Eric Weddle was in the San Diego airport, awaiting a flight to Utah that had been delayed hours on Saturday, Oct. 17.
His son, Gaige, had booked a recruiting visit to BYU, which was hosting Notre Dame in a marquee top-ten matchup. Weddle, the former All-Pro safety, had some time to kill, so he decided to pull up another college game, Michigan football versus Penn State, on his phone.
The Wolverines’ offense was sputtering, failing to score a single point and netting just 80 yards during the first two quarters. In desperate need of a spark, Michigan coach Kyle Whittingham benched starting quarterback Bryce Underwood at halftime and replaced him with Tommy Carr. The true freshman then helped engineer three scoring drives, leading Michigan to a 21-18
victory.
About 2,000 miles away from Ann Arbor, Weddle typed out a four-word social media post on X (formerly Twitter) – "Michigan fans….. Your [sic] welcome!" – to alert everyone that he had been vindicated.
Michigan fans..... Your welcome!
— Eric Weddle (@weddlesbeard) October 17, 2026
“I ended up being right,” he told the Free Press during a phone interview on Monday, Oct. 19.
He sure was. Almost five months ago, back in May, Weddle predicted that the Wolverines would make a quarterback switch during an appearance on the “Zero 2 Sixty” podcast.
“Don’t be surprised if the backup is playing early because that Underwood kid, you know, I don’t think he could throw or play quarterback,” Weddle said then.
Weddle had seen Underwood up close in practice during early April, when he brought Gaige, a four-star safety, on a visit to Ann Arbor. The Wolverines had offered Gaige a scholarship soon after Whittingham took over in December, which wasn’t surprising considering 41-year-old Eric had once played at Utah under Michigan’s new coach. As Eric watched Underwood, he noticed that the rising sophomore, ranked the No. 1 overall high school player in the 2025 class, couldn’t consistently deliver simple, rhythm-based passes.
Weddle also saw that Underwood would frequently bail from the pocket and run in seven-on-seven drills that were set up for him to throw the ball. The red flags were obvious to someone who, during his playing days, studied quarterbacks for a living so he could expose their weaknesses and stop them. Given his accomplishments at the NFL level, Weddle’s comments carried weight. But many Michigan fans didn’t want to hear them, even after they saw Underwood complete just three of nine attempts for 22 yards during his one-quarter cameo in the Maize vs. Blue game.
They still wanted to believe in Underwood, who was seen as a program savior when he arrived on campus the previous year. The maize-and-blue supporters were outraged at Weddle as a result, which didn’t necessarily surprise him.
“Fans are crazy,” he said.
But he was taken aback after he realized Whittingham and his staff – with the exception of defensive assistant Lewis Powell, a former teammate at Utah – cut off contact with him and stopped recruiting Gaige. It was more difficult to understand considering the relationships he had developed over the years with multiple Michigan coaches. Weddle’s critique of Underwood seemed to come at a personal cost.
Still, he said, “I don’t take back anything. I don’t regret anything.”
He also isn’t celebrating that he was spot-on with his prognostication about Underwood.
“I’m not happy that he got benched,” he said. “But I saw what I saw, and the truth hurts. I don’t know what else to say. I don’t like being right. But if I saw something egregious from the quarterback position, don’t be mad because I pointed it out.”
Up until Saturday, Underwood had the agency to make Weddle eat his words. But he didn’t. He showed little improvement from his underwhelming freshman year, and his raw numbers over the first six games indicated he actually regressed this season. His completion percentage and passer rating were both a tick lower. His touchdown-to-interception ratio was also worse. In a scheme that heavily relied on RPOs and zone-read runs, Underwood struggled to make the right decisions quickly enough. Largely because he wasn’t a smooth operator of the offense, the Wolverines failed to score 20 points in four of their first five games.
In just two quarters, Carr helped Michigan surpass that total against the Nittany Lions.
“We saw good stuff out of Tommy in that second half, and we know exactly what we’re doing and the plan going forward,” Whittingham said Monday.
But he wouldn’t reveal whether Carr would supplant Underwood as the starter, even though that seems to be the likeliest scenario given what transpired Saturday.
Unlike Underwood, Carr was efficient. He completed five of seven pass attempts for 47 yards and gained 36 more on the ground, scoring a touchdown on one of his four carries. The offense he directed appeared more functional, too.
“He looked comfortable,” Weddle said. “He looked like a quarterback, a natural feel of a quarterback. I think that stuff – you either have it or you don’t. … You know how to slide and buy a split-second to get the ball out in a second-level throw. Just like those little intricacies of a quarterback, you kind of saw a little bit of that. It was just a short glimpse.”
Still, it was enough to make a favorable impression on Weddle.
Back in the spring, Carr wasn’t really on his radar. Underwood took the vast majority of reps during that lone practice he watched with his son. While he was aware Michigan’s coaches had praised Carr after he outshined Underwood in the spring game, Weddle had no expectations for Michigan’s freshman quarterback entering this season. All he knew was that Underwood didn’t have what it takes to lead Michigan very far.
“What I saw wasn’t good enough,” he said. “And so it ultimately came true.”
He takes no satisfaction from that.
“I don’t need to be proven right,” he said.
But he was. He just wishes, in retrospect, that there had been no price to pay for a prophecy that ended up being correct.
Contact Rainer Sabin at rsabin@freepress.com. Follow him @RainerSabin on X.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Meet the ex-NFL star who forecast Bryce Underwood benching months ago
