National championship recap: How Michigan climbed to college football's mountaintop
The Michigan Insider
247Sports, Michigan Football, Michigan Wolverines, Michigan, Michigan athletics, College Football
4.6 • 855 Ratings
🗓️ 10 January 2024
⏱️ 58 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
In this episode, Zach Shaw and Steve Lorenz recap the Michigan football team's 34-13 win over Washington in the national title game, and offer some big-picture thoughts on how the Wolverines got to the top of the college football world.
They open the show by looking at what decisions or changes Michigan made after its 2-4 2020 season that were most impactful on the Wolverines going 40-3 since. Quarterback play, trench dominance, a player-led culture and toughness are all mentioned. They then look at what impressed them most about Michigan's win over Washington, including defensive pressure, Donovan Edwards and more.
In the second half of the episode, they look at the legacy of Michigan's ginormous senior class and what they accomplished, the most important stay-or-go decisions the Wolverines face, the value of the 2021 and 2022 recruiting classes and Michigan's ability to succeed in the face of outside noise.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hello, everybody. Welcome to the Wolverine 24-7 podcast or audio service for all things Michigan football, basketball, and recruiting. |
| 0:06.4 | I'm your host, Zach Shaw. Steve Lorenz here with me. We are talking Michigan's national championship victory over Washington, 34 to 13 in Houston. |
| 0:16.0 | Myself, Alejandro, Sam Webb, Josh Newkirk, we were all down here providing coverage. |
| 0:21.9 | So be sure to check it all out over at the Michiganinsider.com, Michigan.247 sports.com. |
| 0:27.7 | Kind of a guess it was a little bit of a close game, but then Michigan started to pull away. |
| 0:32.0 | And even when it was close, it did feel like this was Michigan's game to win. |
| 0:39.8 | You know, you saw the run game run for over 300 yards and eight yards per carry. Something, they hadn't done either of those things all season. |
| 0:44.5 | And then the defense probably can't come up with enough adjectives to describe this defense. |
| 0:51.0 | I mean, this is, this is one of the best defenses of the 21st century. |
| 0:56.5 | You know, I asked Trevor Keegan about it after the game. He, he said 2001 Miami, |
| 1:01.5 | 2021 Georgia, and 23 Michigan. Those were his top three and kind of looked at the numbers. |
| 1:07.6 | I'm sure 2011 Alabama probably sneaks in there, but, but yeah, really, really, |
| 1:13.2 | really impressive defense all season, but then against the number one passing offense, against |
| 1:18.6 | a team that had all these great passing stats and was supposed to, you know, expose a big 10 |
| 1:24.9 | defense. Michigan did the exposing with their defensive play. |
| 1:28.7 | So really, across the board, felt like a very strong victory. We don't really need to get into |
| 1:35.4 | the nitty-gritty. This is a little bit more of a big picture podcast, talking about what went |
| 1:41.1 | into becoming a national championship team and what's next for the |
| 1:44.9 | Wolverines and so steve we will talk about the game what impressed us the most in just a moment but |
| 1:51.1 | thinking about the national championship we've been doing this podcast for a long time i think we did |
| 1:56.8 | a lot of those episodes kind of maybe we weren't jerks about it but in the back of our minds |
| 2:01.7 | were like Michigan just might not win a national championship in our lifetime because in the |
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