Michigan football hesitant to run Bryce Underwood, but looking to build on deep passes

ANN ARBOR – The Michigan Wolverines‘ offense is still searching for its identity heading into the third week of the season. Even with a new offensive coordinator in Chip Lindsey and a blue chip quarterback in freshman Bryce Underwood, Saturday’s 24-13 loss at Oklahoma was a sign that they aren’t where they want to be yet.

Not only that, but it had a conservative, uncertain undertone. It was Underwood’s first road start, and Michigan is still trying to empower him while protecting him for the long haul.

“I think you [try] find the right balance all the time,” Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore said on Monday. “You have to continue to work to be perfect at that. And we look at everything, every single game, to see, whether you win a game by 30, or you lose a game by eight or nine, whatever it is, you’re always looking to get better. So I think there’s a piece where we’ll be more aggressive in every phase to help ourselves, but we’re not really going be protecting anybody.

“We want to protect the quarterback, but as far as the guys when we put them on the field, we trust them to do their job. So we have to continue to just put them in great positions to do that.”

Michigan wants Underwood to make plays and be smart under center, but says there will be a time that he is unleashed as a dual-threat. But still, Moore wants to make sure he is not putting Underwood in harm’s way.

We will [run Underwood] at some point,” Moore said. “But you run your quarterback, you better have two [of them]. And I’ve always believed that. We even did that with JJ [McCarthy]. JJ wanted to run every game. And I was like, ‘No, you’re gonna get hit, you’re gonna get hurt.’ I think there are parts of that we tried to do in [at Oklahoma], they just were pretty good at not letting us, because they didn’t want him to run. And I think there are ways we can get him to run in different ways and make sure he’s protected. So we’ll work that as we go game by game and have a strategy for that.”

Underwood might also go hand-in-hand with having a quarterback they trust ready to play, too. Grad transfer Mikey Keene is still on the mend from an offseason injury and working his way back into the mix, but sophomore Jadyn Davis remains QB2. Jake Garcia has been the third quarterback in throwing drills during pregame warmups.

“Mikey’s doing really good,” Moore said. “He’s been practicing, doing all the throws. He’s actually worked a lot on offense, and then he worked as a scout team guy to help out with books. So he’s full go, ready to go.”

An area Michigan is still looking to get going is its downfield passing game. It achieved its first 40-plus yard passing play since 2023 on Saturday in a 44-yard jump ball from Underwood to wideout Donavan McCulley, who was added for moments like that.

Now, they hope they can feature it more.

“Let’s continue to do it, do it even more,” Moore said. “We will continue to implement that, and implement him, Channing [Goodwin] and Semaj [Morgan] as much as we can. And Andrew Marsh. Guys like that, we need to keep putting them in a position to be successful and do different things to do that. So we’ll definitely keep adding that to the attack.”