CHICAGO - Kyle Whittingham has spent a long time around college football, long enough to know what never changes. A team still has to run the ball, defend with some unpredictability, protect the football and avoid the kind of mistakes that beat you before the other side does.
What feels different now is the quarterback at the center of it all.
As Michigan prepares for another season, Whittingham said Thursday at Big Ten football media days that Bryce Underwood is the player who can tilt everything. And for a coach entering his 22nd season leading a college program - after 21 straight years at Utah and 32 total including his time as the Utes’ defensive coordinator - that makes this a new kind of challenge.
“Quarterback is hands down the most important position − in all sports,” Whittingham said, sitting at a dais in the international ballroom in the Hilton Chicago. “If you got a good one, you get a chance to be really effective.”
Michigan thinks it has one. But Underwood’s first season didn’t look the way anyone around the program hoped it would.
The freshman posted a 60.3% completion rate, threw for less than 2,500 yards, and finished with 11 touchdown passes and nine interceptions. Whittingham said the numbers weren’t what bothered him most when the team got to work in the spring.
“He was not nearly as fundamentally sound as he needed to be,” Whittingham said.
So Michigan spent the offseason building support around him. Underwood worked with QB guru Jordan Palmer in California, and during one of those sessions he was alongside Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow, a three-time Pro Bowl pick. Underwood said Thursday it was “insane” to watch Burrow up close, and he admired how “relaxed” he looked and how everything seemed “effortless.”
The Wolverines also brought in Koy Detmer Jr. as quarterbacks coach. Underwood called that “amazing” and said the two have already started picking each other’s brains so they can stay on the same page with every play and decision.
Then there’s offensive coordinator Jason Beck, who arrives after one season working under Whittingham at Utah. Underwood said he has been studying Beck’s offenses at Virginia, Syracuse, New Mexico and Utah to “see how he took advantage” of each game and matchup.
That kind of structure might be exactly what Underwood needs after a year in which, by his own team’s view, the direction wasn’t always clear enough. Whittingham doesn’t think Michigan has gone too far the other way.
“You [can] get too many cooks in the kitchen. ... Go overboard and have six different guys in his ear telling him different things,” Whittingham said.
“I think we've struck a good balance in how to handle Bryce right now. We'll find out in fall camp.”
Underwood’s personality brings another layer. He has never been shy about his confidence, and he hasn’t backed away from the bold things he has said along the way.
Before his first college game, he told Big Ten Network, “Nobody’s seen a freshman like me” and told national radio host Rich Eisen that he wouldn’t lose to Ohio State during his time in Ann Arbor. He’s already 0-for-1 there.
He has also talked about winning a Heisman and multiple national championships, and earlier this offseason at his camp in Saline, he said he wants to prove he’s the best player to ever come out of “the state of Michigan.”
That kind of spotlight comes with the territory when you’re the quarterback at Michigan and the highest rated recruit ever to commit to the program. Underwood leaned into that again Thursday, saying, “I don't regret nothing I said.”
Whittingham doesn’t mind the confidence, even if he’d prefer the pressure not pile up quite so heavily.
“I think you want your quarterback to be confident, and if you know that's his belief, that's great,” Whittingham said. “I have no problem with that ... [but it] may be his best interest maybe to not put that pressure on himself in that way.”
Running back Jordan Marshall backed the swagger, saying he’d want any quarterback he played with to have that kind of belief because the game so often comes down to what happens with the ball in the biggest moments.
“Who wants that guy that says 'I'm OK, I'm getting better'?” Marshall asked rhetorically. “You have to have that confidence and when you have that confidence, it's someone you can lean on when it's fourth-and-1, when it's the fourth quarter and there's two minutes left.”
That’s the job waiting for Underwood now. He said Thursday that his work with Palmer has centered on “simplifying” the game and shortening his steps with his footwork in the pocket.
Whittingham knows that sort of cleanup matters as much as anything else on Michigan’s roster.
Asked what he’d most like to see from any position when fall camp opens next week, he went straight to the passing game.
“I'd say getting the throw game more dialed in, more consistent,” Whittingham said. “Bryce trusting his offensive line more, going through his progression in a manner that, you know, we can speed things up a little bit. ... Quarterback has got to have a clock in head as he's going through his progression that [goes] 'Hey, it's about time to either make the throw or get the heck out of here.'
“I'd like to see that be cleaned up and us become more efficient in that regard.”
If Underwood does that, Michigan has the kind of quarterback Whittingham says can change everything.
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