Former Michigan quarterback Brian Griese joined his former teammates Jon Jansen on the In The Trenches podcast. Griese reminisced about his journey at U-M, the 1997 national title and more.

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"I finished out that season as the starter, because I think Scott tore some ligaments in his thumb. And so, finally I have a chance. I’d go out and play, and it’s like any player that’s out there for the first time, there’s going to be some ups and some downs. And, we had some good games, we played some good games. And then, there were some games where I could’ve played a lot better. I remember going through the remainder of that season, we played in the Outback Bowl against Alabama, and I threw an interception to Dwayne Rudd and he runs it back for a touchdown. But, I played pretty well in that game, and I remember thinking after the game I said, ‘I don’t know if I did enough to earn the spot next year.’ And, sure enough, it wasn’t enough. And, the next year we come back for my senior year, and Scott Dreisbach is starting at the beginning of the year. So, it was an up-and-down ‘95 season, and I didn’t quite know what my senior year was going to look like, or whether I was going to have another opportunity. And, as it turned out, Scott started that entire ‘96 season, and then he got hurt again at halftime at Ohio State, and that’s when things kind of changed."

"There was no other game that I’ve ever been a part of — college, high school or in the NFL — that had the kind of feeling that the Michigan-Ohio State game had. The kind of history and vitriol and importance for both teams. Playing in the NFL, I played in Denver mostly, but the rivalry we had was with the Raiders. That didn’t feel the same. I think that game colors your history and your relationship with your alma mater, whether it’s on the Ohio State side or Michigan side. And people still remember — to this day, when I see people on the street, they ask me what my record was against Ohio State. And, I’m sure they do the same in Columbus. That ‘95 game was all about [running back Tshimanga “Tim” Biakabutuka]. It was just an unbelievable performance by him. I think Ohio State was ranked number two in the country or at least top-four, and we had lost three or four games, so we were out of Big Ten title hopes, and I just remember it was cold and I remember calling the same two or three running plays the entire game. We had a counter, which they couldn’t stop, and I’d turn my back to the defense, hand it to Tshimanga, and then I’d turn back around and the offensive line, you guys had open holes that you could drive a truck through. And they had Andy Katzenmoyer, they had some really good players on that defense. Just to watch you guys block, and to watch Tshimanga run, it was something I had never seen before, and I’ve never seen since. In a game of that magnitude, for us to go out and dominate them the way we did was a lot of fun.

"And then the ‘96 game, I’ll tell you honestly the feelings I had. I was a senior. That was my fourth year. It had been a frustrating year for me, just because we had lost three or four games and this was the last time, in my mind, that I was going to play against Ohio State. It had been frustrating because I wanted to play. I hadn’t played all year, and I thought that my career was going to end like this. I didn’t know that I was going to come back for a fifth year. It had certainly been a frustrating year, and I didn’t want to come back and sit behind Scott Dreisbach again. And then, Scott got hurt late in the second quarter. We were down 9-0 at halftime. And, I remember sitting in my locker in Columbus and saying to myself, ‘Listen, this is it. You have one half for the rest of your life. Just go out, let it all hang out and be proud of the way that you play for two quarters, and if you end up hanging them up, then you can hang your head high.’ So, that’s the attitude I took. We came out and it wasn’t like I did anything special. I threw one slant route to Ty Streets, and I remember Shawn Springs, a corner, falls down, and Ty runs 70 yards for a touchdown, and that kind of sparked the second half for us. Our defense shut them out and we ended up winning 13-9. I remember the end of that game. It was like we had just won the Super Bowl. Those were my two memories of ‘95 and ‘96."

