Can Michigan Football QB Bryce Underwood make a sophomore leap?
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Bryce Underwood’s freshman season could best be described as meh. Like the final season of The Boys, there were highs (Central Michigan, Washington, Maryland), there were lows (Oklahoma, Purdue, Ohio State) and there were some truly perplexing performances (Michigan State, Northwestern).
If you tuned in for the occasional game, you might be impressed by any given throw, or truly shocked by the next. He finished his inaugural campaign with 2,428 passing yards (60.3 completion percentage), 11 touchdowns and nine interceptions, with another 396 yards and six touchdowns on the ground, in 13 games. He was a true freshman in every sense.
Underwood’s evaluation requires a more unique lens than most. Factoring in the revelation of his head coach’s numerous indiscretions and/or crimes, competing offensive philosophies, the lack of a designated quarterback coach and an offense prominently featuring six other freshmen (true and redshirt), did Underwood actually overachieve? There is being positioned for success, then there is being positioned as the teenage savior aboard a sinking ship during a hurricane. It’s hard to set your feet in the pocket on unsteady ground; nonetheless, his passing numbers are not dissimilar to a handful of other recent high-profile true freshman starters.
2025 Malik Washington (12 games): 2,963 yards (57.7%), 17 touchdowns, nine interceptions
2024 Dylan Raiola (13 games): 2,819 yards (67.1%), 13 touchdowns, 11 interceptions
2023 Dante Moore (Nine games): 1,610 yards (53.5%), 11 touchdowns, nine interceptions
So what are reasonable expectations for Underwood compared to these examples? The jury awaits Washington, but in four fewer games last season, Raiola was more accurate (72.4%) as a sophomore and threw five more touchdowns (18) and five less interceptions (six) despite the reduced sample size. Moore took a gap year when he transferred from UCLA to Oregon before evolving into a Heisman hopeful with 3,565 yards (71.8%), 30 touchdowns and only 10 interceptions in 15 games last season.
Compared to the only other true freshmen Michigan quarterbacks, Underwood wasn’t the best, but his passing numbers again stack up favorably.
1975 Rick Leach (11 games): 647 yards (35.3%), three touchdowns, 10 interceptions
2004 Chad Henne (12 games): 2,743 yards (60.2%), 25 touchdowns, 10 interceptions
2009 Tate Forcier (12 games): 2,050 (58.7%), 13 touchdowns, 10 interceptions
In terms of development, Leach improved across the board as a passer in his second season — 897 yards (49.5%), 13 touchdowns (led the Big Ten) and eight interceptions — while furthering his dominance on the ground (604 yards and 10 touchdowns) for one of Bo’s best teams of the ‘70s.
Henne slightly dipped as a passer in year two — 2,526 yards (58.4%), 23 touchdowns (also led the Big Ten), and eight interceptions — but that was expected after losing the third-best receiver in program history in Braylon Edwards, All-American center David Baas and having an injury limit star running back Mike Hart to 45 percent of his record-setting freshman production.
And Forcier would never start another collegiate game.
The Ringer’s Lindsay Jones wrote a piece in 2025 identifying a few best practices to help NFL quarterbacks take a sophomore leap — get the right head coach, surround the quarterback with talent and build a better offense. Entering Underwood’s second year, the Wolverines are applying the same logic. With adults in the room, a clear offensive vision, dedicated positional coaches, a wealth of returning experience around him, and new weapons to deploy, Underwood should improve. But to what degree?
Although in far(rrrrrr) better hands, Michigan remains in the midst of its biggest coaching turnover stretch in modern program history. Kyle Whittingham is Michigan’s third head coach in four years and Jason Beck is Michigan’s fourth offensive coordinator in as many years, and he is already Underwood’s second. In recent history, Michigan has struggled to change offenses with an outside hire and an incumbent quarterback.
