2 things we learned from Michigan Football’s 2025 season

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The 2025 Michigan football season has come to a close after a loss to the Texas Longhorns in the Citrus Bowl. The Wolverines failed to meet expectations in the second and final year of the Sherrone Moore era that cascaded into larger drama off the field than on the field itself.

Looking back, here are two things we learned about Team 148 that had significant impact on the year and what’s next.

Bryce Underwood needs time to develop

Fault can fall in a lot of areas, but Bryce Underwood underperformed expectations in his first season at Michigan. I think a majority of the blame goes to the coaching staff, as he was consistently not in the best place to succeed. The offense was all over the place and felt like a battle throughout the year between what Chip Lindsey wanted to run vs. the SMASH football Moore wanted. What came together was little cohesion, a quarterback who lacked confidence at the end of the season and a unit that never really synced up.

It took the coaches weeks to understand the connection fellow freshman Andrew Marsh had with Underwood, and it was even longer for them to get a players like Semaj Morgan off the field. Injuries decimated the tight end room, drops across the board plagued the team, and it felt like Underwood was not comfortable throwing the ball to anyone other than Donaven McCulley and Marsh.

Late in the season, that culminated in the Wolverines’ failure to beat the best competition they played all year. The Ohio State game wasn’t even close. It was the pinnacle of the lack of development this staff had for Underwood and how little they improved. He threw just 18 passes despite being down to their third string running back and trailing early. It was like the team said, “Well that didn’t work!” and proceeded to just watch the Buckeyes boat race them.

As for Underwood, he looked like a true freshman. This kid has great talent, but he over relies on that talent to compensate for a lack of fundamentals. Someone needs to sit down and work with him on his throwing motion in the pocket. The throw below looks more like a pick off move to first base by a pitcher as he tries to squeeze the ball into a tight window.

That leads to a larger problem — Underwood’s issues deciphering defenses. He’s playing defenses that are disguising coverages he’s never seen before and was asked to run an RPO offense on top of that. He just made too many silly mistakes that compounded, and he was also consistently a step behind. He threw nine interceptions to just 11 touchdowns and was sacked 20 times.

Yes, Underwood threw three interceptions against Texas, but he also threw the most times he had all season. If he’s allowed to make those mistakes and learn from them earlier, maybe he performs better under pressure against some of the best teams.

Leadership is more important than talent

In college sports, programs tend to shift into two categories — those who have elite resources (and thus talent) and those who have elite culture, coaching and leadership. National champions and dynastic programs are born when those two intersect.

That’s what happened when Michigan won it all under Jim Harbaugh. Moore was supposed to be the continuation of that. Unprecedented resources were poured in so Michigan could get Underwood, Andrew Babalola, Justice Haynes and others. The goal was to have that talent outweigh any problems from a first-year head coach.

As we learned over the last month, Moore was not leader he was expected to be, was struggling on the field, and seemingly lost his locker room while also losing games. It was a complete disaster class, and there were signs of it early on. The broken culture continued into 2025 and eventually spiraled out of control, even with new coaches in Ann Arbor and highly ranked players on the field.

The lesson learned — talent can’t fix everything. Michigan was a young team in 2025, but the ceiling of the roster was still very high. That’s now in jeopardy with the coaching transition. At the same time, it’s also incredibly exciting hiring a known tradition and culture-builder like Kyle Whittingham. But in order to make it work, they have to win, and quickly, in this “what can you do for me now” culture of college football.

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