The Michigan Wolverines are surely riding high on their first win in the College Football Playoffs era, a comeback over Alabama in the Rose Bowl. Quarterback J.J. McCarthy recovered from an overturned interception on his opening pass to throw for 221 yards and three touchdowns, and star running back Blake Corum ran 25 yards to the end zone on just two carries for the eventual winning touchdown.
The job isn’t finished for Michigan yet, however. The Washington Huskies stand between the Wolverines and a national championship.
In anticipation of Monday’s title game, Michigan head coach Jim Harbaugh took to the podium on Wednesday to answer some questions from the media, as did McCarthy and defensive lineman Mason Graham.
HARBAUGH: Thank you, Mr. Daniels. On behalf of the 2023 Michigan Wolverine football team, I just want to say to you how delighted and excited we are and appreciative to be playing in this game. Very much looking forward to a great week of preparation. It’s going to need to be. I want to congratulate Washington on a tremendous season. Coach Kalen DeBoer, tremendous, fantastic job that he has done in a short period of time at Washington. Their entire football team looks real tough to beat right now. We are in full preparation mode to get ourselves ready for this game.
HARBAUGH: Yeah, it was a glorious victory. Just so proud of our players and our team. The things that jump out are just how we responded in the pressure moments, in the pressure times, offense, defense, special teams, and rose to the occasion. Tremendous play during the pressure moments of the game. Yeah, happy flight home, and really focused the last 24 hours on rest for the players. I figure that’s going to be very important for this week, especially traveling back from the West Coast. Spend today, tomorrow, the next day, Friday we fly to Houston, and we’ll continue our preparations there.
HARBAUGH: Yeah, I guess I have thought about that. I’m thinking more about the here and now for sure. Taking a look at Washington, they’re an outstanding football team, and as we said, just a very one-track mind of today, getting our team prepared, get them back moving around, but also schematically on to what Washington does and preliminary plans for pretty in our game plan.
HARBAUGH: Well, great love for Texas, Texas football, and tremendous respect. It goes back to my — it actually goes back to my playing days. I’ll tell you that story sometime. But yeah, one of the finest areas for football. No argument there.
HARBAUGH: Just about everywhere. There’s Michigan graduates, alumni all over the country, all over the world. Yeah, personally have many friends in Dallas, guys I was close with before, gotten to know many of the coaches and their families very well in the Dallas area. Houston, too. I’ve got a lot of good history in Houston. Got some known friends and trusted agents from Houston, as well.
HARBAUGH: Well, like I said, the pressure moments, I thought our team handled extremely well, as well as they can be handled. JJ, tremendous in the way he handled the pressure moments in the ballgame. I’m really proud of — there was a few guys that had a bad play in the game. JJ, first play of the game, he’s clearly throwing the ball away, and I can tell you having made a bad play in a football game, it’s like a train going through your head of — I mean, you see red. It’s like a deafening siren. There’s a lot of guys that will hang their head and go in the tank or get that deer-in-the-headlights look, but every guy that had that happen to them in our game came back and made a phenomenal play. Kris Jenkins had a bad play early in the game; came back, dominated in his block destruction. JJ had the ball he should’ve thrown away that was a look pick — looked like it was a pick and then it was reversed. That was the first play of the game. Dropped punt, comes back and makes catches. We had a bad snap, and then that snap and hold has to be perfect and kick made or else we don’t go into overtime. So many plays that could point to — I’m just really proud of those guys. Roman Wilson had a block in the back that could have cost us that big drive at the end. He comes back and makes a phenomenal catch and scores a touchdown. Just the mental toughness that takes for an individual to be able to do that, plus the other thing is the support that they get and have gotten from their families, but also a teammate or teammates, leaders on the team, I saw that taking place. That’s unanimous support. That’s unanimous support from every guy on the team, and you know every guy has your back. That’s special to be a part of. I’m really, really proud and happy to be a part of that.
