At this point if youre a sports fan, I would assume you've see, it will be Michigan vs Washington for the College Football National Championship. The Rose Bowl and the Sugar Bowl were too wildly different games.
Rose Bowl Recap: Michigan (27) Alabama (20) OT
I am not going to lie, I went out to dinner with my mother at 5pm so I spent most of the first half looking over my shoulder to the TV. I didn't seem to miss much considering it was 13-10 at half time. I had my thoughts leading up to the game that Michigan may be a little over hyped, and an Alabama team led by Nick Saban is not a team you want sneaking in as the 4th seed for the CFB. "Dont let them get hot!"
Despite falling asleep for the entire 3rd quarter and majority of the 4th quarter due to a belly full of veal parm, here were some of my takeaways.
Michigans defense is legit. Michigan’s defense made Alabama’s offense one-dimensional. Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe had no answer for what Michigan was bringing on defense, and was held to only 116 passing yards. Milroe was also sacked six teams, five of which came before my 2nd half siesta. (Siesta is Spanish for nap).
Michigan took a 13-10 lead into halftime, but after neither team scored in the third quarter Alabama scored ten unanswered points to go up 20-13 on the Wolverines. As previously noted I was sleeping while Alabama went by 7. Woke up to see J.J. McCarthy tying the game with a minute and a half left.
I don't know what Alabama talked about during their timeout in OT, but that 4th down play call when the game is on the line was wildly stupid. On 4th and Goal from the three-yard line Alabama went with an RPO look from quarterback Jalen Milroe. Milroe opted to run with the ball and was stuffed by Michigan’s Derrick Moore well short of the goal line.
“We called three plays. One they called time-out, one we called time-out, and the last one that didn’t work. The fact that it didn’t work made it a really bad call. You know what I mean?But we called time-out because we had a bad look. We had a good look on the first one. They must have known it. But (offensive coordinator) Tommy (Reese) just felt like the best thing that we could do was have a quarterback run, which was kind of our two-point play, one of our two-point plays for this game. The ball was on the 3-yard line, which is just like a two-point play, but we didn’t get it blocked so it didn’t work. We didn’t execute it very well and it didn’t work. They pressured and we thought they would pressure, but we thought we could gap them and block them and make it work, and it didn’t.” - Nick Saban explaining the final play may have broke my brain the way he explained it.
Sugar Bowl Recap: Washington (37) Texas (31)
After watching a collective 21 minutes of the Rose Bowl, this game was more of a shoot out than a defensive standoff. Washington and Texas were going score for score the entire first half, finished the half tied at 21-21.
What I saw out of Michael Penix Jr last night, has be thinking he's the best QB heading to the draft, and despite finishing second in the hesiman, he is clearly the best player in the nation. But then you have Jim Harbaugh saying J.J. McCarthy is the best college QB in history.....yeah sure!
Penix has a very fuckable spiral, which funny thing about fuckable, accidentally googled Michael "Penis" Jr, on my work laptop so thats going to be funny when our tech team finds that search history and comes spank my ass. It's ok I can make these jokes, I will get fired for other reasons. But, I would recommend not googling with that typo in his last name.
After failing to score in the third quarter, Washington had built a a 34-21 lead after the start of the 4th quarter, after back to back field goals. Texas was able to answer with a TD, and then the team traded field goals. After a 3rd down stop, Texas was able to get one last drive with 48 seconds left, and about 68 yards to march in order to score and potentially win the game. On 4th and 11, with one second left, Texas was unable to get into the end zone from 13 yards out. Confirming that #Texas is confirmed #NOTback.
No. 1 Michigan vs. No. 2 Washington | CFP National Championship Game (Houston, Texas) | 8:30 p.m. (EST) Monday, Jan. 8 on ESPN
Michigan -4.5 o/u 55.5