In 2019, snake oil salesman Josh Gattis and “speed and space” left Tuscaloosa and came to Ann Arbor. The goal was to implement a more modern attack, which has been a talking point for every Michigan offense for half a century. Before Gattis arrived, quarterback Shea Patterson threw for 2,600 yards with a 64.6 completion percentage, 22 touchdowns and seven picks, and added a career-high 273 yards and two touchdowns on the ground. But after a disappointing finish to the season and a limited passing attack, Pep Hamilton was out and Gattis was in.
Under Gattis’s guidance, Patterson threw for more yards (3,061), but at a worse completion clip (56.2), one more touchdown (23), and one more interception (eight). More or less the same numbers until you factor in the abandonment of the quarterback run game (Patterson only rushed for 50 yards in 2019, albeit with three more touchdowns) and the team’s overall run game.
Gattis was brought in to help Patterson sling the pill, and he did that — the offense went from 215 passing yards per game to 250. But the rushing attack was pathetic, as the Wolverines averaged 204 yards per game in 2018 and dropped to 151 under Gattis, the lowest of any 12-game season under Jim Harbaugh. This loss of identity sent the offense spiraling for two years and would not rebound until — sigh — Sherrone Moore was promoted to co-offensive coordinator ahead of the 2021 season.
During Brady Hoke’s last stand in 2014, he replaced offensive coordinator Al Borges with Doug Nussmeier to develop and protect quarterback Devin Gardner and save his own job. Nussmeier, like Gattis, came from Alabama, where he mentored future XFL MVP A.J. McCarron to several school records en route to a Heisman Trophy runner-up finish in 2013. (Quick aside: What a weird year. The top five from the 2013 Heisman voting were Jameis Winston, A.J. McCarron, Jordan Lynch, Andre Williams and Johnny Manziel. A who’s who of “how in the hell.”)
Gardner was coming off a solid season, despite mixed team success, where he completed 60.3 percent of his passes for 2,960 yards, 21 touchdowns and 11 interceptions. Gardner also stamped his CV with 483 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns, which helped him set Michigan’s single-game total offense record of 583 against Indiana, which still stands today, and the oft-forgotten 461-yard performance against Ohio State, still No. 5 all time. The offense had holes all over the place, but a quarterback ready to take off into the stratosphere.
In Nussmeier’s one season calling the shots for Michigan, in technical football terms, everything went to complete shit. The team was shut out for the first time since 1984 and failed to reach the red zone against multiple opponents (including a Kyle Whittingham-led Utah team). Individually, Gardner was the offense’s biggest victim.
Still playing behind an atrocious offensive line, his completion percentage actually rose to 61.5 (hoorah!), but his yards dipped to 1,896 and he threw 10 touchdowns to 15 interceptions. Moreover, Gardner only rushed for 258 yards and four touchdowns. Still, despite his lessened contributions, the team’s rushing attack overall actually improved, going from 126 yards per game to 163, while the passing attack plummeted from 258 to 170.
Similar to 2019, one aspect of the offense was forgotten while the other was “salvaged.“ The blame pie slices differently for the 2014 team, but Hoke, Nussmeier and even Athletic Director Dave Brandon were all shown the door after the mess they created. A fitting, yet ironic ending for Hoke, who helped usher in a new era with incumbent Denard Robinson three years earlier.
Robinson’s record-breaking 2010 earned him a sixth-place Heisman finish, but it was not enough to save head coach Rich Rodriguez’s job. After three dreadful years, Rodriguez and his staff were fired, and in came the aforementioned duo of Hoke and Borges. Suffice it to say, Hoke and Borges weren’t brought in to save or develop Robinson, coming off a season where he threw for 2,570 yards, 18 touchdowns and 11 interceptions, and rushed for an absurd 1,702 yards and 14 touchdowns; they were brought in to support him.
