Blue By Ninety - The Bryce Narratives

Episode Date: August 24, 2026

The Bryce Underwood conversation is beginning to change — but how long will the new narrative last?Welcome to Rise to the Victors, your daily start with Michigan sports on the Blue By 90 network with Trevor McCue and Darnell Porter.In this episode, Trevor and Darnell discuss the shifting conversation surrounding Michigan's sophomore quarterback as more people begin to hear what those closest to Underwood have been saying throughout the offseason.Kyle Whittingham has praised his progress. Jason Beck has talked about his improved consistency and footwork. Quarterbacks coach Koy Detmer Jr. has spent the offseason working with him inside Michigan's new offense. Now, longtime quarterback coach Jordan Palmer is adding his voice to the conversation after working directly with Underwood this offseason.So are people finally remembering just how talented Bryce Underwood is?And then comes the bigger question: What happens when the games start?Will people allow a 19-year-old quarterback to develop over the course of a season, or will every Saturday bring a new declaration about what Bryce Underwood is — or isn't?🏈 IN THIS EPISODE:• Is the national narrative around Bryce Underwood beginning to change?• Why we've remained bullish on Underwood throughout the offseason• Putting his freshman season into proper context• Jordan Palmer watched every snap of Underwood's freshman season• Why Palmer came away more impressed than expected• Koy Detmer Jr. earns major praise from Palmer• Why Palmer believes in Kyle Whittingham's program• Are people finally remembering how high Underwood's ceiling is?• Can we evaluate Underwood's development without overreacting every Saturday?Rise to the Victors is your daily start with Michigan sports on the Blue By 90 network.Join Trevor McCue and Darnell Porter every Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday morning at 10:30 a.m. for Michigan Football news, analysis, recruiting, basketball and conversation about everything happening around the Wolverines.Subscribe to Blue By 90 and turn on notifications so you don't miss a show.〽️ Rise to the Victors🎙️ Trevor McCue & Darnell Porter📅 Monday, Tuesday, Thursday & Friday⏰ 10:30 a.m.📺 On the Blue By 90 network

Well, Commander Rise to the Victors, brought to you by Blue by 90 Podcast Network, another week of shows, another week and days closer to Michigan football. It's getting close now, very, very close. Michigan held its last scrimmage Friday last week. I assumed it would be on Saturday, previous ones, but they actually had it Friday before Witts press conference. So some information there. But the big thing for me, I think for Darnel as well,

been texting this weekend and I've just kind of been laughing because I try to be consistent. I'm not always, right? And I fail sometimes. But I try to be consistent. And when I have opinions, I try to explain where they come from. And I try not to state opinions as facts. And if I say something's a fact, I try to explain why it is. But the Bryce narratives have been a big topic of this offseason. I mean, we've talked a bunch about our people acting like he was worse than he was last year and are people forgetting how good he was and the conversation coming into this just all these different narratives of and out there and I've seen a lot of people start to realize they might be wrong this year they don't want to be wrong right nobody's ever wrong they're

just evolving so I'm just kind of laughing at some of the shifting from the Bryce conversation but we're going to talk about why I think that's happening and why I've tried to be consistent on Bryce this entire offseason and like I said we'll connect some dots and see what you folks think about Bryce but darnel a lot of this is stemming from uh Jordan Palmer going on rich eisen and being again I keep using this word all off season but being very candid about Bryce underwood and his process of coaching him this offseason how little or much he knew about Bryce and what he's seen from Bryce since he's been coaching him and this Michigan staff. and how it all comes together for him.

Yeah. So let's go back to something I think you said at the beginning of business all, right? You said it's the narrative around not wanting to be wrong, right? I think we live in a very micro, and I keep saying this, but it's because I believe, I think we live in a very microwavable society, right? People have short attention spans. People are very impatient. And so they want results now.

And they don't understand that these kids, some 17, some 18, they don't think about what were they doing at 17, 18 years old, right? You didn't kill your first job that you ever had in corporate America. at 21 plus. So what makes you think an 18 year old is going to kill something as complex? Does it happen? Sure, sometimes. But it's very rare that it happens.

