Nick Saban explains Alabama’s disastrous final play in the Rose Bowl (and why it went wrong)

College football fans are so used to hearing Nick Saban get asked about his winning play calls on the sport’s biggest stage that it’s jarring when he has to explain spectacular failures.

Monday night after the Rose Bowl was one of those rare moments.

With Alabama facing fourth-and-goal to send its College Football Playoff semifinal against Michigan to a second overtime, the Crimson Tide ended up running quarterback Jalen Milroe straight into Michigan’s defensive line where he was stopped well short of the end zone.

It was a baffling scene in real time and most fans couldn’t believe the play call in that situation.

JALEN MILROE IS STOPPED ON 4TH DOWN😱

THE WOLVERINES ARE HEADED TO THE NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP 🏆 #CFBPlayoff pic.twitter.com/X2x3tPzwqr

— ESPN (@espn) January 2, 2024

So what happened? Or rather, what was supposed to happen? Here’s how Saban broke it down.

Per Saban:

“We called three plays. One they called time-out, one we called [a] timeout, and the last one that didn’t work. The fact that it didn’t work made it a really bad call. You know what I mean? But we called timeout because we had a bad look. We had a good look on the first one. They must have known it. But [offensive coordinator Tommy Rees] just felt like the best thing we could do was have a quarterback run, which was one of our two-point plays for this game. And the ball was on the three-yard line which is just like a two-point play. But we didn’t get a block so it didn’t work. We didn’t execute it very well, and it didn’t work. They pressured, and we thought they would pressure, but we could gap them and block them and make it work, and it didn’t.”

A closer look at the overhead view of the play shows there may have been room for Alabama quarterback Jalen Milroe to cut to his left, but a missed block and a low snap — a recurring theme for Alabama all night — left him with nowhere to go.

Milroe's final run had a chance if it was run as designed. Cut to the left was somewhat there. But low snap, Milroe panicked, RT got destroyed, just ran straight into the pile. https://t.co/qrql7rpCRu

— Chris Vannini (@ChrisVannini) January 2, 2024

yeah I think this play ages better if the QB doesn’t have to rush the timing. https://t.co/Z6EpzZyR5d

— Mike Golic Jr (@mikegolicjr) January 2, 2024

The reality is the play got blown up pretty quickly, and it’s super easy to second-guess once that happens. At least fans now have a bit more insight into how the Tide ended up going with that call — and given they were playing in overtime, there’s a pretty good chance that play was going to be used at some point regardless.

But Alabama didn’t execute it properly, and Michigan was able to get to Milroe before he turned a broken play into another heroic highlight.