Previously: Part 1, Part 2

Third Quarter

Both coaching staffs may have made adjustments at halftime, but one thing remained consistent between halves: penalties. Michigan had six in the first half for 67 yards, while Alabama had eight for 56 yards. The second half opened with a Michigan penalty on the kickoff return. Then on Alabama’s first offensive snap of the half Michigan nose tackle Rob Renes jumped offsides. Alabama offensive lineman Dante Ellington got flagged for a false start on the very next play and the crowd began to boo.

Marcus Knight, wide receiver: As a player you don’t necessarily think about [penalties]. You just know you’ve got to clean it up. You don’t want to have a sloppy game and beat yourself. Things happen. It’s a big game. It was hot. It was muggy. I know the big boys were getting exhausted because of the humidity that was on the field at that time, so mentally we just had to lock in and I think both teams were feeling it at that time so that’s kind of why you got that happening at the beginning of the second half.

Fumbles and the sideline were the two key ingredients in the early third quarter stew. Albama quarterback Andrew Zow executed a jet action fake before pitching the ball to Shaun Alexander. Michigan had a corner blitz on, and James Whitley was already behind the line of scrimmage when the ball was pitched. It hit Alexander in the shoulder, then Whitley bounced off Alexander and dove at the loose ball. He collided with an Alabama player as he was about to land on the ball, which hit his knee instead of nestling into his stomach. Alexander scratched the ball out and threw it five yards further behind the line, at which point Michigan defenders Jake Frysinger and James Hall converged on the ball. Frysinger dove at the ball only to see if bounce off his facemask and out of bounds.

Alabama faced 2nd and 29, lost two yards on an Alexander carry, then ended up punting after an overthrow on a 3rd and 31 bomb. Michigan quarterback Tom Brady hit fullback Aaron Shea in the flat on the first play of the drive. Shea turned the corner and was met by Alabama defensive back Marcus Spencer, who got low and dove at Shea. His helmet knocked the ball loose as Shea went heels over head, the ball hitting the turf and bouncing once, then slowing and bouncing a second time before skittering past the sideline.

Michigan went back to the air on second down…kind of. Alabama had called a perfectly timed blitz for outside linebacker Saleem Rasheed, who got a free shot at Brady thanks to Michigan’s waggle call. Rasheed came in too high, which allowed Brady to step out of the hit. He avoided an arm tackle and heaved a downfield one-hopper in the general direction of David Terrell just as Rasheed had circled back and crushed Brady.

The ball made it to Terrell without hitting the turf on the next play. On 3rd and 8 from Michigan’s 42-yard line Brady found Terrell breaking in about 15 yards downfield. Terrell jumped to make the catch, then spun downfield as the corner lunged and missed. Terrell had no one within five yards of him from Alabama’s 40 to their 5-yard line. Terrell then slowed suddenly to get safety Marcus Spencer, who Marcus Knight almost blocked in the back before pulling his hands back at the last second, to time his tackle incorrectly. Spencer grabbed Terrell’s ankles, but Terrell but his left hand in the ground and stretched the ball past the line with his right.

Michigan 14 Alabama 14, 13:05

Knight: The second touchdown he ended up catching I want to say it was another post or a glance and the DB took a bad angle and he ended up taking it to the house and tying it up 14-14.

David Terrell, wide receiver: There’s no big egos. It’s not like Dave Terrell feels he’s about to come in here, like he’s so selfish—nah. We all got one common goal and we’re just trying to get to the end of it. If this is what it takes, then this is what it takes. If A-Train was rolling, believe me, we would have been handing the ball off and I would have been downfield blocking. Period. But the Train wasn’t rolling, so now y’all got to show off your pass protection. Aaron Shea, you’ve got to go dual because Aaron Shea was one of the best dual tight end/fullbacks I’ve seen. Aaron Shea was very big in this game as well, for real. Shea was like ‘DT, let’s go, baby. It’s me and you. We about to win this motherfucker right now, me and you.’ But then Shea is Tom Brady’s best man. It’s like one hand feeds the next.

Knight: One thing about that group that I played with in the wide receiver room: we were all there for each other. David had a great game but if you really study the film a lot of us were doing the extra [things] once he got the ball in his hands to make sure that he got an opportunity to do what he did with the ball. Not taking anything away from David because he was a great athlete and he did a lot of big things for the program and in that game in particular being the MVP, but you would see DiAllo [Johnson], Marquise [Walker], myself, KB [Kevin Bryant], once the ball was in the air and caught, we were working our butts off to find the secondary and third block to give him as much leeway as possible.

