'Let your players play': Michigan QB Bryce Underwood has 'green light to do whatever he wants'

Michigan Wolverines football was reluctant to run freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood in the first two games but called 3 designed rushes and saw him scramble 6 other times in the 63-3 win over Central Michigan last week. It was a conscious decision by the coaching staff to let him loose more following the 24-13 loss to Oklahoma.

At his press conference last Monday, head coach Sherrone Moore said Michigan would run Underwood “at some point,” but that “you run your quarterback, you better have two.”

Nothing changed between then and Saturday, though, when Underwood led the Wolverines with 114 rushing yards and 2 touchdown runs, interim head coach Biff Poggi said this week.

“I think, look, you start learning about your team,” Poggi said. “It takes a while to learn about your team, when you transition from spring ball to fall camp. You really start learning the most when the games are played.

“And what we’re learning is that coaches don’t win games, plays don’t win games. Players win games. You have to let your players play. So, we’re letting them play — all of them.”

Against the Chippewas, Underwood was sensational, completing 16 of his 25 passes for 235 yards and a score, while also impacting the game with his legs.

Michigan opens up Big Ten play against Nebraska Saturday in Lincoln, and the Wolverines are going to let Underwood use his full skill set once again.

“He’s got a green light to do whatever he wants, because he’s one of the great playmakers, I think, in the country,” Poggi said.

The Michigan staffer was asked if they coach Underwood to slide and get out of bounds.

“You can coach competitors to slide, and it’s good that they do, [but] this kid’s a football player,” he noted. “If we could hit stop and everything would stop, we’d run out on the field and get him down, but we can’t. So, he’s going to finish those runs.”

Underwood completed only 38 percent of his passes in Michigan’s loss at Oklahoma. The Wolverines will face a similarly tough road environment this weekend, but Underwood has already experienced one in his first three games, so there were lessons learned.

“Everything stacks, doesn’t it?” Poggi noted. “I don’t know if there’s a harder place to play than Nebraska. The fans are very loud, the stadium is loud, very raucous. They’ll obviously be very excited.

“And what Bryce has to learn — and I think Bryce learned this — is just be Bryce. You’re not playing against the stadium. They got 11, we got 11 — and everything else is just noise.”

Biff Poggi is Sherrone Moore’s ‘caddy’

While Moore won’t be inside Schembechler Hall this week or amidst the noise at Memorial Stadium Saturday, his fingerprints will be all over the game plan, because he got ahead on preparing for the Cornhuskers last week, before his two-game suspension began.

“He, before he left, gave us a strict menu of what he wants to see. Think of him as [professional golfer] Tiger Woods, and I’m the old guy with a fluffly mustache caddying for him, so we’re going to keep it the way he wants it.”