Michigan wins the 2024 Rose Bowl in stunning fashion, here’s what they had to do to get there.
As the roses began to get handed out after the spectacular finish at the Rose Bowl as the purple and yellow Pasadena sun set– quarterback J.J. McCarthy put one in his mouth. The smile on his face reached from ear to ear wider than the 2,235 mile trek the Michigan Wolverines had to make to get here. For a split second everyone forgot about the upcoming battle versus Washington they would have to play in less than a week– but remembered the arduous journey that the team had to take to have the roses in their mouths.
“The last two years being able to watch the opposing team celebrate, it’s just different when I see the maize and blue confetti on the field,” McCarthy said. “I’m nothing without this head coach, nothing without my teammates, nothing without that defense. Everything was so amazing.”
This Wolverines team is no stranger to heartbreak, adversity, and all of the above. From suffering backbreaking losses the previous two seasons to losing their head coach for an extended period of time– for some it felt like they were about to cave at any given moment. But they didn’t. Some remember the clip of the team in the meeting room watching them draw Alabama as their next opponent at the conclusion of the regular season. They just beat them in the Rose Bowl 27-20 in a defensive standoff that rivals some of the wild west’s best. If the reality for Wolverine fans hasn’t set in yet, they just beat the Crimson Tide and are set for a date in the National Championship Game.
In a game where points came at a severe premium, it felt like J.J. McCarthy and the offense stepped up at the right moments. No matter how tough it was to pull the trigger to start drives, when they took a punch, they punched right back. The philosophy punctuated by a eight play, 85 yard drive to tie the game that took 3:07 off the clock was on full display Monday night, to no surprise.
Look past the celebration and you’ll find plenty of skeletons in Michigan’s closet in recent memory. Rewind to 2021 and you’ll get a crushing 34-11 defeat to Georgia where the Wolverines looked lost and unfit for the College Football Playoff. Then last year, the team was locked in a shootout with TCU who ultimately ended up defeating them in the Fiesta Bowl– a moment that running back Donovan Edwards and the rest of this team would like to forget.
“I mean just staying out there, it gives you motivation,” Edwards says. “Throughout the whole season you remember why it is that you’re playing the game and that’s to be back in that same position. The fact that we’re able to do it again, third time’s the charm for us to be able to win a Playoff game. It means a lot because there’s been so much adversity.”
Then Michigan had to dive knee-deep into the Jim Harbaugh suspension. The team never backed down from the challenge, having to deal with naysayers while also rallying behind interim head coach Sherrone Moore. They were sans Harbaugh a total of six games– three in the beginning, and three towards the back end, half the regular season. Harbaugh has been a crucial element of the Wolverines program, and losing him felt like the wooden stake for some. Instead, despite being without their leader for perhaps one of the most important games of the year against Ohio State, the team showed exactly why they should be in the top-four, rolling 24-30 in Ann Arbor.
The Wolverines are still undefeated, dodging every single hurdle the world and the NCAA has thrown at them this year and are headed to Houston for a chance to win the national championship. It doesn’t get much better than that.
“It’s what it means to these guys, to our players the most, to them, to be champions, for their parents to have their son be a champion, their brothers and sisters, their grandparents, for our coaches, for my kids to have a dad be a champion, my parents, just those people to get to feel what that’s like,” Harbaugh said.
“That’s kind of long gone for me. My joy, my ecstatic joy is for our players and our coaches and our fans and our families, that they get to experience that joy of being a champion.”
Football games tend to be a microcosm of a season and a team’s culture. Games like this tend to have a way of truly testing what a team is made of in its core– this year’s Rose Bowl was no different. Prior to the game-tying drive, Michigan’s offense had sputtered in the second half. Trading momentum shifts up until halftime, the game seemed evenly matched, but as soon as the teams came out of the tunnel, J.J. McCarthy and company struggled greatly.
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To set them up for overtime, Michigan’s defense had one task. Take what’s thrown at you and overcome, just like the rest of the season.
“I would just say credit to a great defense,” McCarthy said when asked what enabled them to have the drive they had to tie it. “They played tremendous. They had a great game plan for us. It’s just all about focusing on the next play, one play at a time, and just staying in the present moment and worrying about the assignment that you have to go out and execute.”
“We weren’t really getting things going, but that never bothered us because it is all in the past and we are focusing on staying in the present and controlling the future.”
Then, when it mattered, the offense strung together a drive for the ages in order to tie the game up. 20-20… game, set, match.
“When we scored and we forced overtime, I knew it was over,” Corum said.
And so it was. Alabama won the toss, put their defense on the field first, then Blake Corum did the rest scampering and breaking tackles to draw first blood. Alabama never touched paydirt after that. On a 4th and goal from the three, Jalen Milroe took a low snap and beelined straight for the endzone only to be stuffed. As soon as his knee hit the ground, Wolverine fans sighed. For the moments leading up to it, the 89,702 seat Rose Bowl Stadium was pitch-silent. Then came the onslaught.
The world threw everything but the kitchen sink at Michigan throughout the year. Questions, suspensions, a transfer portal exodus, and even heartbreak. None of which could stop the the Wolverines from reaching their destiny. This was Alabama, the team that beat SEC-heavyweight Georgia in the conference championship. A perennial blue blood that hailed from a conference that was Michigan’s (and quite frankly the Big 10’s) Goliath. And somehow it seemed par for the course that this was the year Michigan shakes its fears.
A program that stared down the barrel in the face of controversy, that stood tall by its leaders is off to Houston next week. Michigan athletic director Warde Manuel never backed down from his support of Harbaugh and the program, “he’s everything that you want in a leader of a group of young men and a staff. I love him. He’s just awesome.”
There was no controversy however when the maize and yellow confetti started to pour in though.
“Fair and square against ‘Bama!,” defensive tackle Kris Jenkins exclaimed. It was his defense that was essentially a brick wall against one of the highest-profile offenses in the college football landscape.
“We’re not big enough,” Michigan’s star defensive lineman said, voice rising as he spoke Monday night in a postgame locker room littered with rose petals. “We’re not strong enough. We’re not fast enough. We can’t keep up with the SEC.”
The negativity fueled this Wolverines team, and will continue to fuel them going into next week’s matchup against the Huskies, whose offense is one of the best in the nation. They’re 14 games in with 0 losses… can they make it 15? After all, they are Michigan.
