Michigan Wolverines football is holding a quarterback battle that offensive coordinator Chip Lindsey said he hopes comes to a conclusion “as soon as possible.”
Freshman Bryce Underwood — the No. 1 overall recruit in the 2025 class — is the perceived favorite, but others are in the mix. Graduate Mikey Keene joined the program in January but didn’t go through spring practices due to injury, while sophomore Jadyn Davis continues to develop after receiving a lot of reps during the offseason. Graduate Jake Garcia, too, came on to the team this summer, after transferring in from East Carolina.
Jon Jansen, Michigan football’s radio analyst and a former All-American and NFL standout, shared what he’s seen from the signal-callers on his ‘In The Trenches’ podcast.
“They’re all getting great reps,” Jansen said.
He pointed out that he’s seen a trend from Underwood that was apparent in the spring game: some of his missed throws are sailed.
“A couple of the early reps, what we saw in the spring game has somewhat carried over to the beginning of fall camp, where some of the passes that I saw from Bryce were a little bit high,” Jansen said.
“But what I liked was the adjustment coming back, and the thought process of, OK, I had an open receiver, I got really excited and I tried to drill this ball in there. You know what, that’s gonna happen — but touch is the hardest thing for a quarterback to learn.
“If there’s a guy coming across the formation, hey, sometimes I gotta zip a ball in there, and I’m gonna be throwing that one at 80, 85 miles per hour. He’s just gonna have to man up and catch that ball. Other times, when you got a fade route, put a little air under it and allow your guys to run underneath it. Those are the types of things that he is doing.”
Former Michigan quarterback J.J. McCarthy had to learn to put more touch on deep passes throughout his career, for example, and even talked in a recent Minnesota Vikings press conference about how layering the ball in with proper loft is still something he’s heavily focused on.
“It’s never the same mistake twice. There are new mistakes to be made. I made mistakes up until my final year, and then there were so many that they said, ‘We don’t want you back,’” Jansen joked. “They’re going to continue to make mistakes, but they need to be new mistakes. They need to learn from those, and that’s what I’m seeing from Bryce, is there are always gonna be new mistakes, there are new defenses.
“[Michigan defensive coordinator] Wink [Martindale] is gonna throw everything at you, and you’re not gonna see anything more from other defenses than what you see from Wink at practice. That’s one of the great things about practicing against this defense and where they are.”
The timing and cohesion with the Michigan receivers is getting better, Jansen said.
“I like the relationship that he’s building with these receivers, the chemistry that he’s building,” Jansen explained. And it’s really the same thing with Mikey Keene.”
Keene is a 5-foot-11, 200-pounder that doesn’t possess the tantalizing physical traits that Underwood does, but he has the edge in experience. He’s opened 34 games at the college level, played under Lindsey at Central Florida in 2022 and even started at The Big House in the 2024 season-opener.
“Mikey Keene has got a lot of snaps under his belt, and you can tell the difference when he is on the field,” Jansen said.
“If you’ve ever been on the field with a young quarterback and been on the field with a guy that has done it for four years, there’s just a different confidence that they walk around with. It’s not necessarily a bad thing for Bryce; it’s just different.
“[Keene is] very calm, cool, collected. There are just some things that Bryce can do that he can’t do. And there are some things that he can do because he is calm that he sees because he’s seen it 100 times or 1,000 times. So, both of those guys look really good. I like the fact that we’ve got two quarterbacks.
“And I’ll throw Jadyn Davis in there, as well, still working on his release and his throwing motion, but he’s got a gun for an arm.
“At that position, you’re gonna need at least two, if not three, quarterbacks to run the table in the Big Ten and the college football season and the College Football Playoff. I have a lot of confidence in all three of those guys that, if they are in there, they’re gonna get the job done.”
Michigan wide receivers stepping up
Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore compared graduate Indiana transfer wideout Donaven McCulley to Nico Collins, the former U-M receiver who’s now one of the best players at his position in the NFL with the Houston Texans. The comparison stems from being a bigger body who can come down with contested catches, and Jansen sees the same thing.
“Donaven McCulley — the comparison that was made between him and Nico Collins is certainly there,” Jansen noted. “Now what I need to see from him is a little bit more aggression at the top of some of those passes, where we’re talking about those 50-50 balls.
“I’ll go back to the Iowa game in [2019], when it was Nico Collins. There was a play over the middle; he goes up and attacks the ball. Those are the types of things that those guys are working on, and he has that in his skill set and have seen it. Need to see it every single time.”
Junior Fredrick Moore, meanwhile, has bulked up, adding 10 pounds, since his breakout performance that included a contested catch for a touchdown in the 19-13 victory over Alabama to cap off the 2024 campaign.
“Fred Moore — the speed is there,” Jansen said of the Michigan wideout. “That’s the guy that I think is gonna be the deep threat, and really excited from what I’ve seen from him.
“Even [junior] Semaj Morgan, I talked about him being more of a universal tool of guys going back and forth and some reverses and some wide receiver screens. He’ll excel at those, but I really like the adjustments he’s made to some of his routes. They’re much crisper, much cleaner, and the route combinations … I could talk all day about what I’m seeing from this offense.”
When it came to the defense, Jansen didn’t have as much to say, because less of the question marks are on Martindale’s side of the ball. Noting he’ll hone in on them more as camp goes on, Jansen shared a couple observations.
“[Senior defensive back] Zeke Berry, as advertised. He’s having a great camp,” Jansen said.
“Defensive line — those guys are going to be spring chickens, fresh as daisies, because there are so many guys that are gonna be productive up front. They’re rotating those guys through, getting lots of reps for all of those defensive linemen, the linebackers.”