"Just from a personal standpoint, I know also from a team standpoint, the ‘96 season was frustrating for all of us. 9-4 seasons were not the standard at Michigan. But, it had been frustrating for me, as well, just not getting a chance to play. And, you prepare and you do everything like you’re going to play, and when you show up on game day and you’re standing on the sideline, sometimes it’s hard not to get to take the test. You have to remember that I was a walk-on, and I never had any expectations of being an NFL quarterback. That never really entered my mind. I just want to be a great teammate and have a good career at Michigan and play and contribute and help. And, I wasn’t having that opportunity. You combine that with the reality for me was that I had gotten my degree and graduated. I had a scholarship to go to graduate school through the National Football Foundation. So, I had that, and I was like, ‘Maybe it’s just time for me to get on with the rest of my life.’ And, I was excited about that.

"Honestly, I was torn, and there were no guarantees that if I came back for a fifth year that I wouldn’t have had the same experience that I had in ‘96. But, I sat down with my older brother and I was asking a lot of people about what I should do. He said, ‘Listen, you have the rest of your life to go get a real job, and the scholarship will be there next year. Graduate school will be there. If you make that decision and don’t go back, you will always think what would’ve been.’ And, he was exactly right. Yeah, I was thinking of the decision after the frustration of ‘96, and that was the wrong way to approach it. After I had that conversation with him, I said, ‘You’re right. I’m going to go back, but I’m not just going to go back. If I’m going to do it, I’m going to dedicate myself 150 percent.'

"At that time, Lloyd was making a lot of decisions to play younger quarterbacks over and over again. I told myself, I have to make it a no-brainer that he has to pick me to play. The only way to do that is to do everything everyday 150 percent to give myself that opportunity. If you remember, he didn’t make the decision for who the starting quarterback was for ‘97 until the week before the first game against Colorado. We didn’t know, and I didn’t know, but I did know that I had done everything that I could possibly do to give myself a chance to be that player."

"Right before halftime, we punt the ball and Tim Dwight runs it back for a touchdown. I thought it was going to be 14-14, but then he takes it back for a touchdown. We go up the ramp to the locker room down 21-14. I knew it was coming. I tried to get up ahead of everybody, but I wasn’t able to get ahead of everybody, and I could feel the energy behind me, and sure enough, somebody grabs my arm and it’s Lloyd. And he goes, ‘Griese, you got us into this mess, and now you’re going to get us out.’

'Okay, coach. I got you.' There might’ve been a few expletives in there, but that was the main tenor of what he wanted to tell me. And, I knew what kind of team we had. I knew what kind of defense we had, so going into that locker room, I didn’t sense any panic from anybody. I just thought I needed to step up and take responsibility for the way that I had played in the first half, and then be held accountable for the way that I was going to play in the second half. Just support our defense and saying, ‘Listen, this is is bad as it’s going to get. We’re going to build this thing back in the second half.’ And, to give the confidence to the offense that there was no panic in me.

"That’s exactly what happened. We went back out there, we played great defense. We gave up three points in the second half, and we scored the two touchdowns that we needed to score to come back and win, 28-24. At the end of that game, we learned that no matter what happens, we’re going to stick together, and no matter how bad it gets, we’re going to give ourselves a chance to win at the end. I think that gave us a lot of confidence for the rest of the season."

"I had the pleasure of playing with Charles at Michigan, and then having to play against Charles, because he played at Oakland and I was at Denver. Now we were on the opposite sides of a rivalry.

"There’s very few people in my career that I’ve played with that have that natural ability. But, when you get to the NFL, there are some. Charles is a traditional lockdown corner. That’s where you start. Plays man-to-man, plays zone. He can do it all. There’s some of those guys in the NFL, typically one in every division. Every three or four teams will have a guy like that.

"I think the thing that separated Charles was not his physical ability, but mentally what he was able to accomplish, both on the field and off the field. He was a very disciplined person on the field, and very smart, understood the game.

