Blue By Ninety - Rise to the Victors: Bryce Pressure

Episode Date: September 10, 2026

The conversation around Bryce Underwood changed quickly after Michigan's season opener — and Saturday against Oklahoma could change it all over again.Welcome to Rise to the Victors, your daily start with Michigan sports on the Blue By 90 network with Trevor McCue and Darnell Porter.Today, Trevor and Darnell take a closer look at Underwood following Michigan's uneven offensive performance against Western Michigan and the pressure surrounding the sophomore quarterback entering a much bigger test against Oklahoma.Kyle Whittingham made headlines with his comments about Underwood's job security and the need to see improvement. Underwood had his own response. Urban Meyer has weighed in on the situation as well. But how much of this conversation is fair to a quarterback who is still only one game into a new offense?We break down what actually went wrong against Western, the context surrounding Underwood's development, what Michigan needs to do to help him and why Saturday against Oklahoma feels like a major moment — without turning one September game into a final verdict on Bryce Underwood.〽️ Rise to the Victors🎙️ Trevor McCue & Darnell Porter📅 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday⏰ 10:30 a.m.📺 On the Blue By 90 network

All right, welcome in, Rise to the Victors on the Blue By 90 Podcast Network. I'm Trevor McHugh here with Darnell Porter. We might have to change the show name to have lunch with the Victor's. Yeah, lunch, sometimes dinner. Yeah. Just depends on, you know, probably. We have not been rising. Look at me.

I don't even have the right banner up. Just killing it today. Appreciate you guys hopping in. Where is it? Oh, no. Well, that's too bad. Looks like our regular one got deleted. So we go in old school here. Just go all blue, I guess.

That's weird. Anyway, we're going to get into it. What a start. We're going to get into it. I think the topic is obvious. It has been all week. But Bryce, well, other than the Hail Mary clock nonsense that has existed, right? Bryce Underwood and the conversation.

and the conversation around him, how we got here, what some of the comments have been, and then the pressure that exists now in this Oklahoma football game. Obviously, you know, the Western game, you know, outside of the opening drive in the Hail Mary touchdown, Bryce finishes 12 for 22, 170 yards, touchdown, the interception, lost that fumble on the run that I kind of keep forgetting about. But that was a, that was a brutal play too because it felt like some momentum. and, again, fumble for just simply not protecting it. So statistically, analytically, not a good day for Bryce, obviously.

And then you've got Kyle Whittingham coming out, which again, I don't think you have to read into stuff. I thought Bryce, or excuse me, Wittingham's complete comments were clear. He's not going to sit there and baby Bryce and pretend that, you know, Bryce is guaranteed starting no matter what. He said, no starting job is infinite. He went on to say nobody at Michigan. Right? Coaches included. Nobody's got a permanent job if we don't see development, if we don't see progress,

if we don't see ways of winning football games. But yeah, he's our QB right now. It's not something that's infinite, obviously trended like crazy. And then Bryce had his response, et cetera. So Dernel, it's Thursday. The Bryce conversation now is quickly after this one performance gone, a whole bunch of directions. But I guess how are you feeling about some of the,

of the stuff that's led us to hear before we get to the Oklahoma part of the conversation. So I know we got a little bit of time and I can see him hours. Kind of like how you and Boudros perfectly sits there and, you know, go back and forth and I enjoy watching you guys every Wednesday. Thank you. Here's where I am with it. And I'll try to keep this as short but as concise as possible. Let me first say this.

So if you guys, and when I'm saying you guys, I'm talking about all the people that are live in the chat, all the people that go back and watch, if you guys don't think that Wittingham sat down with Bryce between the time he got on that podium and made that statement, and after that game, well, I don't have much, hope and how you look at this situation. I think Woodingham had a real honest conversation with Bryce and said,

hey, look, probably was Sunday, right? Hey, look, you can't continue to play like this because if you do, we're going to have to look in other directions because your, your negative play is hurting the team overall. Bryce being a captain probably understood while it didn't. feel good to hear that, he probably understood like, man, coach is right. I got to play better. So Whittingham does with, I think some people disagree with. I know that there's people split on this. Some people say Wittingham shouldn't have said it. Doesn't involve confidence in

your quarterback. Some people say it Wittingham should have said it. But if I've already had a conversation with the quarterback and he knows that I'm confident in him, it doesn't really matter. And like you said, Trevor, he didn't just call out Bryce. He said, no, coaches too. Right. And so everybody's being held accountable. And then all of a sudden, Bryce gets put up there. Not only knock that I will say.

And I know me and Trevor, we kind of talked about this on our pre-show yesterday night when it was going over kind of notes for the show, is I wish Michigan would have helped Bryce. navigate that question better because they had to know the question was coming. They've been around Michigan media enough to know that that question is going to be served up to Bryce. Could Bryce have could even answer it a lot better? Possibly, but you gave me a different outlook yesterday, Trey. We don't know if Michigan told them like answer it in that way, but maybe not in that way.

If that makes sense. Like, yeah, I just don't want anybody thinking there wasn't conversation before. I know some of the people involved with Michigan's PR and in those situations. And they're phenomenal at their job. Like, nobody was rolling the starting quarterback out there with, like, good luck, buddy. Like, that didn't happen, you know. Yeah. So I don't know what that means in terms of how he answered.

