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It seemed to be something of a coup when Michigan was able to pull offensive coordinator Josh Gattis from Alabama.
The co-offensive coordinator for the Crimson Tide seemed either destined to stay in Tuscaloosa, or more likely to be headed with Alabama offensive coordinator Mike Locksley, who accepted the head coaching job at Maryland. But a phone call later, and Jim Harbaugh hired him away to overhaul the Wolverines offensive attack.
It took a minute to take ahold, but once it did, it took off.
Now it needs to continue taking off, with the Wolverines set to take on Gattis’ former team in the VRBO Citrus Bowl come Jan. 1. As far is the matchup is concerned, just one year removed from having his former team in the College Football Playoff, Gattis is ready to go against the Tide, eager to prove he made the right decision to defect back to the Big Ten, from whence he came.
“Games like this, you don’t need to motivate me any more,” Gattis told Jon Jansen on the Inside Michigan Football radio program. “There’s one guy in the building that has to worry about it (and) I’m excited! I think it’s a great opportunity for our team. And I say that when most people consider it a great challenge.
“It’s a great opportunity for our team to display who we are and how we’ve been practicing and playing and performing at a high level. Obviously, disappointment off our last game. It’s not how we want to finish the year. We want to finish the year with a different taste in our mouth and being able to go out – what better way to go out and finish a last game than playing against a team that’s pretty much set the bar in all of college football.”
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While Michigan fell in the final game of the regular season, the offense didn’t seem to be the issue overall. The Wolverines moved the ball with relative ease against the then-No. 1 defense in the nation in Ohio State, but stalled out in the second-half after the Michigan defense continued to let the Buckeyes score without impunity.
However difficult this Alabama team might be, Michigan’s offense might have something of an advantage — provided it executes — given that Gattis knows precisely what Nick Saban’s team wants to do, and the tendencies of many of the players that will be on the field at Camping World Stadium.
“I think from a game-planning standpoint, there is (an advantage),” Gattis said. “I think just understanding the identity of the defense. Knowing the players, knowing their strengths and weaknesses, things that give them problems from an overall defensive standpoint. They’ve had some challenges this year, just as we’ve had some. They’ve had to overcome that. But ultimately, it’s about executing. In between the lines, in between the whistles. It’s one thing to know how you can take advantage of a team, it’s another thing to do it.
“For us, it’s really stressing the importance of the details. You look at the last game when we went out and didn’t have success in the second-half, it just went down to simply all the details: catching the football, making the right blocks, hand placement, right reads, right throws. Just a number of things we can control on our end that we have to continue to do for us to win.”
But knowing the strengths and weaknesses — that’s a double-edged sword.
While Gattis knows Alabama, Alabama assuredly knows Gattis, and by proxy, Michigan. The Crimson Tide won’t have to look very far schematically to understand how to stop the Wolverines. Gattis acknowledges all they have to do is look in the mirror.
That’s why execution becomes critical, and why Michigan can’t afford to turn the ball over or drop passes like it has in so many big games this season.
“I think that one thing is their familiarity with what we do, because offensively, we’re both the same team,” Gattis said. “They’re gonna have a lot of familiarity with what we do and play certain things. But we just gotta do it better. We’ve gotta do the small little details, the small techniques. Execute our assignments, execute our fundamentals at a higher level. But I think they’re a really talented team. Obviously they’ve had a bunch of injuries, playing a bunch of young guys on the defensive side of the ball. Very talented in the secondary. We’ve just gotta play our type of ball, eliminate our mistakes and make sure we protect the football, because that’s the one thing they do a really good job at as an overall team is turnover margin.”
The VRBO Citrus Bowl is set for Jan. 1 at 1PM EST and will take place at Camping World Stadium in Orlando.