Michigan’s Win Over Alabama Killed Five Major Narratives

Michigan will play for a national title after defeating Alabama in an overtime thriller in the Rose Bowl. Leading up to the game, there were plenty of negative narratives surrounding the Wolverines are somewhat of a tumultuous season but now, most of them are dead and buried.

Before Monday’s Rose Bowl this one had some credibility. After the 2021 campaign, Michigan was dominated by Georgia in its first College Football Playoff appearance and really looked outmatch. Granted, that was one of the best college football defenses and teams ever assembled, but no one cares about that. If you’re in the playoff, you should be competitive, and Michigan wasn’t. Last year, the Wolverines were expected to advance as heavy favorites over TCU and again, couldn’t get the job done

JJ McCarthy threw two pick-sixes and the Wolverines just didn’t look ready after a month of preparation

But now, the Wolverines are good enough to advance and good enough to win the whole damn thing. Nick Saban and Alabama are CFP veterans and the maize and blue made more plays than the Tide and outlasted a team that doesn’t lose games like that.

This one obviously contains Michigan’s last two playoff appearances but the postseason struggles go back much farther than that. Before Monday’s Rose Bowl, Jim Harbaugh possessed a 1-6 record in bowl games and hadn’t won one since 2016.

Obviously now he’s still just 2-6, but winning the Granddaddy Of Them All, with a chance to play for a national, title pretty much wipes out those other losses in terms of how they feel. Michigan fans are already on cloud nine after beating Alabama in overtime, and a national championship will certainly make it easier to forget about a random Outback Bowl loss to South Carolina back in 2018.

This one wasn’t based on fact necessarily, and certainly didn’t hold water amongst the Michigan fan base, but outlets around the country were trying to push a narrative that took away from just how good JJ McCarthy is as a quarterback. The main one was that McCarthy wasn’t playing well over the five games preceding the Rose Bowl.