Why Michigan football's defense is more equipped than ever to take on Alabama, SEC

LOS ANGELES — Take one glance at Kenneth Grant, and it becomes hard to believe no SEC school offered him a scholarship out of high school.

After all, the former three-star recruit from northwest Indiana looks as if he were born to play in a conference where agile, plus-sized humans like himself are both cherished and coveted.

“You know,” he said, “it’s their loss.”

But it’s one of Michigan football’s biggest gains. Grant, a 339-pound rolling rock of a man, is now a fixture in a deep defensive front that has spent the past three seasons beefing up so it can compete against the league that has dominated the College Football Playoff since its inception in 2014.

The SEC has claimed six national titles during that period, and Alabama, the Wolverines’ opponent in the upcoming Rose Bowl semifinal, has won three of them. The Crimson Tide’s consistent presence in the exclusive four-team tournament recently prompted U-M defensive coordinator Jesse Minter to remark that it felt as Michigan were playing in the “Alabama Invitational.”

ENEMY OF THE STATE: Alabama WR says team 'not allowed' to watch individual film because of U-M sign stealing

“Alabama is the standard of college football,” the Tide’s quarterback, Jalen Milroe, declared Thursday. “If you want to learn what true football is, you look at Alabama.”

U-M instead chose to focus on the SEC power’s most obvious replica, Georgia. During the last offseason, the Wolverines targeted the Bulldogs when they set aside an intense practice period for the offense and defense to wage an all-out slugfest in the trenches. The no-holds-barred intrasquad battle was called the “Beat Georgia” drill, which was an acknowledgment the Wolverines would likely have to get past the newly minted juggernaut that won the past two national championships if it were to claim this sport’s greatest prize.

But as it turned out, Michigan is now tasked with defeating Alabama instead.

Perhaps more than ever, the Wolverines are equipped to do that.

“I feel like this defense is built to play a team like this,” said linebacker Michael Barrett.

It wasn’t always this way, as Barrett recalled. He was a member of the 2019 squad that lost to the Crimson Tide by 19 points in the Citrus Bowl. That year, the Wolverines trotted out Carlo Kemp, a 286-pound defensive tackle who would play on the edge at the professional level. Kemp was a key cog in Don Brown’s blitz-happy scheme, which deployed smaller, quick-twitch interior lineman and a lighter set of linebackers. Towards the end of their encounter with Alabama, they were bulldozed by a mammoth offensive line that featured five players currently on NFL rosters.

To deliver the final knockout blow, Alabama marched 75 yards in 12 plays, running Najee Harris 11 times before he finally crossed the goal line in the final minute to seal a 35-16 victory.

Less than a year later, Brown would be gone, and Michigan would undergo a reckoning after its slogged through a 2-4 season during the calamitous fall of 2020. What happened next changed the trajectory of the program, transforming the Wolverines from chronic underachievers to recurring CFP participants.

Following Brown’s ouster, Jim Harbaugh called on his brother, John, for some help. As coach of the Baltimore Ravens, he obliged and lent his sibling linebackers coach Mike Macdonald. During his one year in Ann Arbor, Macdonald remade Michigan’s defense, installing a version of the Ravens’ versatile system and building it with players who resembled the guys he saw in the pros.

“Big people beat up little people,” said Minter, Macdonald’s successor at Michigan and former colleague in Baltimore. “That’s sort of the thought process up front. ... When you’re playing a three-down or four-down front, when you’re playing against an o-line like, for example, Alabama, where their tackles are 6-7, 360, their guards are 340-350 pounds, you’ve got to have size and you’ve got to have guys that are big and that can move.”

Enter Grant. When he set on campus in July 2022, he remembers the coaching staff telling him he was one of the “key guys” for the future of Michigan football. Harbaugh called Grant a “gift from the football gods.” But he was not the only one. Classmate Mason Graham, a supple 6-3, 318-pound fireplug with breathtaking burst, seemed to have preternatural ability as well. The two sophomores have invigorated a unit that flips between odd and even fronts with senior Kris Jenkins, a weight room marvel, at its fulcrum.

[ MUST LISTEN: Make "Hail Yes!" your go-to Michigan Wolverines podcast, available anywhere you listen to podcasts (Apple, Spotify) ]

“I think that is the strength of their team,” Alabama offensive coordinator Tommy Rees said. “They are athletic and they have power.”

Most of all, they have heft. Compared to the lineup Brown rolled out against Alabama four years ago, Michigan’s starting defensive tackles in its most recent victory over Iowa in the Big Ten championship game earlier this month carried, on average, 25 more pounds. The inside linebackers? Seventeen pounds heavier.

“It’s crazy different,” said Barrett. “We’ve got some freaks up front.”

They have helped lift Michigan to the top of the defensive rankings. The Wolverines have surrendered the lowest point total and the second-fewest yards in the nation.

They also have a defense that now approximates the versions seen in Tuscaloosa, Athens and at other SEC strongholds. There is a reason for that. The Ravens’ personnel philosophy, which was adopted by U-M, has its origins in Cleveland. That’s where executive vice president Ozzie Newsome once worked alongside Bill Belichick and current Alabama coach Nick Saban in the early 1990s. Belichick preached that size matters, having learned that doctrine from Bill Parcells, his former mentor. Saban and Newsome then applied it to their own teams, building a physical profile of the type of players they wanted at each position.

All these years later, the criteria were passed on to Michigan by Macdonald and now Minter.

“You try to get the biggest, strongest, fastest guys up front,” the Wolverines defensive coordinator said.

Michigan now has some of them, which is why it no longer looks overmatched against Alabama and Crimson Tide offensive guard Tyler Booker sees his next opponent as the ultimate challenge.

“Top to bottom, they're very technically sound, athletically gifted and move really well,” he said. “They have a great defensive front.”

In large part, that’s because they now have huge men like Grant stationed at the line of scrimmage, helping the Wolverines go toe-to-toe with the biggest, baddest teams in the sport.

Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Michigan football's defense was built to beat Alabama and SEC