I'm not going to pretend. Yeah, I'm pretty sure he could have still answered it not so non-committal. But then again, you gave me another aspect. And I want people to look at this from a, don't look at it from how old you are currently. I want you to go back in time. I don't know how long it's going to take some of you. Some people might take a couple years for me and Trevor, we're a little bit older. It takes us a lot of years.

right track yeah we we got to get on the the the harry potter hoggwards train and right i want you to think about wow yeah i want you to think about how polish of a person you was at 18 19 don't think about that he making whatever he's making i want you to think about the maturity level and who you was at 18 or 19 i personally i won't speak for everybody that's watching i won't speak for trevor but I know I personally may have said some things where in the moment I'm a little bit emotional, I'm a little bit upset, and knee-jerk reaction, I'm like, yeah, this is the right thing to say. And then friends, family, my father comes back to me, say, hey son, you could have handled that better. I understand you're upset and you're dealing with your emotions, but you could have handled it a lot better.

it's a part of learning and growing up. If Bryce was, uh, since my boy's playing a day, if I heard this for Matthew Stafford, I would feel like, what the hell is, damn,

he's 40 years old. What are you doing? 19, 19 years old, you can clearly see he's a little bit flustered. You also could clearly see something that Trevor pointed out to me that makes a lot of sense too.

He probably don't like nobody in the room. Right? These are his biggest, these are his biggest critics i don't know a person that walks into a room full of their critics and there's just everything is awesome rose petals and sunshine pumping right oh someone got a little bit perturbed look at marshawn lynch when he used to get irritated with the with the media he could have done that hey man i'm just here so i can do do my my media so i can get paid i'm just here so I can do my media duties with Michigan.

God, I love Marshaun. And that's been his own, and that been his response to every question. He didn't do that. Yeah, you have, and I don't want people to take this or listen and be like, yeah, but he, you know, you're giving him a pass. No, he absolutely should have answered that question better. But I'll ask you this, and I'm going to shut up, Treyf,

but everybody that's listening. If your boss, because we're going to now take it all the, football we gonna go to everybody's everyday life if your boss went to his boss and threw you under the bus for your performance right and then your boss I mean his but your boss's boss walks in right after you just got thrown under the bus and says well what do you think about that you probably going be a little third like yeah all right it is it's it's in the motion you probably don't even want to answer the question.

And that's what it seemed like. It seemed like he was trying to dodge the question. It was kind of like, yeah, that's cool. And then the reporter followed up, and he kind of hit him back with it. Like, I said, that's cool. Like, I'm not going to, if I say something and I say, oh, I have the utmost confidence in myself that I'm going to play well,

and then I play bad again on Saturday, then I'm going to get clipped for that. If I say, like, there was really no real, answer other than I got to play better. And I feel like later on in that interview, he said, I have the utmost confidence in myself that I can play at the level that I need to play in order for this to be right. So I'm okay with the Michigan fans. I'm not calling the Michigan fans out that's upset. You have every right to be upset. I'm not telling you how to feel about what Bryce said. I'm just telling you that look at this from the lens of an 18, 19-year-old and not from somebody that you would expect that's in their late 20s that is a little bit more polished at life.

That's all. He's going to make mistakes. My gut reaction was probably the same as everybody's. I was like, ooh, you know, I didn't like it at first either. But then I sit down for a little bit and, you know, I think there's a lot of things at play. One, I don't think there was a right answer. no matter what he would have said it wouldn't have been right. You know, he did go on to say or he did say that he knows he made mistakes in the game.

He's not, he's not happy. I say that all the time, too. I try to stress to fans, like, I promise you, you're not more mad than the players and the coaches. You know what I mean? Like, you don't care more than them. I promise you that's the case. And I understand fans, men, are invested more than they've ever been in sports in a good way because of how much you know about sports and how much you,

listen and follow along with your team. And literally financially, it's never been more expensive to be a sports fan than it is today. So, like, it's tough when you are so invested and it doesn't go the way you hope. So I get it. I think, like you said, like I got, I got some hardball vibes, too, man. We're like, Jim, the duality of non-press conference, Jim, and how nice he would be to you. And talk to you about your family and just the coolest, nicest guy in the world. to gym at that podium where I think he probably felt like, you know,

like annoyed by the process because he knows no matter what I say, you're going to make it what you want to make it. And you guys are asking me questions about ball and you don't know ball like I know ball. You know what I mean? Like I think there's a nod ball to all the element to it too. But Bryce spent this entire off season. everything he said

every interview he went on he saw this one little part get taken out and turned into something else or this wasn't the right answer and he's probably exhausted by it and to your point you kind of touched on this I'll go another level with it

I thought that's cool the second one and the first time I watched it I didn't feel like it I could tell he was annoyed with the reporter and that was almost more directed at the reporter than it was to the question itself, right? That was more like, I'm not talking about it.

Right? Like, that was his way of being like, it's cool. Like, this is all I'm giving you, move on. You know what I mean? Like, and again, to your point, if you don't think Whittingham and Bryce have talked and play, like he mentioned the six specific plays, like there was nothing shocking there.