I mean, I think somebody posted a graphic about a list of like all the true freshman quarterbacks. And when you put Bryce numbers up, it didn't look that bad, right? You had people like Matthew Stafford on that list who Bryce had better, uh, season stats,

his freshman year than Matthew Stafford did. Matthew Stafford, if you go back to remember his career at Georgia, he was picked as a pre-season Heisman candidate his senior year. He had an awesome senior year. That team just underperformed. They didn't win the national championship. And so I struggle a little bit when I see people that are completely out on them. And then I struggle sometimes when I see people who are completely like he's going to win three high

right I think there's a way you can find some some middle ground and I'm super excited today to talk about this because I remember when I sent you to just important I mean the Jordan Palmer stuff it just further um confirm some of the things I was already hearing from people who are close to the program and close to coy and you know that type of stuff yeah it further confirmed it so I'll be interested to kind of get your take on it all but I do think people are starting to start to the closer we get to the season, the closer we're hearing more reports out of spring practice, I mean, out of fall camp, I do see people start to change the narrative, right, a little bit. Even some of the national media people, because even Rich kind of was a little bit, you know,

Dave Portnour was kind of like, hey, if Bryce can't do it, we'll just go get another one. But now you're starting to see even Dave Portner put out a video last week, like with his expectations is. So I think everybody has started. to kind of relax and look at this thing from a full circle type view. You touched on two things I want to echo or build on real quick before we get deep into it. And one was you just said, you know, confirmed other things I've been hearing, right?

So you and I aren't the kind of people to run around and like brag about who we know or what we know or go quick to Twitter and say, oh, blah, blah, you know. And even when I was with Amazing Blue Review and when the Blue by 90 site launches, like, we know, like, you have connections to the staff. I'm not going to get into, but like, you know people of the staff, right? I have connection to players, some staff, some parents, some people around program. We all have that, right? And I never like taking, even if it's somebody I trust more than most. I never love taking one opinion or one piece of information and being like, here we go. right but when i'm hearing stuff privately from players and parents and again parents got kids on

the team so that's always going to shift the way they see things because they're kids on the team right so like everything shifts depending on what you know but like when i hear it from four or five not just different people but different types of people in terms of their connection in what way they would view things and then publicly whittingham beck detmer whoever and now palmer are saying the same things we've been hearing while I can go, okay. Yeah, the truth probably is somewhere in the middle, but also like, here's where all this stuff connects, right? So that's just a lot easier for me.

Things are very linear, man. Always. And because we digest information daily, sometimes hourly, it can feel like it's like this with all these giant peaks and valleys. But that's not reality. Yep. Right? No, no coaches treating it like that where one bad series, one bad practice, one great practice.

Like, that's not reality, right? That's how we might consume the information. Even during his recruitment, like him potentially flipping. Remember, it was like, oh, this, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no this. No, dude. Do you make decisions like that? No. Like, that's not how this is happening, right?

And then the freshman thing you talked about, I'm going to admit, Bryce didn't live up to expectations we or even himself probably created for his freshman year. But I don't want to ignore everything else that surrounded his freshman year that potentially went into it. What has changed with those other circumstances coming into this year, right? And where can I find some comparison? You brought up Stafford. I think the most relevant recent one is his buddy Dante Moore. Yeah. Right. Now, I know Moore sat out a year at Oregon. but what happened is freshman year at UCLA. Not that I think of a situation.

No. And even going into last year at Oregon, people were talking about he could be the number one pick in the draft. And that was before he had already bounced back like he did. Now it probably would have been the second quarterback taken because of what happened with Mendoza. But he comes back again this year and look where we're at. Right. So I'm going to be interested to play around with that too because the people that have been down that are

now shifting up. We'll talk about it. I don't want to get too far ahead of myself, but I'm interested too. How quickly do they shift to another level again, right? And now they bring the pressure back in the Heisman talk because they're going to keep raising the bar to a point he's not at so that they can hold him to this standard.

Right. But let's get into, I think we've talked about the narrative ship. But again, if you've been listening to the people closest to Bryce and what they've said publicly, Whittingham, Beck, Detmer, and again, now Palmer, nothing is new or surprising. They've been consistent, again, about where he was,

what he needed to improve on, what they're working on in his progress. So I'm just, I'm not buying like, whoa, he figured it out, right? So we've been talking about this all off season, right? He didn't suddenly become talented again. He's always been uber talented. He was the five-star number one player for a reason. He was 17 last fall, turned 18. You know, right before the game turned 19 this year five days ago.

Right. And he was playing at Michigan. You brought up enormous expectations while dealing with the instability, right? So Palmer said, he admitted, dude, I didn't watch a lot of Michigan tape. I didn't watch a lot of Michigan games. So when he started working with Underwood, he went through every single snap. And we kind of touched on this at a very micro level when we talked about Brooks, Austin, watching the Texas tape. And like, hmm, yeah, there's some, there's some things here that need to be improved.