And JJ, how about the catch he made? How about the one-handed catch he made on the trick play, the throw-back, and then he turns, wheels, and throws the ball? There was just a ton of great plays made in pressure moments. Rod Moore, open-field tackle on Jalen Milroe; he had three in the game like that. I mean, open-field, game-saving tackles. That final play of the game, Josiah Stewart, what he was able to do to a man 110 pounds heavier than him, and Derrick Moore on that same play. And then there was Rod Moore with contain on the edge and then Mike Sainristil contained on the perimeter. Boy, pressure moments.
Our guys full stepped up in executing their assignment and executing the fundamentals and executing and making a play that was really the difference in the game. Yeah, I thought our guys passed with flying colors when it came to handling the pressure.
HARBAUGH: Super great. Thanks for that question. He’s a super great player. My impressions of him when he played at Indiana were the same. Big-time arm talent, tremendous presence in the pocket, sees the field really well. He is so polished. Watching him and his accuracy, his decision making, timing, he has really just continued to have this tremendous presence of going through progression, feels pressure, will drop it off to a check-down. Yeah, it’s at an elite level.
HARBAUGH: Yeah, there’s some of the U’s, some of the uncontrollables, some of the unfortunates, uncontrollables like officiating. I thought some of the — like I thought some of the ways our guys kept their composure were — that’s a way to control the uncontrollable situations. Another U, unanimous support from everybody on the team. When you know that each player, each coach has your back and is going to be doing their job, doing it to the best of their God-given ability, that’s a great way to control some of the uncontrollables, which is pressure, which is some of those unforeseeable moments. Yeah, there’s ways to do it, and our team is built for them. They’re really built for those U’s, the uncontrollables, the unfortunates, things like that.
HARBAUGH: Yeah. Phenomenal. The job that — game ball, guardian of victory, I give one to Jesse Minter. The coaching in the game, the play calling. (Offensive coordinator) Sherrone Moore, same thing. The coaching, the play calling, the pressure moments. The calls they made. The rest of their lives they can go back and go, man, I did it. I did it in some of the most high-pressure moments. It’s just a tip of the cap, really. We know that we’re so confident in those two play callers as an entire coaching staff and an entire team.
HARBAUGH: Yeah, great question. I mean, it’s not uncommon. When recruiting is in December, now it’s getting to open back up where business can be made. It was so good for us last year. We’re very open to any really good football player that — any good person, someone that would want to come and help our football team, we’re open to that.
HARBAUGH: Yeah, as I said, getting ready for this game, one-track mind. I don’t know if you want to live in rumorville or speculation, but we just don’t really have any room to be doing that at this point. That’s done elsewhere.
HARBAUGH: I mean, it’s kind of a long one. A good one, but some other time. It’s a good funny one.
HARBAUGH: Yeah, we’re thinking about, we’ve got one phase line to go here, and that’s Monday night against Washington, and we’re going to do anything and everything in our power to get ourselves prepared for that football game.
J.J. MCCARTHY: Extremely valuable. I feel like he, in my eyes, is the most valuable player of our team. There’s so many of them that are right up at his caliber, but especially from an offensive perspective, I feel like he’s one of the guys that makes our offense go. Just everything he’s been through, all the adversity that he’s been through, just from his upbringing to this past year, just everything about who he is and just his character, how he attacks every single day, it just rubs off on all of us. It’s just one of the most valuable players on our team if not the most.
MCCARTHY: Yeah, I just feel like that’s just a smart part of who he is, just being able to be not just a leader on the field but leader off the field, everything he did with the toy drive and the turkeys just speaks to the character that he is and just having the ability to give back and do it in such a big and profound way when you can keep it all for yourself and worry about buying yourself all the chains and all the cars and all the materialistic things, now Blake is thinking about giving it back to the people in need, and that just speaks to who he is and the culture that’s here at the University of Michigan.
MASON GRAHAM: Yeah, I’d probably say maybe Ohio State 2021. Just watching that offense, a lot of high-powered receivers, good quarterback, good group of O-line, obviously they won the Joe Moore, so it’ll be a good challenge for us. But if I had to compare it to one team, it would probably be that.