I don't know if he actually didn't see the comments or not. I know he's pretty much ghost on social media because of how things have turned on there in the last year or so too. But like, I think when you're winning and playing well and whatever, people don't care about this stuff and they don't nitpick it in little detail. And I think when you're coming off a game where you underperformed and won with a Hill Mary that's been deemed controversial and you had one of your worst games, no matter

what you do, you're going to be under a microscope. And that's a tough place to be to your point when you're, you know, 18, 19 year old quarterback. And like, there's other things. Bryce is different. He's not J.J. McCarthy in terms of how he handles press conferences. And, you know, Bill Belichick with his media stuff, everybody thinks that Marchion Lynch, you brought it up. It's all funny until what, right? There's another instance.

So I'm trying not to overreact to it too much, Darnow, because at the end of the day, if he goes out and plays really well against Oklahoma and wins, I don't give a crap about that press conference. I only care based on the results of the game. So realistically, all I care about is how he plays. Because if that's going to dictate how I feel about what he said previously, that I don't really care about what he said, right? Yeah. And I mean, I know somebody posted two things I want to highlight.

And then we can kind of move around because I know you didn't want to harp on it. But two things I want to post because I saw somebody post this. Somebody said, oh, he's not JJ McCarthy. and they posted the press conference of the TCU game. And what I want people to understand is in the TCU game, they had just lost a big game. They were disappointed. And I commend JJ for what JJ said.

But nothing in that press conference was nobody was asking JJ, hey, you didn't play up to your ability. You threw some picks out there. Jim just spoke on the press. conference and said, you know, your, your position as starter next year is up for grabs. How do you feel about that? Right. That wasn't the type of question he was asked.

He was given raw emotion after a loss, and he basically said, I vow to be better, we're going to be back. That's a different type of question. And I just want people to understand the human element of it. like you're never going to be happy and jolly or even not like a little bit noncombative when somebody is questioning your position or your job right and like I said I see the person in the in the chat that he was saying he almost lost the playoffs and he was like Bryce almost lost to Western Michigan. What we're basically saying

and somebody was comparing like, why can't Bryce be like JJ in that moment? And all I'm saying is there is two different moments. JJ is having wrong emotion after losing a playoff game. And this person, Bryce is having an emotion of somebody asked them how you feel

about losing this job. And I don't know anybody, football or not, I don't know anybody that if somebody's asking you about your job security, you're just going to be happy. And like I said, to the person in the chat, we're not saying price. Well, and hold on this is again the context, bro. How he said it.

JJ was mocked for comments in that press conference. JJ was mocked for standing on the field afterwards and saying we're going to be back and blah, blah, blah. JJ was given the chance to come back in 2023 and win a national championship. So the context of that stuff changes, right? That's my point. And I think, too, a player is going to mirror their head. head coach j jay was a little jim man he really was like the way the way he spoke and the phrases he used it was crazy he was just this little jim harbawall i love like him stating on the sideline too

with the hands on the knees looking like a little jim harbawall i also just think jay j's a little bit more polished because jay jay just had the same controversy going on we haven't heard from him now because he's yeah he's qb3 for the viking now right yeah he's q b3 but everybody goes through some shit man but kiley murray's response to sharing reps with j jay jay everybody got on Cala Murray. Like, how dare you be upset that you got to share reps with JJ? JJ kind of took the approach like, hey, I'm just here. So, I mean, you can tell that JJ actually is a more polished person when to come to that anywhere. Well, and that was the point I was going to make, too. Like, I can tell people that have

never seen a Bryce Underwood Press conference before, before, excuse me. This wasn't a different Bryce. That would be more, like, shocking to me, right? A2 fan, you're kind of on the right to spot like oh jj answered questions bryce never answers questions like this is just kind of how he's always been he's never been a great quote at press conferences right um and again i'm not gonna put words in the kid's mouth or try and guess i don't i don't know if he's not comfortable if he doesn't like it if he's like jim and has some feel i don't know but he like that that's how he always kind of is good or bad you decide again everybody's going to say bad if you hate the kid right now and think there's no chance he gets better and blah blah right like that's gonna it's kind of like to me

like text messages. And again, I'm not, I'm fine. Everybody can have the opinion they have and whatever. And I'm not trying to change your mind on anything. I always laugh because sometimes like my wife will get a text message from somebody and be like, can you believe she said this and she reads it, blah, blah, blah. And I'm like, well, when you put that crazy angry tone on it, yeah, she does sound rude. You know what I mean?

And I know it's not the same because literally he's speaking and he has body language, right? So like, yeah. I get there's more context than a text message. The context is everything else going around it, right? Bryce hearing this pressure and, you know, everything else and dealing with the reporter asking him about that little snippet of Whittingham's and he's sitting there thinking, and you don't know what Whittingham and I have talked about. Yes, perception is reality.

I agree. I say this all the time. I'm a big dude on especially with sports narratives and perception drives everything. It's a tough deal. And I'll just say this. Everybody deals with emotions differently. I promise you, 85% of the people

if they came out of a fucking performance review at their everyday job and their boss just threw them under the bus and then their boss's boss asked them, how did they feel about it? They wouldn't give this political answer. Like, oh, well, that just means, director, I have to do better.

No, they blow the hell up. They'd be like, and who's this? Like, what are you talking about? Like, it's an emotional thing. Some people deal with it better than others. I'm still not saying he answered. I was one of the first people to say, I didn't like the way he answered the question. No, I agree.

That was my gut reaction. I was also one of the first people that said, I don't know how Michigan allowed him to get up there on the podium and not be more polished and ready for a question that we knew what's coming. Right? We know they're going to ask that question. So how was it that that's the one thing we would have rehearsed if I'm PR for Michigan. It's like, hey, they're going to ask you this. What is your thoughts on that, right?

