Breaking down the semi-finals
Washington chucked the ball to victory over Texas while Michigan got their big SEC victory over Nick Saban's Alabama.
My longtime readers have to be laughing at how the Washington vs Texas game played out relative to my expectations. My sense that Texas had the better overall team was probably right but the Longhorns were done in by a squad with a superior “space force” who employed spread passing as a trump card and fielded veterans across the secondary. They were the exact sort of team to overachieve relative to their overall talent rating.
The semi-finals were pretty great overall. My 8-year old son stayed up extremely late to watch them both, learning how the game works as we went along (what’s that penalty again?), and was rewarded with two compelling games and two amazing finishes. That was a pretty sweet experience for this father and a bit foreign since most of my life I’ve not had anyone in my immediate family or household who particularly cared to watch college football.
He absorbed the ending with a mixture of joy and stoicism. There was excitement to see an improbable and wild ending along with reserved acceptance that the better team had won and earned the W. Great moment honestly, sometimes it doesn’t really matter if you win or not if you don’t make it the only thing that matters.
The hometown team Michigan won as well, which was also exciting and a little more in line with my prediction. Once I was convinced that Alabama’s linebackers weren’t good enough to shut down the Wolverine offense, I couldn’t pick Jalen Milroe to outplay JJ McCarthy and that proved to be the right read.
Let’s dive into some of the particulars of these games.
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