But whoa, wait a minute. This wasn't as bad as I remembered, right? And he said, the more he learned about Underwood, what was happening around Underwood, the more impressed he said, I was actually pretty impressed. He pointed to how young he was and how difficult it had to be handling the pressure and the circumstances around him. So as we talk about the progress he's made this off season, and again, we got to see it in games, and we'll talk about that in a minute, the way the narrative was shifting games.

But is the narrative around his freshman year finally starting to evolve and catch up as well? Or do you think some of that's going to be set in stone with people as the net negative that it was or this perception that's out there about how bad he was, if that makes sense? I think people are going to all, you're going to still have skeptics because they got burnt the first time. with their own foolishness of he's the number one quarterback. He's the highest red quarterback that Michigan's gotten quite some time, maybe ever. And so they were overheighted and they were let down because he didn't have the, he didn't live up to the lofty expectations that they had for, right?

And then you have the people who are super negative that just thinks that the kid is just not good and he's never going to be good. And then you have people like me and you and people that come back to reality that are somewhere in the middle, right? As in it's not as bad as we thought it was considering everything that the kid was dealing with. And I think Palmer touched on that with Palmer touched on it with being as respectful to Sharon as possible. Respectful to Sharon. That's a really good point. He did handle that surprisingly well.

He said, Rich, you know what happened. You kind of know it was yeah. That was that was and then he kind of like brought up in. It was like, I can't believe this kid was able to do this with what everything, you know, was going on. So I think he was trying to be not only respectful to Sharon but also the chip list, right? Can I be honest? What's up? Lesson learned from the JJ Cade situation maybe.

And how we discussed that, you know. Probably. I don't know. I'm not putting words in his mouth or. whatever. I mean, Palmer's been a well-respected QB coach for a long time, but I just thought that, I agree. That was interesting to me the way he discussed that. Anyway, so. He tipped out of route, but then you have to people like me and you who are kind of in between and understand never be too high, never be too low. Do we want Bryce to be the Heisman trophy,

hopeful, yes. But we also understand that, bro, just like we was talking last night in our chat, It is hard to win consistently in year and a year out at this level. You got to have a little luck. Things got to go your way. Bryce last year had people, a ton of players, teammates letting them down dropping passes, which kind of kills his rhythm, right?

Kills his comfortability. The line didn't do as good of a job as it could have done in pass pro. Great running the ball, but pass pro kind of sucked. That speeds up your clock. So he had a lot of things going on that kind of, shaped and molded what that season looked like. So I'm going to give this to you, then I'm going to shut up.

Pause. If Bryce comes out and he lights up Oklahoma, the amount of people that are going to go to this social media app, whether it's Twitter, whether it's YouTube, whether it's Snapchat, TikTok, and crown this kid to my site. again it's going to be so crazy that i'm just going to sit back pop me some popcorn and sit back and laugh it's going to be like a newfound you have people that going to act like Bryce this is his first year starting

they're going to forget about everything you can go down their page and see they were super negative about Bryce just 12 months ago then you're going to have people who the the negative people right the super negative dances they're going to say oh it was just Oklahoma let's see them do it in the big team. He's bound to blow it when he plays Indiana or Penn State or Ohio State or Oregon. Let's see if he can do it on the road. And then you're going to have us, Treb that's going to be the middle of and say, well, that's surprising a little bit. But based on what we heard from our people, we're not surprised and we're excited that he's taking that next step. Now, let's see how the rest of the season goes. That's just how the next 60 days go, Tray. Well, that's why I,

like I'm not telling anybody and I've been saying too don't buy camp hype right if that's how you're looking at it like oh you know and I've seen people too talking about like the PR angle and trying to do this to that player and whatever like you're not paying attention man to the way this staff operates and he's 17 by the way like you brought up that's the last point he was 17 years old yeah and like I said even if I want to move past the excuses part if that's what we're going to call it right was the past pro perfect last year? No. Was Bryce bailing early at times? Sure. I think he would admit that too.

And they've talked about that too, being able to stand in the pocket and trust it. But I think for me, again, I'm telling people, if you're thinking all this is hype and I'm not buying it and here's this peak, here's this valley. Somebody's trying to tell me X, Y, Z, the consistency, right? So he talked about Palmer, that is, that he was blown away, exact quote, blown away by the professionalism, the work ethic. and the attention to detail. You know who else said that? Shroom Moore. And Chip Lindsay and anyone else that was around him last year,

you could make the argument. His professionalism was above his own head coach based on stuff we know now, right? And now you heard that in the spring from the new staff, and you heard it in the summer, and you heard it from players, and you're hearing it from his QB coach, right? So the physical traits, again,

well documented. We all know how talented he is. That stuff's always been there. That talk, right? So why did it not always show up or whatever? Well, let's look into that. I've been getting a kick out of J. Sean Barham and the Cowboys fans freaking out and asking what in the world was going on. When I think about players, I've hyped up a lot in recent years, Barham might be on the top.