Although Robinson’s numbers dipped, the 2011 season was the brightest spot in the darkest stretch of modern Michigan football. Robinson completed 55 percent of his passes for 2,173 yards, tossed career highs in touchdowns (20) and interceptions (15), and rushed for 1,176 yards and a career-high 16 touchdowns. Most importantly, the team complemented its star player, no one area of the offense was forgotten, and the Wolverines finished 11-2, and beat Ohio State for the only time between 2003 and 2021.
Comparatively, Michigan’s present offensive turnover is the most similar to 2011, with both a new head coach and offensive coordinator coming to town. However, the comparison is far from one-to-one with Underwood nowhere near Heisman contention. Perhaps it’s more similar to when Lloyd Carr made the decision to replace Terry Malone with Mike DeBord ahead of the 2006 season.
Following Carr’s worst season since taking over in 1995, a 7-5 season which featured the loss of key stars and injuries galore, he decided he was not just going to chalk it up to attrition and bad luck. Instead, he re-elevated DeBord — who had been at Michigan from 1993-99 before taking the head coaching position at Central Michigan for four years until returning to Ann Arbor in 2004 — to implement a new zone running scheme and reaffirm the foundation of his team. Carr expressed as much during his opening spring press conference in 2006.
“What we need to do offensively that we didn’t do a year ago is run the football more effectively,” Carr said. “ In four games there we had the lead late in the game and had we been able to run the football, possess the football, the outcomes certainly could have been different; so we have to run the football more effectively.
“We have to be a more balanced football team. We’ve got people who can throw it and we’ve got people who can catch it, but if you’re going to be successful and play championship football I think you have to run the football and I think we’ll able to do that more effectively than we did a year ago.”
On the surface, the rushing improvement doesn’t jump off the page in ‘06 — about 15 more yards per game — and the overall total offense actually dipped by a similar margin that season. But the balance and efficiency took this unit to another level. As Hart racked up a career-high 1,562 yards, Henne’s efficiency (143.4 passer rating) and explosiveness (7.9 air yards per attempt) skyrocketed to career highs as Michigan went 11-2. The exact formula Whittingham aspires to emulate this season.
“Physicality will be our calling card,” Whittingham proclaimed at his introductory press conference. “ Usually Utah, the place I was, we were the most physical team in the league, whichever league we played in. That’s not going to be any different here. I believe in running the football. We were second in the nation last year rushing the football at Utah. And defending the run. If you can win the line of scrimmage and be physical up front, you’ve always got a chance. And so that will be the trademark and the identity of this football team is physicality, toughness and grit.”
Over the last two seasons, Beck’s offenses — 2024 New Mexico, 2025 Utah — have ranked second nationally in rushing offense, only trailing a service academy each season, and have ranked tops in the FBS the last two years in rushing yards per attempt.
Efficiency. This clear identity will allow the offense to play complementary and ease the burden on Underwood’s shoulders as he develops within the offense. But it won’t limit him either; in eight of the 13 seasons Michigan had a 1,000-yard receiver, the team also had a 1,000-yard rusher. Balance.
Underwood’s development isn’t rooted in him simply mastering his mechanics, although that is a part of the equation. But the driving factor is implementing a system around him to make failure impossible. Creating stability within the program so Underwood can set his feet and deliver; implementing innovative concepts so the signal caller has an advantage pre and post-snap; making success inevitable.
When Jones asked Denver’s offensive coordinator, Davis Webb, about developing Bo Nix, he spoke to the comprehensive efforts surrounding a young quarterback. “The biggest thing … I believe in is it takes a village to develop a quarterback,” Webb said. “ It’s not a quarterback coach. It’s not just the head coach… It’s the person itself. Who is in the room with the quarterback is underrated. And who does he have to throw to? How’s he protected? Like, it’s a domino effect of so many different things. Like, there’s so many players that could probably still be playing today if they’re in different situations. That’s life. You catch the right wave, and things go well.”
Whittingham has built a village around Underwood, a foundation on which success should be inevitable. Now it’s up to the young quarterback to ride the wave.
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