All right, give me your answer. Okay, no, that ain't going to fly. We got to come up with something a little bit more. You know what I'm saying? But maybe they just was like, hey, answer how you feel? We don't know those type of question. Michigan has one of the best PR teams in the nation. right that guy been there for quite some time so he's good i think that there's definitely something

that he can definitely learn from um but enough on the brice thing because i know we'll talk about this till we we blew in the face as far as his comments uh i wanted to get too real and i want to you usually lead in the trip but i'm gonna toss it up to you and then you can kind of give your thoughts i want to talk about the urban mire comments right because urban in Wittingham is like Master Yoda in

right Urban looks at Whittingham is like his true one of his true mentees right Ben Wool was at him

at Utah left him in Utah he goes to Florida and I thought Urban has some interesting comments to say so I'll let you

kind of tossed it up for the people in case they didn't get a chance to read it, read the article. But I thought it was kind of interesting what Urban said because I think it shared some light on this conversation also. I think it's pretty obvious that, you know, for people that don't know, Whittingham's choice to ultimately pursue this was after talking to Urban Meyer. Like Whittingham being here is a big part of Urban Meyer and they continue to talk all the time. So there's a chance that Urban Meyer might know more about this situation beside Whittingham and Bryce.

It might be Urban Myers next. I don't know how much Whittingham has told him. But I feel like Urban probably knows a lot and feels comfortable with what he's going out there saying. And Urban's got a good history with quarterbacks. Let's be honest. I know people want to hate him, but like there's stuff about when he's right, he's right. Okay. He talked about what I think is more important in this debate because, again,

I care about the comments only because of the play on the field. So what I care about is the play on the field. And he talked about like, look, it's not, this kid's not. And again, multiple things can be true. I've seen a lot of people that are like, oh, the hype and it's all lies. Like, no, all the progress this offseason, there were people at football practices that have no reason to lie, have no connection to Michigan that were all saying the same thing. Right.

And the mechanic progress and what he was doing in practice, all is true. What we didn't know, and maybe I should have said it every show. I know I said it a lot, but I said what we don't know is what happens, come gain pressure, first thing goes wrong, whatever, does he stick with the new teaching or does he revert back? And he reverted back. He, I don't have the quote in front of him, but he basically said exactly that, that he had reverted back to these bad habits. And Bryce's struggles aren't talent, right?

It's not that he can't throw the football and he doesn't. of this canon army can't all do that so underwood talked about Whittingham loves bryce underwood he believes in Bryce Underwood um that Bryce underwood is coachable he said his problem his issue is spatial awareness and we talked about that pressure in the pocket right going through progressions and then executing it's really that simple right like it's not sometimes we can make it more complex than it needs to be, you know. So he said that he called it normal progression for a young quarterback. And he brought the conversation back to what Bryce went through as a freshman being thrown out there as a starter and the development structure not being ideal because of what was going

on with Sharon and not having a coy Detmer-like person around in terms of the development. So that stuff all still matters. Was it good enough against Western? Absolutely. Not. Is it concerning absolutely because is it going to continue um but is it final and proven or any of this other stuff no right and that's and i think that's where the conversation is interesting is okay if it if it's against okama again this level of struggle and mistake etc then what you know, because the conversation is clear what's going on. The conversation's not going away. The team can do the best they can to keep it outside, but that's tough to do.

And that weighs on him, and that's not going to help him either, right? But I did think Urban's comments were a good point of, like, reset again, where still talking about the development of a quarterback and being able to do the things that some young quarterback struggle with. I'm not pretending Bryce is going to figure out. I don't know. I think he can. I absolutely do, but like just again, kind of like a reset.

Like we're still talking about somebody who has all the talent in the world. He's just got to be able to put it together. And this is not an excuse. I said this on Michigan Weekly with Butros. A lot of things we talked about being positive this year that were bad last year that should help Bryce didn't happen Saturday. The line play wasn't good enough. They couldn't run the football. That was a new one.

expect that, right? All these great wide receiver weapons and everything we talked about. JJ was out there. Marsh was too. But like, you had Beagle and Hoffman out there more than you saw Moa or French or Johnson or any of these dudes we've been talking about. And the play calling too was questionable at times. Right. So there's still, if everything else looked good except for Bryce, I think it'd be a different conversation. But there's missed assignments and issues all over this offense. Bryce is obviously going to be the topic of conversation and it needs to be better. better. But anybody that thinks it's like take out Bryce, plug in Tommy, or break, whoever, it's not that simple. There's still other issues that need to be

fixed on this team. Yeah, so a few things. So I thought Woodingham did a good job of talking about that yesterday, either yesterday on the T on the, on the, think his weekly radio show, or maybe talk about it at the press conference. I can't remember. But I think the, The rhino is. I didn't even bring the penalties to the penalties are killer. I think the rhino, I've studied Bex offense. And I know people are out on the rhino, right? But the rhino can work if your offensive line is moving as a collective unit.

And everybody is actually hitting their assignments. We showed you guys on cutups. There was a couple plays where we were one misde-a-sacist. away from it being an explosive run for Bryce, possibly a touchdown. One misassignment from being an explosive run for Xavier Hider, possibly a touchdown. Those little things can be tweaked and can be fixed. Where I was a little bit disappointed and I've watched now three different people break down to Michigan film. Western Michigan obviously came in with their plan of they were going to muddy up the box and see

if Michigan was going to be able to adjust to what they were doing. Michigan never adjusted. I want to just... It's okay to give Western credit in this game, too. Yeah, yeah. Michigan never adjusted. And I want the Michigan fans, because I'm about to take y'all down memory lane a little bit.

