The Michigan Wolverines became the story of Week 1 of the college football season as a result of their underwhelming performance in the “win” over Western Michigan.
After time seemingly expired, officials added an additional second to the clock after replay review. Which Michigan quarterback Bryce Underwood used to his advantage. While his first attempt sailed out of the back of the end zone, the second try fell perfectly to wide receiver JJ Buchanan for the walk-off winner.
It was Underwood’s best play of the game, not too surprising considering it was a game-winning Hail Mary. But what was surprising was just how bad he looked for the previous 60 minutes. Really, really bad. For someone whose recruitment turned into a bidding war, with well-heeled donors pushing him to Ann Arbor.
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Excluding the Hail Mary, Underwood completed just 11 passes on 21 attempts for 127 yards. He had much more success in the running game, with nine rushes for 47 yards and a touchdown. But he frequently looked indecisive as a passer, overthrowing or underthrowing receivers and frequently looking confused in a new offense.
After the game and his performance, Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham wasn’t exactly effusive with praise. Whittingham said Underwood was the starter “right now,” but heavily implied that his role would be reevaluated, perhaps sooner rather than later.
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“He’s our QB right now. It’s not something that’s infinite,” Whittingham told reporters on Monday. “At some point, we’ve got to turn a corner, and we’ve got to see improvement.
“As we do with a bunch of stuff, we’ve got to see improvement out of the coaches. It’s not just Bryce; it’s not just Bryce’s job that is not absolutely set in concrete. Nobody’s is, you’ve got to perform week in and week out. Become somebody that we feel is playing at a level that we can win with.”
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For a quarterback who got $12 million in NIL to start at Michigan, that’s underwhelming at best and potentially career changing at worst. On Wednesday, Underwood spoke to the media and was asked about Whittingham’s comments. And instead of responding head on, he feigned ignorance.
“Um, there was comments about that?” he said. After he was reminded of Whittingham’s remarks, he answered “That’s cool. I didn’t see that. It’s cool.”
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The full video of the interaction was even more painful to see than the answers indicated.
Your head coach says your job might be up for grabs if things don’t improve quickly, and you expect people to believe that you didn’t hear about it until days later, when asked by reporters? That’s obviously not what happened, but it is telling that Underwood choose to respond like this.
Whatever answer he gave could have been obviously pre-rehearsed, but it would instill more confidence to acknowledge the poor play this past weekend, and express confidence that better play is ahead. Particularly when the Wolverines have no time to rest, with an even tougher matchup against the Oklahoma Sooners looming this coming weekend.
Underwood still has the immense arm strength, potential, and passing ability that he had coming out of high school, but to this point in his career, it’s been mainly visible in short bursts and not through him consistently dominating games. He’s still young, and still just one game into his sophomore season, but if Underwood doesn’t improve in a hurry, college football fans might quickly turn to labeling him one of the biggest busts of the NIL era.