GRAHAM: Not really. Kind of just the same stuff we’ve been leaning on all year, just kind of lean on our pillars, our good defense, just kind of keep playing the way we’ve been playing.
MCCARTHY: You know, I can’t really pick out one way that he helps me. It’s just his overall presence, being in whatever situation that arises he’s been there before and just having somebody that can kind of — I can look to after a great play, a bad play, like the first play of the game that like I was expecting to get chewed out and all this, but with Coach Harbaugh, it was just, hey, man, it’s good you got that out of your system, let’s roll out. It’s just little stuff like that where coaches that haven’t been in that situation before or haven’t had the experience of playing in the Rose Bowl would maybe just get emotionally off balance and just start freaking out at their quarterback. That’s not him. Just little stuff like him hitting me before the game with — just getting me ready, getting me into it just physically, and then just little words of advice that he gives every single game day.
I’d say it’s not one thing in particular, just his overall presence being out there.
GRAHAM: Yeah, kind of just — I’ve only briefly just started getting into them. We just got back yesterday, so just kind of getting back into it. But I feel like they’re similar to the other O-lines we’ve faced, good group, well-coached, work well together. It’ll tend to be a similar challenge for us up front.
MCCARTHY: You know…I’ve always been someone that chases purpose, not fame. I could care less what the media says about me or the light they put me in. All I really care about is winning football games. Obviously, we had numerous chances of making sure that game didn’t come down to the wire like it did, and I’m excited to get in the film room today and look at that and correct our mistakes and learn from all the mistakes we made. But at the end of the day, it’s about winning football games no matter what it takes, and I could care less what comes of it, what other people think about me, or what they deal me amongst the other quarterbacks in this class right now. All I care about is winning games.
MCCARTHY: I haven’t really gotten a chance to break down film with him, but he’s just given me a lot of advice on how to watch film throughout the week and what he did and especially in big games, just little advice like that, just how to handle yourself emotionally and a bunch of other advice about health and well-being and all the tremendous things he’s done with his life in that area. A lot of stuff like that, but I can’t wait to maybe get the opportunity one day to maybe break down film with him.
MCCARTHY: You know, those moments, I cherish every single one of them, win or loss, just because you work so hard every single day throughout the off-season, during the season to get to points like that. Just taking it in, win or loss, is just always something that I really just appreciate. This past one, it was just — all the extra work and all the different things that I did this past off-season and this season just like reflecting back on those and how hard I pushed myself and like training seven to eight times a week and going to the separate trainer where we would do like these conditioning days and I’m throwing up like 75 percent of the time down there. Just all the extra things that I did, just kind of taking that all in on the field and just realizing, hey, it was worth every single second of pain that I went through, and I would do it all over again if I had the choice.
MCCARTHY: Yeah, I just kind of feel like those pressure situations are what make teams great. I feel like we slipped up in that moment but we were able to regain it. Obviously, he got down at the 1 so we were able to have a chance to keep on playing. Just letting us line up again. He did his job, and he got us back.
GRAHAM: I think it was tremendous the way he handled the situation. He didn’t freak out. Their punter was outstanding. Some of the kicks he had were just like something I haven’t seen before. The way he handled it and not freaking out once the ball was going towards the end zone and accidentally kicking it or muffing it again and making sure he didn’t fumble it when he got hit by those three guys. There’s a lot of good that he did in that scary situation that I feel like needs to be appreciated, and that’s just a testament to our training and the mindset that we’ve forged over the last year.
GRAHAM: Yeah, I think kind of going into this game with the same mindset. He can still make plays with his feet, extend plays, obviously he’s a great player on a high-powered offense. We still have to contain the quarterback as best we can and try not to let them or allow them to extend plays because that’s kind of when explosive plays happen.