Do y'all remember us as fans when we used to get mad at Jim's offense, probably like, I think we had a little kick in 2020. So let's go like 2019, 2020. I know we want to throw the COVID year out. But do y'all realize like we used to get mad at Jim for just running into eight-man boxes? We'd be like, throw the damn ball, like push the ball down the field to get them to get you out of sitting in those eight-man fronts.

I like Beagle. I think Beagle did an okay job. But at some point, if you're up in the box and you're Jason Beck, because you're not on the field, and you see they're sitting in eight-man fronts, they're sending four, which that's a whole other problem that they can send four, you have six people blocking and you can't block up six, I mean, block up four. That's the first thing that Western Michigan, D.C., saw, I mean, office coordinator, I mean, I'm sorry, defense coordinator saw, and he was like, wait a minute.

So I can put eight in the box, I can rush for, drop four, and have my corners. And I basically I can drop, basically I can drop seven, right? And I can still get pressure. And if they're running, my linebackers can now fire up. They can't block it. I don't have to do anything. And the one thing I wish Michigan would have done, we heard so much about offensive, of weapons, whether it's wide receivers, whether it's tight ends.

We heard about these weapons, but they weren't on the field. I think you did a great job of showing that in your article over at bluebought 90.com. Y'all make sure y'all tap in. Look at the snap counts. We didn't see Jamie French. If we're not going to deploy our receivers, what did we bring them here for? He had one snap. Moa, I think he was like three or four snaps.

would just all go routes. Wasn't nothing creative with it. Then you have Mark. That too. The route there were, you pointed it out on cut up, some of the routes. It just was like vanilla routes.

Everybody ending up in the same spot. What are we doing? Yeah. It's like, what are we doing? Right? Yeah. And so I agree.

Let me say this because I see everybody in the chat going crazy. Bryce was a issue. But he was not the only issue. And one of the things that I respect Whittingham for doing. is right after that game. And then Monday morning, he got up on that press conference. And I'm pretty sure Kyle saw, with everybody else that's been breaking down this game, saw they have to do better at play calling.

That play calling was horrendous. And it was horrendous because you literally was lining up. For one, how can we not block four guys and we got six offense a line? We're putting the rhino out there for, blocking. And Beagle is a defensive tackle by trade. So the fact that he was able to do some of the things he was due, I give him kudos. Yeah, he was moving dudes off the ball in the second half. He played a lot. But it's no way in hell, Trevor. I'm sorry to use that word, but it's no way in hell. I'm putting Beagle against their best defensive end and saying, hey, get him past pro. He's not an offense alignment by trade. He's getting beat. And now you already have a quarterback who doesn't have spatial awareness like,

like Irvin says. So any little jump, he's bailing out the pocket because he thinks the pocket is muddy. And we're looking at the TV and we're like, stay in the pocket. Step up. Make the throw. It's just a bad recipe for disaster. And I told you this. I put this on the board and the forum.

Just give us Babelua. Look, I haven't prayed for a lot of things. But big fella, I need you to get ready. Eat your weedies. Do whatever they need to get you back. I beg of you. Because I think once we kind of stable out that offense line and we can go 11 and 12 personnel, right?

And we can put those pass catchers on the field. I think everybody going to play better. because that offense got to get in the rhythm. No penalties killed us. How do we have receivers not, how do we have receivers not lined up on the line? Yeah, the formation. That's day one stuff. That was really brutal.

Come on, man. Yeah, I, and to Beck's credit with the play calling, like, you, you admitted too. Like, there was five or six plays that would have been great, but they didn't execute. Right. Dave, Malachi is not, I think he's learning the playbook. Sorry, if somebody asked where. Malachi Lee. Yeah, I mean, we talked about, too.

I think there's a world where five weeks down the road, they could get crazy. And Babs is at left tackle and Frazier's at right and Sprague's playing guard and Lee's out. Frazier and Sprague are both at guard and Lee is out at right tackle. Who knows? It's going to evolve for sure as guys develop and get healthy and get better and blah, blah, blah. But, yeah, so I think for Oklahoma, want to see the penalties. gone. You can't have it. You can't have the self-inflicted losses. Again, you had 12 extra plays left out there where you had first downs taken away because of families, at least 12 other

plays. Who knows how many more plays you get first downs and field goals and touchdowns. And this game's not even close, right? It happened. It's part of the story. I'm not trying to be like, whoa, it happened, but it can't against Oklahoma, right? And you've got a game where last year you lost 24 to 13, which felt significantly worse than that because of turnovers, because of giving up third and longs, because of self-inflicted mistakes, right? So I was so confident for Michigan coming into this year because, again, better line play, more weapons at wide receiver,

more competence. I'm excited with the different changes on staff. I like the bend don't break, 2023, mentor secondary focused approach. we're seeing with Jay Hill. I thought it was really good in week one. I don't think Jay Hill is going to let Mattier go off and just continue to, you know, extend plays with his legs.