I hyped the crap out of Jay Sean Barham because I was hearing things, again, from multiple people, different types of people saying the same things blah blah about how good barham was going to be and what a freak he was and then when there were issues going on during the year i'm trying to tell people man i don't understand why they're not using him here and this is what he's strong at and this is what he's weak at this is how you know what i mean now everybody wink what was wink doing you know like this this correction and same thing too we've seen derrick more i know it's preseason in football, right? But we've seen people, okay, now I've got to shift the blame, if you will.

Yeah. Right. And there's some of that happening because people want to predict what's going to happen and they want to be right about it or worse. They don't want to make outlandish predictions and be wrong, right? So you talked about, I'm still going to wait to finish on that, but when you talked about the way that the narrative will change. But I wanted to highlight.

again, what Palmer did, I think, if you haven't seen it, he was on Rich Eisen Show, and he answered these questions for like five minutes, but he hit on a ton of stuff that I think was really, really relevant. He talked about Jason Beck and confirmed again that Beck spent the spring evaluating Underwood, not necessarily coaching up attacking changes in the spring. We talked about that the other day. We were like, oh, that's kind of interesting. He confirmed that. and then he explained how they've been talking about quick footwork and how there's certain plays that you shouldn't be under pressure because you should be getting rid of the ball so fast it shouldn't matter

so why are you doing this or that? He got into the details on that. The QB coach narrative, not having a QB coach versus this year. He talked about Koi Detmer and I thought, as you know, you've talked about Koi quite a bit, I thought this was interesting. He said a coach to watch because he's talked about how impressed he's been with Depperm even compared to other because obviously he works with a lot of traditional quarterback coaches but he brought up a good point if if Underwood comes out and

whatever expectations shift to but if Underwood shows marked improvement this year whatever that looks like yeah we might have to worry about being able to keep koi demur as QB coaches he's going to get a lot of attention right back too obviously but I think people are underselling how impactful Coy's been. And even Whittingham too. Palmer has a good relationship with Cam Rising, who is now a coach out in the California area, actually was the coach for Brady Smigel, the quarterback recruit that came in to Michigan, right?

So some interesting connections there. But he said at one point he was talking about how back, you know, a few years ago, he was so impressed with how Utah operated, he thought, man, if I'm a top quarterback, I might choose Utah. Mm-hmm. I thought that was interesting. Yeah, yeah. So he talked about, I just, I think, again, connecting what we've heard all offseason, the structure of a Whittingham program, the offense that Jason Beck operates, the fact that Jason Beck has been very open about the fact that that offense will be molded

to Underwood's strengths and challenges, the fact that Coy Detmer has been working with him independently as a QB coach, the QB coach for Bryce Underwood, Jordan Palmer connecting the dots and all of that and that they've been working on all the same things. Like, how much better is this coaching setup than what he dealt with last year? And you think it's crazy that this super talented five star number one overall player in the country might actually be looking better? Oh, without a doubt.

I just want to circle back so that the people who are looting in and maybe this is their first time looking, knowing who Jordan Palmer is, right? So I want to set the table because I think this is important. Yes, he did train Kate McLemar. I think that's people's knowledge of him, is calling JJ the other guy. Yeah. The other thing is he's trained Josh Allen. he's trained Super Bowl winner Sam Darnold. He's trained Joe Burrell.

He's trained Patrick Mahomes. He's trained Deshawn Watson. He's trained Trevor Lawrence. You want to talk about current quarterbacks that's in either in Bryce class or last year. At one point, he's trained Mendoza. He's trained Dante Moore. So this dude is not just going to a real. regular guy, right? This is one of the top guys in the field. So I just want people to understand

when we're hearing that Palmer is bullish and Palmer is making these statements about what he likes about Bryce and what Bryce can clean up. It's important to me because he's at the top of his game of what he's doing. If he was just a lower end guy, I'd be kind of breaching it off like maybe in preseason height, but this guy has trained some of the best of the best. Now, to get back to what you was talking about, Trevor, now that I've set that table, the one thing I thought Palmer brought up was interesting was he talked about intermediate and short throws. I think you brought it up and you said, you shouldn't be under pressure because the ball