MCCARTHY: You know, obviously, from an outside perspective, it would be very unfortunate just to not get recognized for all the hard work we’ve put in and everything we’ve accomplished over this last year, but at the end of the day, it’s not going to change the amount of accomplishment and the amount of pride for being on this football team and just everything that we accomplished because we know what we put in, we know the work that we’ve put in, and we know that we did things the right way as players. Whatever happens with just all the outside controversy is just out of our control, and whatever the NCAA wants to do is out of our control. We’re going to appreciate the things we did control and the things we did accomplish.
GRAHAM: Yeah, along the same lines as J.J., we’ve kind of just been working all the way up until this moment. Things happen along the way that don’t kind of fall into place. We’ve overcome a lot of adversity this season. I’ve felt like it’s brought us closer together, and I think everyone is starting to see this in the outside world, but everybody knew in Schembechler Hall that we wanted to be right where we are right now. That’s all we’re worried about.
GRAHAM: I’d probably just say focus on execution. The higher rate we execute, the higher rate of winning. Just kind of just keep on the same track we’ve been all year trying to execute a good game plan we have in place. Kind of just all the same things that we’ve been pushing throughout the season, just kind of bring it all full circle.
MCCARTHY: Yeah, I agree with Mason, it comes down to execution, not really thinking about too much National Championship. Obviously, we all know that, but just all coming down to how we execute each and every play and making sure that we are locked in on all the little details on each and every play and making sure that we give it our all and realize we’ve only got 60 more minutes together, and this has just been such a special group. So many great relationships, great friendships that will last a lifetime, just realizing that it’s going to be our last time going to war together. Taking everything in, really appreciating the moment and embracing the moment and finishing out on top because nobody remembers the second-place winner or the runner-up.
MCCARTHY: I think just his level of preparation. He’s probably one of the most prepared guys in this building each and every week, and I feel like these games specifically he prepares weeks, months ahead of time. When the time comes, he’s got a plan A, a plan B, a plan C, a plan D, just anything he can go to to make sure that he’s one step ahead of the defensive coordinator on the other side of the field. Yeah, I just feel like he always prepares for these moments, so when the moments come, we’ve already been there before, and it’s pretty effortless for him calling that game.
GRAHAM: I’d kind of just start it off, more the allegations are coming on the defensive side of the ball. I feel like we just kind of watch film and we get tendencies from other teams, just like Trevor was saying, and we kind of just pick up on it. I feel like we just have a high football IQ here at Michigan. We go over specific situations multiple times a week, just kind of learning more about the game every day, every meeting, just kind of just building that IQ and being starter football players all around so we pick up on things faster, even if it’s in-game adjustments. I think little stuff like that, film study really helped us this year.
MCCARTHY: Yeah, and I also feel like it’s so unfortunate because there’s probably — I don’t want to say a crazy number, but I’d say a good number, 80 percent of the teams in college football steal signs. It’s just a thing about football. It’s been around for years.
We actually had to adapt because in 2020 or 2019 when Ohio State was stealing our signs, which is legal and they were doing it, we had to get up to the level that they were at, and we had to make it an even playing field.
I just feel like it sucks, just because like Mason said, we do work our butts off. We do watch so much film and look for those little tendencies and spend like 10, 15 minutes on one clip alone just looking at all the little details of the posture, of the linebackers or the D-ends, the safeties off levels, the corner to the field is press but the corner to the boundary is off, little stuff like that where it’s like, you could say it’s all sign stealing, but there’s a lot more that goes into play, and a lot of stuff that gets masked, a lot of work that gets masked just because of the outside perception of what sign stealing is all about.
GRAHAM: Yeah, for sure. Obviously, Penix is a great player. I feel like they have a great offensive scheme, just a great group of guys on the offensive side of the ball that can really make plays happen, and he’s one of the ones — he is the one that makes their offense go. It all starts with him. Then talking about Mike B, he’s been a leader on this defense, vocal, physical, any type of leader you can name, he’s been that for us this year on defense. Not just defense of the team, he’s just really set the tone, whether we take the field first or offense takes the field first. He’s one of the tone-setters on our team, and he’s going to continue to do that this game.