Meteer's going to make plays, but I think he'll have a plan for him. Yeah. And then Bryce has got to figure out a way that this is easy for us to say, right? Like I know he's probably having a tough time too. He's not happy that it happened, happen. But whatever they got to do to keep him on that right track, throughout the game and that when adversity does come, you know, not look for a reason to

grab onto that negativity, like come back, you know, I hope it's a complete performance for Michigan and that means a victory. Yeah. That's probably realistically hard to expect because of what happened in week one. It's a lot to go from one to, you know, I get it. But if it's not complete and if Bryce is part of the problem and, we're going to, you know, we're seeing the poor mechanics because Joel Klatt's going to call it out, right? And all these other guys, they're going to call it out.

People that don't know what they're talking about are going to call it out. And people that do know what they're talking about are going to call it out. And it's going to be out there. The pressure is just going to be crazy. You know, so this is just, if Michigan beats Oklahoma, the season's back on track, you have U-TEP to kind of, again, have another week to maybe clean up and refresh some things. and you're looking like, okay, I got another home game at Iowa after that.

Then I go to Minnesota, like a path of 5 and O and cleansing my palate of this Western game before I play Penn State is absolutely out there for you. You lose the Oklahoma game and you lose it bad in a self-inflicted way like you did the year before. And it's just things are going to go off their rails quickly in terms of the conversations and the perception, which like we said can be reality. Yeah, I think I think Would it do Bryce a world of

Help or how you want to put it Is if Michigan finds a way to simplify The game and the only way you can simplify it is Your play caller got to be on point I get he struggles I think he just got rid of the ball quicker Well The

His time to throw was over three seconds against Western. You can't have that. But that's a confidence issue because you're not, you're not trusting what your eyes are seen, right? And you're not trusting what your eyes are seeing because he's, he's a, I don't know if it was Brooks Austin or it was maybe the QB guy. He has a patron called the QB school. He was breaking down Bryce.

and Bryce from last year, that year turned him into like a flight instead of a fight guy. And sometimes with flight guys, they don't trust what they see because they're thinking that their eyes are playing tricks on them. Like sometimes when people like, just throw the ball, he's in the window. In his mind, he's probably like, no, it's no way. Like, I'm not, I'm not, he can't be open. Right. And so he's got to get out of that. I think it's easy to revert back to bad habits when things are breaking down.

He's got to figure out that he has to let those bad habits go. And I think somebody put in the chat, I think it was the boss guy. He's never had to do this. So sometimes when you're good enough at certain levels, you can have bad habits and they never are exposed because you're just better than everybody you're playing against. And then when you play up and you play newer competition, those bad habits come, they show their face. And I think for Bryce, he's been able to get away with a lot of stuff because he was just better than everybody who was playing in high school.

And now that he's in college where the game is speeded up, defensive gap more complicated, he's still thinking that he can do what he was doing in high school. And that's like, no, bro. Like you throwing off your back foot on. the rope yeah that might have been good in michigan high school but that's not going to work in college and so it's not a process that's going to change overnight i know fans wanted to change overnight but i'll just leave it with this and then uh treb you i'll give it back to you so let's say we go with what the the mob fan base wants right we go to to tommy car Tommy car comes then he wins U-Tip.

Looks good. He plays at Minnesota. The same issues that we saw in Western and in, let's say Oklahoma, right? Has the same issue. Maybe it's not Tommy. Maybe we're now seeing the glaring codes of the offensive line and the weapons.

Da-da-da-da-da. Tommy plays okay. they lose to Minnesota. Then we play Iowa, Tommy has a bad game. Who are the fans then going to want to go to? Right. And just like this comment just says, now you think Tommy's your future,

but you're putting them out there to the wolves. And I hate this because we're all arguing. Bryce was broken because he shouldn't have started as a freshman and he was thrown into a bad situation. So your answer is to throw another freshman into a bad situation. Well, look at Keyline Russell. Keelon Russell's having a decent start to his career, right? He didn't start last year.

He took a year to learn the game and do what he had to do. Now, I know people are going to bring up J.K.S. and Malik, Washington. J.K.S. had a bad game against UCLA. Go turn that film on and watch that. There's definitely not people like, did J.K.S. regress? He was this phenom freshman quarterback. He had a bad game. Okay, Malik Washington played at HBCU.

Let's see what happens when Malik Washington plays better competition. Let's see what he looks like. Like, I don't know if putting Tommy in is the answer. I know a lot of people want to because they say, oh, he had a great spring game. He can do the basics. But if Tommy don't work, it ain't go back to Bryce like you did last year. When Orgy didn't work, you went to Davis-Worn.

That's 24, yeah. If Warren didn't work, you want to go to Tuttle. Then you wanted to go back to Orgy. At that point, Orgy's confidence was shot. So you ain't going to bench Bryce, and then when it don't work out, we're playing Penn State. You're like, oh, bring Bryce back here. For what? He's been on the bench for four or five weeks.

Just let him get prepared to go to the transfer portal and keep Tommy out there and let Tommy get killed. with the bad mistakes. And then next year, you go to the portal and find you another quarterback because you will have been put him in the fire to deal with this BS.

So just, I mean, if that's the route, if that's what y'all want to do as fans, okay with it. I'm just telling you, at that point, get ready to start turning on the film,

look at some of these other quarterbacks and say, hmm, let's put him in the portal. Let's go get him in the portal. I tend to sit back and listen to the smart people. Urban said that he thinks the kid has the talent. He thinks winning him is still confident in him.

