It’s not exactly Murderers’ Row.

Believe it or not, that wasn’t a dig at Michigan’s 2023 schedule. At least not as a whole. The Wolverines might not have played a soul in nonconference play, but they did beat a pair of New Year’s 6 bowl teams. They also suffocated Iowa in the Big Ten Championship, though that game was over as soon as Michigan booted a field goal through the uprights.

What’s not exactly Murderers’ Row is the quarterbacks Michigan faced in 2023.

And I’m not just saying that because the last opponent was Iowa, which attempted to set the forward pass back a century.

Look at this list of opposing quarterbacks and tell me who impressed you:

  • Mason Garcia, East Carolina
  • Doug Brumfield, UNLV
  • Camden Orth, Bowling Green
  • Gavin Wimsatt, Rutgers
  • Heinrich Haarberg, Nebraska
  • Athan Kaliakmanis, Minnesota
  • Tayven Jackson, Indiana
  • Katin Houser, Michigan State
  • Hudson Card, Purdue
  • Drew Allar, Penn State
  • Taulia Tagovailoa, Maryland
  • Kyle McCord, Ohio State
  • Deacon Hill, Iowa

Forget Murderers’ Row. How many of these guys could a casual college football fan pick out of a lineup? Two?

That’s also the same number of Michigan opposing quarterbacks who threw for 2,500 yards in 2023. One of them, McCord, hit the transfer portal. In other words, that means Tagovailoa is easily the best opposing quarterback that Michigan faced in 2023.

Meh.

That’s not a knock on Tagovailoa, who became the Big Ten’s all-time leading passer after a prolific 4-year career at Maryland. But if he’s easily the best quarterback that a team faced with a 13-game schedule, that’s telling. He led 1 of the 2 top-50 passing offenses that Michigan faced this year, both of which threw for at least 240 yards against Michigan.

Alabama didn’t have a top-50 passing offense, so a casual observer/Michigan homer might think that facing Jalen Milroe will be more of the same for the Wolverines. Wrong. Milroe is in a different class than Tagovailoa and McCord. If you don’t believe that, you might’ve missed the part where Milroe finished No. 6 in the Heisman Trophy voting after completely turning around his season — and Alabama’s.

Ah, but now is the part where I’m supposed to remind everyone that the Wolverines were 2-0 against CJ Stroud, which means Milroe will be held in check. That assumes that Michigan has the same defense it had in 2021-22. If that’s the case, why then should we ignore that Max Duggan scored 4 touchdowns in a 51-point effort in last year’s semifinal?

If we’re doing the comparison game, Milroe’s strengths and weaknesses align more with Duggan than with Stroud, who was surgical as a passer but unwilling as a runner. The improved version of Milroe was both more explosive and smarter with the football than the guy we saw in Week 2 against Texas. Since the calendar turned to November, Milroe has:

  • 1 turnover on 181 scrimmage touches (118 passing attempts, 63 rushing attempts)
  • 19 passing plays of 20 yards
  • 5 run plays of 20 yards
  • 10.2 yards/pass attempt on 67% passing
  • 17 total touchdowns (10 passing, 7 rushing)
  • 65 rushing yards/game

Most recently, Milroe shook off a slow start and ended Georgia’s 29-game winning streak to knock the 2-time defending national champs out of the Playoff. If the pro-Michigan crowd wants to point to the 13-for-23 passing line as a reason Milroe will struggle against the nation’s No. 2 passing defense, I’d say go back and watch something more than the box score.

Once upon a time, plenty of Georgia fans were saying the same thing about Milroe. That is, a statistically dominant UGA pass defense would hold up just fine against the Alabama signal-caller, and we shouldn’t look too far into UGA’s weak roster of opposing quarterbacks in 2023. Go ask Georgia fans how fun it was to watch Milroe rip off runs of 30 and 9 yards to move the chains on the final drive, which ultimately put the game away.

Maybe Milroe will do the same thing against Michigan. Fortunately for the Wolverines, DC Jesse Minter appears to be well aware of the Alabama quarterback’s midseason maturation.

Minter is right. It’s not all just deep shots and scrambles like it felt like earlier in the season. It’s difficult to prep for a guy who seems to be picking up more things instead of having defenses combat his strengths.

In the lead-up to the Rose Bowl, Michigan is using the only guy on its roster who can perhaps come close to simulating Milroe — Alex Orji. A fellow Texas native, his frame (6-3, 236 pounds) is actually a touch bigger than Milroe’s, and according to Michigan defensive lineman Kris Jenkins, Orji is “a freak of nature” (via Sports Illustrated).

Maybe that’s nothing more than an intriguing pregame storyline, or maybe Orji will be to Michigan in its Rose Bowl prep for Milroe what Stetson Bennett IV was to Georgia in its 2017 Rose Bowl prep for Baker Mayfield. We’ll play the results on that.

As for the final result in Pasadena, both Alabama and Michigan can win and get the “team of destiny” tag heading into the national championship. Both embraced an “us against the world” mentality, albeit for different reasons. Michigan’s was rooted in Jim Harbaugh receiving multiple suspensions for NCAA investigations, while Alabama’s stemmed from the quarterback woes coming out of the USF debacle in Week 3.

Milroe had a back seat for that mess in Tampa. Since returning to the lineup, he became the quarterback that Alabama fans dreamed of.

He’ll get a chance to become Michigan’s worst nightmare.