Why Kyle Whittingham’s answer on Bryce Underwood should worry Michigan fans this week
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Michigan won its opener 13-12 on Saturday night because officials put one second back on the clock and Bryce Underwood threw a 47-yard touchdown to JJ Buchanan on the final snap. Across the 59 minutes and 59 seconds before it, the Wolverines trailed Western Michigan at home, and Underwood completed 12 of 22 passes for 170 yards with one touchdown, one interception and a lost fumble in the fourth quarter that nearly ended the game.
Kyle Whittingham spent Monday morning answering for that performance, with Oklahoma arriving in Ann Arbor on Saturday and the quarterback question following him into the room.
“He’s our QB right now, and it’s not something that’s infinite,” Whittingham told reporters. “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 got to see improvement out of the coaches, and so it’s not just on Bryce.”
He then widened it, making clear that Underwood is one of several players whose position he considers open.
“And it’s not just Bryce’s job that is not absolutely set in concrete. You’ve got to perform week in and week out and become somebody that is playing at a level we can win with.”
“I don’t want to put a timeline on it, but we’ve got to see progress, and we’ve got to see a level of play that is conducive to winning games,” he said.
Whittingham is in his first season at Michigan after 21 years running Utah, he hired an almost entirely new staff, and he inherited Underwood from people who are no longer in the building.
Michigan football coach Kyle Whittingham talks Bryce Underwood job security which “isn’t infinite” and the discrepancy between what coaches said happened in fall camp and last two public performances: pic.twitter.com/AC2h3hr7XW
— Tony Garcia | Detroit Free Press (@RealTonyGarcia) September 7, 2026
The Oklahoma tape Bryce Underwood has to answer for
Underwood’s last meeting with the Sooners produced 9 completions on 24 attempts for 142 yards and no touchdowns in a loss, in what was his first road start as a freshman. His season ended on a similar note, with 63 passing yards in a 27-9 home defeat to Ohio State that removed Michigan from College Football Playoff contention.
Put those next to Saturday’s 170 yards and the pattern is three straight games of consequence in which the offense could not move through the air, the third of which required a miracle to protect Michigan’s ranking.
Underwood started all 13 games in 2025 for a 9-4 team, throwing for 2,428 yards with 11 touchdowns and nine interceptions at a 60.3% completion rate while adding 392 rushing yards and six scores.
The backup is Tommy Carr, a true freshman from Saline, Michigan, whose father played for the program and whose grandfather Lloyd coached it to a national title. Carr beat out Colorado State transfer Brayden Fowler-Nicolosi for the job in August without taking a college snap, which is the kind of depth chart that gets tested only once a staff decides it has run out of patience.
Whittingham stopped short of that point on Monday, and his phrasing suggests he wants the room to know the point exists.
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