Michigan Stadium, nicknamed "The Big House", is the football stadium for the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan. - Ken Lund - Wikimedia Commons

For 320 blissful days, five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood was committed to Louisiana State University.

Underwood, a six-foot-four, 210-pound Cam Newton regen from Belleville, Michigan, looked destined to be the catalyst of Brian Kelly’s bounceback in the bayou. Until he wasn’t.

Despite nearly a year of loyalty to the Tigers, Michigan—and first-year head coach Sherrone Moore—never let up. LSU’s collective reportedly tabled a four-year, $6 million NIL offer to secure Underwood’s services.

But in the new Big 10, the pockets are deeper, the checkbooks heavier. Michigan’s collective and billionaire booster, Larry Ellison, came correct with an offer reportedly in the $10 million range.

On November 21, Underwood flipped his commitment to the hometown Wolverines, altering the trajectory of two of college football’s most storied programs. With his flip, he became the highest-rated offensive commit in program history.

For so long, Michigan and its fan base have been obsessed with the concept of a Michigan Man. The term “Michigan Man” was coined by former head coach Fielding H. Yost, who led the Wolverines to four national championships in the early 1900s. The term has morphed over the years, but it is loosely defined as a man who is wholeheartedly dedicated to the University of Michigan.

Famed, now disgraced, former head coach Bo Schembechler was certainly a Michigan Man.

So too is Jim Harbaugh, who delivered the Wolverines a national title in 2023.

And, well, it appears that Underwood is now a Michigan Man, too.

But getting a Michigan Man is just part of the puzzle for the Wolverines in 2025.

Now comes the hard part: Is Underwood ready to lead a reloading roster as a true freshman? Can Sherrone Moore keep Michigan in the national title conversation without Jim Harbaugh on the sidelines? And in a new-look Big Ten—stacked with heavyweights like Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State—can this version of Michigan still set the standard?

Last season, Michigan fans endured some epicly bad quarterback play.

In 2023, the Wolverines’ offense was led by cool-in-the-clutch JJ McCarthy, who went in the first round of that year’s NFL Draft. But last year was an entirely different story.

Stuck between what it wanted to be and what it was, the offense suffered an identity crisis, and it showed on the field. For all of its deficiencies, it would be remiss not to start with the woeful quarterback play.

Supreme athlete Alex Orji began the season as the starter, but struggled to develop any semblance of a passing threat. Just how bad was he, and Michigan, at passing the football with him at the helm?

Source: Hudl IQ

Using Hudl IQ Player Radar Data, we can see that Orji was a total nothing burger when it came to passing the football. He was far below Big 10 average quarterback play in key areas like EPA/Pass, Net Yards/Pass, Yards/Completion and so much more.

He was such a non-threat as a passer that opposing defenses refused to honor any semblance of a downfield threat when he was in the game. This muddied things for the offense as a whole, allowing defenses to stack the box and key in on the run game.

Orji did some decent things with his legs, as he was an above-average Big 10 rushing quarterback. But the decent didn’t even come close to outweighing the bad, which led to Michigan and head coach Sherrone Moore turning to Davis Warren after a bad start.

Warren was much better, though, right? Right?

Wrong.

Source: Hudl IQ

Again, using Hudl IQ Player Radar Data, we can see that Warren wasn’t a whole heck of a lot better.

His completion percentage was solid and had a relatively strong Success %. But even so, the Net Yards/Pass and Chunk % was so woefully bad that it didn’t exactly mitigate the problem of teams stacking the box and refusing to honor a downfield passing threat. Even with a gifted pass-catching tight end like Colston Loveland, the Wolverines were dink and dunk at best and just outright couldn’t throw the ball at worst.

This type of astronomically bad quarterback play put a huge strain on the offense. It made the Wolverines way too one-dimensional. It made this unit overly-reliant on a good offensive line to make chicken salad out of chicken shit. And, on a very simplistic level, it severely hampered this group’s ability to score points and give its defense a break.

Frankly, with this porous of a downfield passing attack, it’s sort of a miracle that the Wolverines managed to knock off eventual national champs Ohio State or even win seven games.

This begs the question…just how much better can someone like Underwood or transfer quarterback Mikey Keene make this offense in 2025?

Even with all of the largely deserved hoopla surrounding Underwood, it feels likely that Keene will be the Week 1 starter. Keane was a solid quarterback at his previous stop, Fresno State. He was a good distributor of the football and didn’t do a ton of stuff that negatively impacted the offense.

On a very simplistic level, there’s almost no way that Keene and/or Underwood could be quite as bad as Orji/Warren? It feels harsh to say, but it’s also true. I refuse to believe that the offense could be THAT bad again.