"I know that people remember a few plays from Charles. The Michigan State interception, the interception in the Rose Bowl. A lot of people remember those plays. Probably the most impressive play that Charles Woodson, in my eyes, ever made at Michigan, was the last drive that we had the ball on offense in the Rose Bowl, when we’re up 21-16 and we gotta burn some clock. We call a reverse pass, and Charles was supposed to throw the ball down the field. He got the ball, and there was nothing open downfield. Normally, you have a receiver or a running back who all they do is play offense. They might take a chance of just heaving it out there, or they might throw it out of bounds, which would’ve been a mistake because it would’ve stopped the clock. But, Charles knew exactly what he needed to do, and he didn’t throw it out of bounds, stop the clock. He pulled it down, ran with it, gets a first down and kept the clock running. In that moment — the biggest moment of all of our lives in college, with the national championship on the line — the coach trusts him and in real time, he makes the right decision. To me, that was the most impressive play that Charles Woodson has ever made at Michigan, and I don’t think a lot of people know it."

I think, for all of us, we had the experience of beating Ohio State, but the experience that we had not had — any of us — was winning the Big Ten championship. For me, one of the reasons I went to Michigan was to win the Big Ten championship. In the five years prior to my coming to Michigan, they had won the Big Ten championship. It’s just what they did. Our fifth-year group, Rob Swett, Zach Adami, Glen Steele, myself — there was a chance that we were going to go out without winning a single Big Ten championship. That had not happened to a senior class in a long time at Michigan. I remember feeling that pressure before that game. I wasn’t even thinking about undefeated or any of that. It was, ‘We gotta win the Big Ten championship, and to do that we have to beat Ohio State. I know we can beat Ohio State because we’ve done it the last two years.’

"So, at the end of that game, I don’t remember a lot because I remember the emotions of finally being able to say that we were Big Ten champs. I remember two of my classmates — Rob Swett and Zach Adami — coming up, and the three of us just had a moment there on the field, talking about exactly that, that we were not going to go out in our careers at Michigan without winning a Big Ten championship. That was what I remembered the most. I knew we were going to have an opportunity to then turn our attention to the Rose Bowl, the national championship and all that, but in that moment, to me it was about not going out without a championship.

"The Rose Bowl meant a lot to my dad, having played in the 1967 Rose Bowl. It just so happened that 30 years later, we’re in the Rose Bowl. For him to be calling the game and for the way that the game ended, for us to be not only Big Ten champs and Rose Bowl champs, but national champs. One of the things a lot of people probably don’t know or remember is just the opportunity that I had after the game, for my dad to be there.

"Everybody else’s parents on the team were there. Everybody’s parents were there. My mom died when I was 12, so she obviously was not there, and there was a chance that if my dad wasn’t calling the game, he’d be calling another game — the Sugar Bowl, the Orange Bowl or whatever. And so, there was a chance that neither one of my parents was going to be there, which would’ve been really tough. And so, I was really thankful that my dad got the game, and was able to be there, and then after the game, for him to come down in the hallway on the way to the locker room, and for me to be able to see him. For us to have that moment to talk about everything that we had been through, and losing my mom and the decision to come back, not knowing if I was going to play and then all the ups and downs of the season and then the culmination at a place that meant so much to him, where he was in the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. For us to win and for me to play the way I did in that game and then to be the MVP and to have that moment in the bowels of the Rose Bowl is something that I’ll always have. It was emotional, both personally and for professionally in doing what we did on the field. There was just a lot of memories, tears and I was just so thankful to have him there."

"Oh man, the relationships. It’s like anything else in life, right? You go through a journey with people, and you don’t know where you’re going to go in that journey, what the endpoint is going to be on the journey, whether you’re going to be successful or not. During the course of that journey, you see people grow personally, professionally. It started with the coach and the relationship with him, because he was on the hot seat, and people don’t realize that. He wasn’t a proven commodity. He was a lifetime defensive coordinator who had gotten this opportunity due to some bad circumstances, and it hadn’t gone well for him. And so, for all of us — players, freshman through seniors, coaches, head coach — our butts were on the line that year, and we didn’t know how it was going to play out.

"To watch people go through adversity and uncertainty, and to grow and to come together and for all of those relationships to melt together into something that turns out special. After 10 years, 20 years and now we’re coming up on 25 years, those relationships to still be there, that’s by far what I cherish the most from that season."

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