I didn’t have the best game; I dropped a number of balls in that game and I was frustrated with myself not being able to produce the way I thought I should but I found another way to contribute and I said, Okay, if it’s going to be that type of game I’m gonna block my butt off and that was what I was focused on.

Shawn Thompson, tight end: What an awesome play. There’s certain plays over the years that kind of get engraved in your mind but yeah, I can still picture that play. I think that was another one where it was an out route or a comeback route where he caught it and kind of shook him off. What an awesome play. And the fact that at that point it ties it up for us at 14-14, yeah, a play that I’ll always remember is that play.

[After THE JUMP: Alexander answers, Shea circles, and Terrell...I mean, you see the title]

Shaun Alexander wasn’t done, though. Alabama went tempo on 3rd and 1 at midfield, handing the ball to Alexander to the right. He got north on one quick cut that left linebacker Ian Gold tackling air and high-stepped over a fallen teammate to get into the open field. Alexander then ran through two tackles, one of which was executed with excellent technique, and outran three Wolverines while weaving out of two diving tackle attempts on his way to the end zone.

Michigan 14 Alabama 21, 11:01

Knight: You just knew it was going to happen. You knew they weren’t going to go away. I grew up on Alabama football and I know what type of program they are and I knew it was going to be a grind ‘em out, running the football-type of game, just as we were at the University of Michigan. I knew Shaun Alexander was a special talent being from the state, having to hear my family who were mostly Alabama fans talk about how good this young man is and to see it in person, he kind of proved it for me. To be able to see it in person, yeah, that was a phenomenal run that he had.

Michigan was forced to punt from their own end zone on the next drive after two unsuccessful screens and Brady hitching his way into a sack. Hayden Epstein booted the ball 62 yards from his foot to Freddie Milons’ hands.

Thompson: I think it was getting down to the bottom hash and then literally completely reversing field and went all the way around the other end, but that just shows you the speed of Freddie Milons. Not that we weren’t prepared for him—that’s all we did those two weeks down in Florida in preparation in camp. Really that’s exactly what we were preparing for, but just kind of shows you with all that preparation what kind of athlete Freddie Milons was. I guess it just shows you the true speed. It’s tough to reverse completely on a field and really outrun every single defender on the punt coverage.

Not only do I remember that clearly coming down to the bottom hash and taking it up around, but then you just feel like gosh, here we were 14-0, we’re able to come back and tie it up 14-14 and then it’s like geez, here we are like being down 14. It definitely took the wind out of the sails, that punt return. Especially when we felt like we were so prepared for it and we knew what was coming with Freddie Milons. It was a tough pill to swallow.

Aaron Shea, fullback: Freddie Milons made me look so unathletic and so slow when he returned a punt. I still remember coach Carr going, ‘What were you doing?’ and I go, ‘Coach, he made me look really bad.’ They were a really, really stacked team.

Michigan 14 Alabama 28, 9:00

Knight: The game wasn’t over until it was over. We never counted ourselves out. We knew we always had an opportunity. Our defense was a unit that was always opportunistic and was going to make plays, so we knew that at any time the defense was gonna have our back and offensively we were going to do everything to support them. So no matter what the score said, we knew as long as there was time on the clock, we had time and going drive-for-drive in that game was exciting but we never counted ourselves out.

Todd Howard, cornerback: Big plays were made. My roommate, Dave Terrell, ended up having an incredible game. I think it was kind of like his coming-out party. Brady just did what Brady typically did, man. I think all of us that had the privilege and pleasure of playing with Tom, we might not have seen the six Super Bowls and the Tag-Heuer-Aston-Martin-married-to-Giselle Tom Brady but we all knew that he was special and that specifically as a defense if we got the ball back, if we kept the game close, we were going to win that game. I think to a man everybody on the roster kind of felt that way about him.