Keene isn’t necessarily a sexy pick (especially when compared with Underwood), but he checks a lot of the boxes that Michigan, in theory, wants out of a game-managing, don’t-fuck-this-up kind of quarterback. How do I know?

Source: Hudl IQ

Using the Hudl IQ Player Comparison Tool and data from the 2024 college football season, we can see that perhaps the most comparable quarterback to Davis Warren was none other than Mikey Keene.

Keene is more accurate and creates more explosive plays, but the two players are fairly similar. It should come as no surprise that Michigan was in the market for someone like Keene, especially as a stop-gap option before Underwood is ready to rock and roll.

When will Underwood be ready? Your guess is as good as mine.

I suspect that, from the onset, Michigan will incorporate some run packages specifically for Underwood. Moore and staff would be crazy not to. Outside of that, it will likely largely depend on Keene’s performance and whether the temperature gets cranked up on Moore’s seat.

If Keene is servicable or good, I don’t see why he can’t play the majority of the season to allow Underwood to marinate a little longer. On the flip side, if Keene isn’t good enough or if the Michigan offense struggles in a high-profile, early-season game against Oklahoma, for example, well, then Moore might be tempted to hand Underwood the keys to the Maize and Blue Cadillac.

Sherrone Moore has a lot to prove entering the 2025 college football season.

Last season, Michigan failed to play up to its lofty national championship quality standards from the year prior and went just 7-5 during the regular season. But despite the letdown, Moore and company did some good things to keep themselves in good graces with the Michigan fanbase.

Chief among them, knocking off arch-rival and future national champion Ohio State. Next up, beating a close-to-full-strength Alabama team in a bowl game. Sprinkle in the big recruiting win with keeping Underwood in the state of Michigan, and, well, I think it’s fair to say the fans still feel pretty good about the trajectory of this program.

That doesn’t mean things are all rosy, though.

As part of the Connor Stallions’ advanced scouting scandal, Sherrone Moore is being suspended for two games in 2025. He has chosen to serve the suspension in Weeks 3 and 4 in games against Central Michigan and Nebraska. Moore, an Oklahoma alum, decided against serving the self-imposed suspension during the Week 2 matchup against the Sooners.

There’s also the part about, you know, winning more than seven games in a given season. I think it’s fair that Moore was cut a degree of slack last season. He was a first-time head coach. The team had lost an insane amount of talent from the title-winning season. And the Big 10 looked stacked with Ohio State, Oregon and Penn State all primed for huge seasons.

But make no bones about it, Moore’s team needs to play much better this time around. Especially with Underwood waiting in the wings, I think the offense needs to show a significant improvement from the outset.

Early, high-profile games against Oklahoma and at Nebraska should be a pretty decent barometer for what this Michigan team is ready for. If it can manage to go on the road and win both games, it’d be hard not to feel good about where this program is headed in Year 2 under Moore. If things go south, or if the team splits those two games, well, Judgement Day will have to wait until later in the season, in games at USC and against Ohio State.

For all the questions about this team, I’m not entirely sure we’ll get any major answers right away.

Early road tests against Oklahoma and Nebraska should be a litmus test to some extent. But the rest of the schedule feels manageable, meaning it might be difficult to tell just how good this team is for quite some time.

The Wolverines start the season with a gimme against New Mexico, before travelling to Norman to take on Brent Venables’ Oklahoma squad. Next up is Central Michigan before a trip to Lincoln to play Nebraska.

After that, Michigan has home games against Wisconsin, Washington, Purdue and Ohio State. Road games include matchups against USC, Michigan State, Northwestern and Maryland.

That later-season stretch of home games feels pretty nice if you’re a Michigan fan. Washington should be feisty, and we know Ohio State will be formidable. But Wisconsin and Purdue feel like guaranteed wins. Couple that with a relatively comfortable road slate, and you have the recipe for eight or nine wins at a minimum.

From where I sit, Moore has little to no excuses for this team not to be in the nine-win range and hang around in the Big 10 title race.

From what I can tell, being a Michigan Man extends far beyond the playing field. It’s how you carry yourself in the classroom. It’s how you lead your team to battle. It’s even about where you come from and what you believe in.

Sherrone Moore is notably not from Michigan, but possesses many of the qualities heralded by those who cheer for the Maize and Blue. Underwood, on the other hand, hails from Michigan soil. And if all goes to plan, he’ll be the quarterback who leads this proud program to the promised land.

Both men are now intertwined. In all likelihood, they will either succeed or fail together.

All of this begs the question: Is being a Michigan Man something you’re born as, or something you earn?

Perhaps 2025 and beyond will give us that answer.

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