Sherrone Moore addresses Michigan football’s drop issues, Bryce Underwood’s growth

ANN ARBOR – The Michigan Wolverines head into their first bye week of the season at 3-1 with head coach Sherrone Moore now out of the penalty box from a two-game suspension and ready to lead the team into the next quarter of the season.

A big key to where this team winds up when the dust clears will be where the passing game goes from here. Freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood is a big key to that, and he has impressed the staff with his readiness and maturity through four weeks.

“He is mature beyond his years,” Moore said on Monday. “He’s got a lot of his ability to do that, but it’s also coaching, and Chip Lindsey is doing a great job with teaching him what he needs to do, how he needs to do it. Bryce is really taking ownership of what he needs to do, and also for the staff on how we’ve created the game plans and what we’re doing to allow him to see that. So all of it takes a team, and he’s done a really good job of it, and Bryce just keeps getting better and better as the week goes, and we’ll see how much better we can get this week.”

Of course, Michigan needs to support him more. Its wide receiver group has 11 charted drops through four games, according to Pro Football Focus. Channing Goodwin and Semaj Morgan have four of them apiece, while Fredrick Moore, Justice Haynes and Marlin Klein have been credited with one each.

Moore said has it has everything to do with being more reliable as a position group.

“I think it’s consistency, being a hands catcher,” Moore said Monday. “We’re really harping on that. It’s a piece and it’s an emphasis this week on not allowing the ball to connect to your body. I think in coaching a lot, you hear it all the time, catch the ball, catch the ball. What does catch the ball mean? You’ve got to teach people how to catch the ball, whether it’s seeing the ball to the top, or whether it’s catching away from your body, whether it’s above your navel, catching it thumb to thumb, below, pinky to pinky…There are all these key coaching points, so really harping on those things to make those plays we need to, because we can and we have.

“So that’s the goal. We’ve got to continue to do that this week.”

Michigan’s offense took a step forward when Underwood started to use his legs more as a weapon two weeks ago, but Moore said his ability to do that was always built into the offense. The maturation and progress there fell on Underwood to see and make a play.

“I mean, we had plays for Bryce to use his legs in the Oklahoma game,” Moore said. “They just didn’t come up, and then we actually did call one that just got hit in the backfield. The Central Michigan game was seeing that there’s an open lane. We’ve always preached that if there’s a lane there and you can take it. You can run, but he just actually did it in that game.

“So that’s just another week of experience for a dude that’s 18 years old. So he’s just going to keep getting better and better with it.”

Michigan has re-added the explosive element back to its offense with Lindsey running the show as the coordinator, but the Oklahoma game underscored how important it was to improve its physicality. Moore likes how they have progressed there of late.

Michigan needs to catch the football and connect on the opportunities it has.

“You want to be explosive,” Moore said. “Like you guys all know, physicality piece of it is bread and butter [for Michigan]. But I want to make sure that we can impose our will on people, but also get those big plays because that’s how you win ballgames. Scoring points and possessing the football. So what it looks like is what you want.

“You want to make those plays in the passing game. [Nebraska] shouldn’t have been as close as it was if you make a couple of plays. I know Semaj is kicking himself on the double pass. It was a perfect call by Chip. And he hadn’t missed that pass for the last two months. It’s been perfect.

“And rewind to 2023, I had a double pass in for him and I never let him throw it because in practice, he’d never throw it right. But Donovan [Edwards] would always throw it right. So it was a competition between the West Bloomfield boys to see who would get the throw. And Donovan won. But in training camp the past couple weeks, just dimes, dots. I don’t want to mess with him too much, but I have to mess with him a little bit.”