Michigan continued their aerial attack on the next drive. Brady saw soft coverage on the outside and threw to Terrell on a skinny post, but the ball glanced off his fingertips. From there, Terrell put together his MVP drive. On 2nd and 10 Terrell was the hitch on a Smash concept; he snagged the ball, turned and ran toward the middle of the field, and extended the ball with one hand for extra yards as he was being wrapped up. On 3rd and 2 Brady hit Terrell on a four-yard hitch, with Terrell catching the low pass almost from his knees. On first down Terrell caught a quick out on the sideline and in one motion turned toward the secondary while also stepping back to shake linebacker Darius Gilbert before getting shoved out of bounds.

Shea ran a circle route on 3rd and 3 that pulled a linebacker too far outside and turned into an easy throw for Brady up the middle for a new set of downs. Brady went back to Terrell on a post for 20 yards on second down, putting Michigan at the edge of the red zone. Then on first down Brady again took advantage of off coverage from Alabama’s corners, connecting with Terrell on another hitch. Terrell spun 360 degrees out of a diving tackle attempt by the hard-charging corner and ten yards later saw Knight’s block got enough of the one defender back who could have attempted to stop Terrell that he slowed to strut from the five-yard line into the end zone.

Michigan 21 Alabama 28, 5:42

Terrell: It was a hitch route I caught and just took it to the house. It was a little bit more to it, but backside of it, they did a good job in getting it away. We got rolling, man. Me and Tom had a lot of those games to where it was like, Okay, we’re rolling, let’s go. Period. He came out, we looked at each other and bam bam.

It was a hitch route. The DB, I played him inside. Just regular stuff that we worked on every day. You catch it, sell him one way, go the other, then I sold him one way, went the other way, looked up, [and] there was a lot of grass to run so I had to just pretty much get in.

Knight: I think they were base Cover 3 and a lot of the plays we were running were a regular smash route, corner by the slot and a hitch by the outside guy. Their corners were having a rough day making that first initial tackle, which Dave did a good job of making people miss and then with us being in the slot given an opportunity to run a corner, we were in position to make secondary blocks. They kind of stayed and closed the middle of the field because they knew that was where we liked to attack and they stayed with it.

They did throw a little bit of man coverage in there every once in a while and we took some attempts at it. One memorable one that I remember is I dropped the ball in the end zone--one-on-one coverage that I should have had—but they did mix it up and they were trying to just close the middle of the field and make us throw the ball in front and kind of make our way down the field in a slot manner. But unfortunately for them, Dave did a great job making the first man miss and they ended up—that’s where you saw a lot of the big receptions on what you would consider a hitch route or a curl route.

Terrell: They had a pretty good corner. They had a pretty good secondary. They had a good secondary. They were manned up the whole game, so when they were manned up the whole game they had eight in the box. They had 8-7 in the box, which 8-7 in the box you’ve got safety high and you aren’t covering the field, so if you aren’t covering the field then shit, let’s see if we can take advantage of it and win one-on-one and we won one-on-one.

Alabama went three-and-out on the next drive, and a nearly blocked punt set Michigan up with good starting field position at their own 40. Brady connected often but short; he threw to Shea in the flat, then hit Shawn Thompson over the middle, then found Terrell on another hitch. On 2nd and 10 from Alabama’s 40 Brady finally found the deep matchup he was looking for, lofting a pass for Knight that hit him on the fingertips inside the 5-yard line with a step on the corner.

Knight: Should have had it. I still think about it to this day. It would have been a great, great way to end my career but it wasn’t meant to be.

It wasn’t a touchdown but Michigan did manage to get into the red zone on the next play. Shea caught the ball on a circle route and broke two tackles, then lowered his shoulder and fell forward for a few extra yards to the 15. Anthony Thomas dragged two would-be tacklers five yards before a third brought him down at the 5-yard line. He got the ball again on the next play, and though he tripped on a teammate Thomas fell forward to the 3. A waggle rolled Brady into pressure and forced him to throw off his back foot. Bill Seymour was open on a drag route but the ball was too early and hit his outstretched hand, setting up a Thomas plunge into the end zone.

Michigan 28 Alabama 28, 1:02

Thompson: He came over the left side. I think it was me, Hutch, and Backus on that side. I remember how in the huddle how important a play we knew that was, and from what I remember he just walked in on that one. The confidence to get back to a tie ballgame was Here we go with the momentum again back to our side. With that play, we knew that was a must-score for us in terms of the game. From what I remember it was just Train over tackle between Backus and I on the left side.

Coming in part 4: #collegekickers, but before hash tags were a thing