There was a lot of fall camp talk that quarterback Bryce Underwood had turned the corner. However, in the Michigan football season opener against Western Michigan, that looked accurate for about one drive and one play. Outside of that, much of the same in terms of bad habits came roaring back, with Underwood making poor decisions, escaping the pocket when he still had time (though the offensive line did struggle on Saturday), and throwing off his back foot.
On Monday, head coach Kyle Whittingham asserted that Underwood still has the starting job, but also noted that he can lose it and that the Wolverines could move on to someone else. However, he also says that the game struggles don't fall entirely at Underwood's feet, either.
"He's our QB right
now, and it's not something that's infinite," Whittingham said. "At some point, we've got to turn a corner, and we've got to see improvement. As we do with a bunch of stuff, we've got to see improvement out of the coaches.
"And so it's not just on Bryce, and it's not just Bryce's job that he's not absolutely set and conquering. Nobody says that. We've got to perform week in and week out, and become somebody that we feel like is playing at a level that we can win with. And that goes far beyond Bryce. It goes throughout the whole team. And so it's what you've done lately has been very important in football."
As far as what Underwood could or should have done, there were a lot of things that Whittingham would have liked to have seen him do better at. He shared some of what he saw when he went back to watch the film, noting that there are many things that need to be fixed.
"We left a few things out there in both the run game and the throw game," Whittingham said. "The right read, the QB run read aspect of it, weren't quite as sharp as we need to be. And we did have some things in the throw game that we could have had more production. And so that's an ongoing process. He won his first game, live game, in a Jason Beck offense. So we're very confident that he'll continue to grow."
Whittingham had said on the Big Ten Network's camp preview that Underwood had been graded as an A-plus during camp, so for him to come out as he had -- he went 12-for-22 for 170 yards, with a touchdown and an interception; and he ran nine times for 47 yards with a touchdown and a lost fumble -- was not the type of stat line that Whittingham had hoped to see.
"It is unfortunate and disappointing, because we see him every day, and he's been very sharp all through fall camp," Whittingham said. "And so I don't have a great explanation right now other than we hope to see improvement between game one and game two in the live action. And there's nobody, as I've said many times, that wants to be great more so than Bryce. And so we just gotta keep going down that road and hope for improvement. We've got to do things coaching-wise to help him be more successful. And we learned a lot; we're not gonna share that game plan, that type of stuff. But we learned a lot in this past game -- going forward, what we need to do."
Underwood will have to improve in a hurry, as Oklahoma comes to town for a noon EDT kickoff on Saturday at The Big House.
This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Kyle Whittingham puts Bryce Underwood on notice after shaky opener
