Michigan football winners and losers vs Texas as Biff Poggi ends U-M run
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Michigan football didn’t play under the best circumstances, with several key players opting out of its postseason bowl game, but much of what ailed this team throughout the 2025 season came back in the season finale.
With a hot-and-cold performance from freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood, the Wolverines (9-4) lost the Citrus Bowl to the Texas Longhorns (10-3), 41-27, on Wednesday, Dec. 31, at Camping World Stadium in Orlando, Florida. Texas quarterback Arch Manning was the star of the game, with 376 total yards and four total touchdowns (two apiece rushing and passing).
With the loss, the Wolverines officially close out a turbulent 2025 season and look ahead to 2026 with new coach Kyle Whittingham.
But first, for one last time in 2025, let’s tally up the winners and the losers.
Winners
Bryce Underwood
Forget about his three second-half interceptions for a minute, because Underwood was as dynamic as ever for much of the game. At times, he looked the part of a five-star recruit even if it wasn’t his best game of the season.
His most impressive drive came with the game tied at 10 early in the second quarter, with the freshman ripping off 53 yards on three separate runs before capping off the 69-yard drive with a 4-yard touchdown pass to fellow freshman Andrew Marsh. Underwood got his deserved rushing touchdown later in the fourth quarter on a 5-yard run that gave the Wolverines a fourth-quarter lead.
He played looser and looked much more poised in the pocket than he has looked all season, and he rewarded his team when the designed runs went in his direction. Michigan’s offense would have been more explosive all season with this version of Underwood, even if his turnovers eventually doomed the Wolverines.
Turnovers? We’ll get to those in a bit.
Andrew Marsh
Marsh, changing his uniform from No. 4 to No. 3, wasn’t much of a factor on offense, gaining only 10 yards on three catches. But he was dominant on special teams, ripping off kick returns of 43 and 51 yards in the third quarter to set up the Michigan offense twice with great field position.
Is it Marsh’s fault that the Wolverines only scored three points combined on both possessions? Maybe a bit (especially during an Underwood interception on a pass targeted for him), but after some sub-optimal returns from Semaj Morgan this season, the Wolverines appear to have found their return specialist of the future in Marsh.
Biff Poggi
Interim coach Biff Poggi lost his chance at the full-time job with the hiring of Kyle Whittingham, but he did well in his audition to land a coaching job elsewhere.
Poggi appeared to have the Wolverines offense playing looser and more aggressively than it has for most of the season, trusting Underwood to make good decisions on RPO plays, feeding the ball to his best-available running backs and not forcing anything that wasn’t working. And against Texas, arguably the most talented team Michigan has played all season outside of Ohio State and Oklahoma, the Wolverines looked close to the best version of themselves on many drives this game.
This appears to be Poggi’s last game at Michigan, per his postgame conference, and it was a fitting send-off for a well-liked figure in the program.
Losers
Bryce Underwood
Okay, now you can pay attention to those interceptions.
Underwood threw nine interceptions all season, but a full third of them came Wednesday. That’s partly due to aggressive play-calling, for which Underwood often rewarded his team, but mostly due to bad decision-making when it mattered most.
His first two interceptions came with Michigan driving and down by four points on each series, robbing the Wolverines of chances to take critical leads. Ultimately, Underwood couldn’t match Manning’s heroics, no matter how good he looked intermittently this game.
Michigan run defense
Christian Clark, Texas’ featured running back against Michigan, had 131 yards on 35 attempts coming into this game. He got over half that total on 11 attempts in the first half alone, with Michigan’s defense unable to control the line of scrimmage for much of the game.
The most egregious runs, however, came from Manning. On a fourth-and-1 play early in the second quarter, Manning took the direct snap out of a modified shotgun formation, rolled to the left and gained 19 yards to the Michigan 3-yard line, setting up a game-tying touchdown on the next play. He had another fourth-and-short scramble in the fourth quarter that picked up 15 yards and scored a touchdown in the third quarter on a 23-yard scramble up the middle, giving him his ninth rushing touchdown of the season.
And then to seal the game, Manning took it to the house on a 60-yard run late in the fourth quarter, looking a lot more like his dad Archie Manning than his uncles Peyton or Eli with a career-high 155 rushing yards this game.
His previous career-high in rushing? Fifty-three yards against UTSA in 2024. Yikes.
Dominic Zvada
Michigan’s kicker continued his 2025 habit of nailing the tough assignments while goofing up the easy ones.
Zvada hit a 53-yard field goal late in the first quarter to tie the game up at 3-3, bailing out Underwood after he took a bad sack to the Texas 44-yard line. But after Underwood orchestrated an eight-play, 44-yard drive with less than a minute left in the first half, Zvada yanked the 45-yard field goal wide to leave the game tied at 17-17.
Zvada had one last chance to put the worst season of his college career behind him, but like he has done all season, he couldn’t convert his undeniable leg talent into consistent production.
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You can reach Christian at cromo@freepress.com.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan winners and losers from Citrus Bowl vs Texas
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