And we'll see Saturday. If he plays horrible and everybody want to bench him, I can't defend it. I'm not here to be a Bryce defender. But I got to seek his suspicion. The kid will play better because you can't play any worse than what you play. Because those first six plays showed me that there is talent there.

When he has everything going and it looks right, there's talent. When stuff starts to break down, and I think I talked about it on cut up, Treff. When Bryce got hit, I want you guys to go for the people. If y'all don't think, if y'all think I'm trying to defend Bryce, what I want y'all to do, go back. and look at the, I think it's the third draft. We talked about it on cut-ups.

Bryce didn't look right after. Norton missed his assignment. They had rushed four, and they had a person come unblocked. Bryce threw a strike to JJ, but he got hit. And after that, his clock was sped up. He's like, oh, wait a minute, we can't block. We can't block four people. Oh, the offense line is trash.

And he started bailing on clean pockets because he didn't trust what he was seeing. He didn't trust the protection. So I think everybody got to step up. Bryce included probably the most because he's the quarterback heavy as the crown who wears it. But they got it like our O line, we got to get them some help, man. We shouldn't we shouldn't be able to let four people rush. we got six in protection and we can't block for it. That just makes no sense.

Yeah. I don't know. There's a lot of roads and paths. We'll see. It obviously depends what happens Saturday against Oklahoma. Again, I'm going to continue to be optimistic until I can't because I haven't seen all of it yet. So that's where I'm at. Obviously, it's, it's,

funny because like these things happen where like the overton window and sports debate moves so much like i was the most pro tami gar person before he was even being recruited by michigan because of what the high school coach i know had told me and you know i was this huge time of car guy and then the hype got so high in spring where i'm like they're like oh he's he's qb too yeah there was literally only two quarterbacks throwing in spring you know not that he wasn't doing well and exceeding expectations but like he's not beating out like a bunch of veteran dudes right and then coming to this year he gets an incub d2 over um i was calling bfn but it's bnf that that was a good deal that's great um you know he gets here late and doesn't earn the job which i think a lot of people expected and it's like oh okay

another good note for tom you always six four now okay you know i'm really i'm excited about his future i think could be the starter here. I don't love throwing them out there right now. And this isn't Madden, bro, or college, well, there is a college football game now. This isn't NCAA 27 where you just go into start hit X and switch him, and that's it. There's so many other dynamics to this that exist on the field in the locker room with other players. And it's real, you know, so. And I don't care that he played better in the spring game.

J.J. had a bad spring game. J.J. didn't play in a spring game. Darius Clemens had one of the, this great play and was going to be the next great wide receiver. Like, I don't care about the spring game. And we know now, too, the staff wasn't even trying to change Bryce at all yet in the spring. They kind of let him do his things so they knew what they were actually working with. So I don't care about this game. I mean, I just want people to, I mean, I swear to you, I promise you, J.J. McCarthy became a quarterback he became because he sat that first year against K.

When everybody, the year we had with K, that first year, everybody was like, put JJ in, put the five star in. JJ was a better player for sitting that year behind K and then having to truly battle the next year. Did he win and come out and take over the starter? Yes. But even we went through some growing pains as a sophomore of him starting. It happens. Like I said, I understand the sentiment. I understand people want Bryce to be benched.

And I'm not here to tell you how to feel. That's your opinion. I'm just telling you that once you put that, once you take that genie out the bottle, we can't have what we had last year, which is a bunch of people going from quarterback to quarterback, only for us to end back up with the starter that you had that you wanted benched. Because the two that you thought was better than, the starter and then they got in and they wasn't really that grid and then he was like well no no go back to

this person that's not how this works i mean it doesn't madden it doesn't college football but well and it it's more than just like yeah you got to play the guy that gives you the best chance to win but like that's got to be clear right you're giving up on bryce's development you're giving up on him at michigan when you bench him completely and you're completely resetting everything towards Tommy and his development and throwing it in. So, like, I don't think it's just as simple as, oh, Bryce is struggling. Let's see what Tommy's got.

Like, I don't think that's going to be the coach's decision. I think it's bigger than that. And they might just ride with Bryce because, again, last year, I brought this up a bunch. Like, Bryce turned a corner in the middle of the year. People forget that. And then MSU and everything that happened around this program in November. So, like, I want to see Oklahoma.

You have to see Oklahoma as you're starting quarterback. And then we'll go from there. Because obviously, U-TEPs a much more interesting dynamic. But, like, Bryce Underwood's the quarterback, man. Until he's not, obviously. I'm just going to be like real with y'all. Y'all might hate this comment. But I'm kind of out on, like, if the Bryce experiment doesn't work,

I'm not soccer. I see the person in the chat saying, we need to, you sacrifice this season for Tommy, like I'm out on high school quarterbacks. Like if Bryce doesn't work, I don't care how good Tommy plays. I'm going to the portal and I'm getting me an established quarterback and I'm going to put him versus Tommy in training camp and I'm going to tell that quarterback that comes in, Tommy's not the starter. Whoever wins the job will be the starting quarterback.

Like I'm not doing this going back through a sophomore, a slump because if it don't work next year, then I got a, at that point, I'm going to just go get an established quarterback. There'll be plenty of them in the portal. I don't know. I get it. And I know that it's a dangerous game, too, man, because you're not guaranteed to get one of them. There's nothing more valuable, too, than a QB in the portal. Everybody wants to talk about how much Bryce is getting paid.

