BCS a decade ago.
A lot of people last night were fairly adamant that Michigan, Alabama, Washington, and Texas gave us the best tandem of playoff games in the entire era. While I ultimately agree, 2022 was right up there with what we saw last night.
TCU’s stunning upset of Michigan, followed by Ohio State’s shanked field goal right at the stroke of the New Year, gave us two excellent semifinals. Unfortunately, the brilliance of those games likely gets overshadowed by Georgia’s mauling of the Frogs in the National Championship.
Nonetheless, my point is this: It took ten seasons, but the four-team playoff finally found its stride, and it gives way to the twelve-team format having gifted us the best two semifinal pairings of the era.
Like I said earlier, I do believe yesterday’s action was the cream of the crop.
Rose Bowl – Michigan 27, Alabama 20
The heavyweight fight everyone wants to see in a playoff game.
At times, both offenses moved the ball at will, and other times, neither one could gain an inch. It was such a fascinating chess match between two coaches and two programs clearly at the top of their respective games.
A lot of attention will go to Alabama and the fact that it clearly didn’t trust Jalen Milroe to make throws down the field, and that they probably couldn’t protect against Michigan’s front long enough to make those plays happen. For what it’s worth, Milroe was excellent with the ball in his hands, especially after Alabama made some adjustments to give him more opportunity to run.
However, what became obvious over the course of the game is that both teams had potentially fatal operational flaws that they needed to work through.
Michigan’s entire field goal procedure, from the snap to the hold to the kick itself, was an adventure all night to say the least. The Wolverines missed an extra point early after the ball went through the holder’s hands, and most of their made kicks even had wobbly snaps and borderline miraculous holds.
On the other side, Alabama center Seth McLaughlin was wildly erratic in his snaps back to Milroe. At least once or twice per drive, Milroe was having to pick up a snap off his shoelaces or jump to either side to stop the ball from going past him. It’s an issue that came up over the course of the entire season.
At halftime, I was fairly confident that one of those problems would rear its head at the worst possible time and make a massive difference in the game.
Initially, I thought Michigan was going to be the victim. After that awful Milroe fumble, the Wolverines had a chance to change the game’s complexion with a field goal. However, after an imperfect snap and a diagonal hold, kicker James Turner pulled the kick and missed it.
However, I give Michigan a ton of credit for hanging in after that point and regaining the momentum. Ultimately, in overtime with the game on the line, it was Alabama’s poison pill that changed the game.
On fourth and goal, Milroe had to abandon a well-designed RPO because of a low snap. He likely felt the play was blown and tried to run it in himself. If the snap had been even halfway decent, Milroe likely had his running back in the flat for a walk-in touchdown.
It’s incredibly uncharacteristic of a Saban-coached team to fall victim to an operational problem like that, but in a game of goliaths like this, those issues become magnified.
As a result, Jim Harbaugh gets his first playoff victory after falling in the semifinals in each of the prior two years, and the Maize and Blue will head to Houston to play for a championship.
Sugar Bowl – Washington 37, Texas 31
Washington had control of the entire game, but head coach Kalen DeBoer and offensive coordinator Ryan Grubb did their best to give it away.
Michael Penix was phenomenal, putting up one of the best quarterback performances of the playoff era. He proved why he should have won the Heisman. We don’t have to talk about my 8-1 ticket of his I had in late September.
It is so fascinating to watch the driving force behind a team’s success also be a major reason for its collapse. DeBoer and Grubb probably should have paid more attention to those Roman Empire memes from earlier this season.
For everything good DeBoer has done at Washington – and there’s obviously a lot of good – his decision making and Grubb’s play calling were idiotic at times to say the least.
Texas clearly had no answer for Penix and the Huskies’ incredible receivers/tight ends, but Grubb kept trying to call plays for his running back, who was clearly playing injured, to run straight into the Longhorns’ elite defensive interior. DeBoer clearly wanted to keep calling a balanced game despite their clear advantage in the passing game, which was simply crazy.
Washington really only failed to score when they had to play behind the sticks after bad run plays. If they had just let Penix keep slinging it, they likely would have won by more, and Penix would have broken all the records.
On top of that, DeBoer proved that he has no semblance of clock management skills at the end of games. Texas is out of timeouts with less than a minute left, and instead of kneeling on third down and pinning Texas back inside their own 15 with ten seconds left, he insists on continuing to run the ball with Dillon Johnson, who, again, we know is playing injured.
Johnson’s injury is made worse when he’s tackled on the third down, and the clock stops so that he can receive treatment. The decision is indefensible on so many levels. Obviously, many more things could go wrong on a handoff than a kneel-down. You could have a fumble or a crippling penalty, and that’s all with a healthy running back. In this case, you have Johnson back there, who was clearly liable to aggravate his injury at any point. It’s borderline negligent decision-making from the Andy Reid/Mario Cristobal school of game management, and DeBoer is lucky it didn’t cost him the game.
Washington ended up making a goal-line stand after some interesting play calls from Steve Sarkisian, and the Huskies held on. Quinn Ewers wasn’t fantastic for the most part, and Texas’s secondary had no clue how to defend Penix’s pinpoint passes. DeBoer still came awfully close to giving the game back to the Longhorns.
It didn’t bite them in New Orleans, but I’m certainly flagging the late-game management as an issue that could come up big in the worst way when Washington meets Michigan next week.
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