You wait until you spend $8, $9, $10 million. Oh, the price of the QB is. B. Corral portal is definitely, definitely up. It ain't yesterday's press. I think San Levick got like eight or nine this season. Yeah. All right. We went crazy long today.

So, yeah. Y'all make sure you all go over to the website, man. Yeah, yeah. I don't know if y'all been seeing the ticker at the bottom. Trevor's running a crazy promo right now. It's not that crazy. I mean, it's, it's a thing. Come try.

We, uh, we, uh, talk on the board. Yeah, we're doing it for if you're watching this podcast. If you want to check out Bluebyn90.com, you've got the deal on annual. But if you want to do one month free to check us out, we're letting you use promo code rise so you can get the month free. So you can see some of the premium content. I'm pretty proud about my post game stuff, great sessions. Yeah.

If you want to check that out, I'm going to have a couple more things during the week as well. And the message board's finally starting to pick up as some folks are getting in there. And it's going to get even better when we can announce some. some interesting folks that'll be joining the community. I'll put it that way as far as folks that will be on the message board. And Justin's working on something big that I'm really, really excited that's going to be subscriber only in a big burst in the short term and long term going forever,

something we're going to do for our subscribers all the time. I'm really, really excited to announce that as well. And of course, the tailgates, we're right by the stadium there. You can find that information out on the website as well. if you're interested in a VIP package or just knowing where the tailgates at, come hang out before the game. Somebody brought it up and yet with the way the ticket prices have dropped and everything, and Michigan fans, sorry, my brain's blanking, but current excitement level, I think there's going to be a lot of Oklahoma fans in that crowd, which is unfortunate.

If you can get down there, I'd go. But it's unfortunate. It's the result of the game, though. Again, it's reality, man. Nobody can feel bad for themselves. Michigan did what they did. like people aren't going to, again, I brought this up to you when we were offline. Like to go to a game now and pay, the golf course is charging, was it 85 or 90 bucks for parking now?

Yeah. Something like that. Yeah, it's kind of quite expensive. You know, a guy trying to bring his kid to the game. It's just, it's a risk now where you're like, man, I'm going to spend all this money and they lose. I don't know. It sucks. Like, that's the equation people got to make now.

You got to understand, Treb, like. Fan stands for Fadetic, and I'll get this quick story. Damn, even parking got in. That year that we beat, that year that we beat Ohio State the first year in the snow, right? I had a ticket to that game. I got my ticket locked in fairly early around September. Do you remember that season at all, like any of the losses in that? that season.

21? Mm-hmm. What are you talking about? The Michigan State game, what about it? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that game broke me. Oh. And I was a lot like Michigan fans are about the Western game.

People forget, like the Fire Jim Harbaugh stuff was back. That game broke me, and I moved very emotionally and gave that Ohio State ticket away. Oh, no. right to another family member in the group me i am and i'm right i said the season we i said we lost seasons over with and i gave my ticket away and i and then we went on to win a couple more games i remember going back in the group chat like oh no i'm going this time they're like oh we already got your ticket away and i said the most college football karma thing would be michigan beat Ohio State, they rushed the field because I've always, at that point, it always had a vision.

I was going to rush Michigan Field to ever be to Ohio State. And then they won. And, yeah. So I'm not telling you they're going to beat Oklahoma, but it might be a lot of people that gave up their tickets. And then they're going to be like, damn, I wish I'd have been there for that moment. Best experience I've ever had in a Michigan game. It was like being in a movie, bro. The weather was like cinematic.

even though Ohio State fans that were near us were super cool. And when the game ended, it was like they were like happy for us almost because they knew how hard we had at it. They were like, congratulations. They're like, get down there, man. And like,

yeah, getting on the field. And I think this is why like I tend to be more pro Mr. Brightside than others because I don't think the song itself matters. I just think it's the fact that you got a whole stadium to sing along. And like when everybody was on the field after that game with the players and everything, it was just cool. It was a cool day.

And yeah, there was a vibe. I remember being at the Blue by 90 tailgate that day. And we were like, dude, I don't know why I'm confident, but I'm confident. It just feels like Michigan's going to win this game. And then Cade through that pick in the first quarter. And we all looked at each other like, well, that was fun. That was fun. You've seen this story before.

Yeah, here we go. Just like the Mike Weber fumble that bounced right back into his chest in 19. I was at that game with Wadi. And we looked at each other. And we knew like, dude, if that's happening or it's over. All right. our half hour show has been an hour. So we're going to get out of here.

Rise the Victors will be back tomorrow morning. A lot more Oklahoma talk. It's impossible to ignore the Bryce stuff. So we talked about it. Again, content message board, everything. Blueby90.com head over there. The annual saves you two months. If you want to do monthly and get your first month free to give us a shot from this show,

promo code rise gets you the first month free. And then I think OG Blueby 90 should be posting today. Justin and Joel have a show. And then Dennis will be on tomorrow, will be on tomorrow, and the post game live after the game. So like, subscribe, notification bell, please. So you know when we go live. We got tons of content on here for you every single day.

So appreciate all the live comments and folks contributing to the show. Appreciate the guys watching back or listening on Spotify. You guys are great. We'll see you tomorrow. Rise to the Victors, Blue by 90 Network. Thank you guys. Go Blue. Go Blue.