should already be gone, right? But he also said that those type of passes should be the equivalent of a layup in basketball. basketball. Like, you shouldn't really miss those because it's a muscle memory thing with your lower body and your arm strength and you should be completing those at a high tick, right? Where it gets a little bit iffy is that you start pushing the ball down the field because the ball is traveling longer in the air, right? And so the fact that if you guys remember, what was some of the things that people were

complaining about with Bryce last year? he throws the fastball on every pass whether he's doing deep whether he's going to intermediate and what does a fastball do to you intermediate well it gets there on the intermediate short routes it gets there a whole heck of a lot quicker right and i'm not saying you're supposed to softly throw into tighter windows but what it seems like jordan is working on brice to understand is you don't have to use your arm to get the ball where it needs to go every single time. Sometimes you can use your lower body. And that's going to help you be a lot more accurate than when you're delivering those balls and making sure that your guy in those intermediate passes is the only one that's going to be able to catch that ball

because you placed it exactly where it's supposed to place. And so I thought that was interesting because if you started looking at some of the clips we've seen, it seems like he's understood like, okay, if it's tight, window and it's an out route. Maybe I do need to rifle it in there. But then we see the D passes where even a coach like Zach Smith sees a clip and says,

oh wait, this kid might have understood how to start to layer the ball down the field. And understand he don't have to throw a 70 mile far off fastball to a streak and receiver down the field. He can layer and catch that receiver in stride. And I think not only do we need to give cool. Kudos to Jordan Palmer. I mean, yeah, Jordan Palmer, but I also want to give kudos to Kai Deppner, right?

I mean, Koi Debtman, I'm sorry. Sorry, Koi. Koi has been working with White. Is that what just happened? Yeah, brother together and made a hybrid. But I want you guys to understand how Beck's hierarchy works. Is he working with Bryce? Yes.

But 90% of his time. Bryce is with Hoy. And when we see that the reason why Jordan is saying this is a coach to watch is when this offseason comes

after this season, if Bryce has a season that they believe he's going to have, there's going to be some lower-end colleges that's going to come knocking on the door saying, hey, you just made this kid who people were kind of out on look like he could be a Heisman hopeful next year.

We want to interview you and want to take you serious. And I think Corey deserves everything that's coming his way because he's done a wonderful job from everything that I've heard. I think we're going to be like you said, Trevor, as a fan base

in November, December saying open up the checkbook, give Roy whatever he wants, give Jason whatever he wants. And run this thing back next year and see what this really could be. Well, and there's always going to be this interesting because of Kyle Whittingham's age. Correct.

We're always going to have this interesting clock on, you know, staff retention is more important than ever because, look, your guys getting jobs is a good thing. That means your program is doing well and you're successful, right? But there's always going to be this idea of like, hey, transition, because we don't know when it's going to be, but it doesn't feel like, you know, Whittingham's going to be here for 15 years, probably right although i mean god the guy looks great for his age the gym man grandpa who hit the gym uh i wouldn't be i'll just say this because i know you was bringing that up i wouldn't be so sure that those two would leave after year one and i'll just leave it at that

no i i i think they all see the trajectory and where this program can be in two three years i agree. Just something ran a big picture. But I think on that note, they were talking about Bryce and the fast mall thing. This is what happens when you start a freshman quarterback. And then he isn't maybe getting, you know, whatever attention or coaching level he should. Because almost every quarterback that's an elite quarterback recruit, you can watch their high school tape.

And almost all of them are bad at using their lower body because they've gotten where they've gotten because of their arm talent. Right. And then what happens is you get to the college game and what is the number one thing? Every player talks about when they go up a level, the speed of the game. Right. So what happens a lot of times when you have a young player, when the game gets faster, to catch up with it, they accelerate their own actions and their own decision making. Right.

So now he's throwing it harder and faster when he doesn't need to. And he's throwing quicker and not going through full progressions, right? Because he's trying to speed himself up. And that's just a natural thing that happens. And we talked about in a previous episode, I pulled up stats where I was like, look, you can see like this tough moment in Oklahoma and the two really, really good games. And obviously the narratives that existed because Sharon was gone for those. But even when Sharon got back, Braves was starting to, we were seeing progress each week.

And he was getting better as the year went along. Michigan State game outstanding. That was rough, right? And then we get to like November and you can throw in the Texas Bull game. Well, again, what was happening? What was happening the week of the Ohio State prep? What was happening at halftime of the Ohio State game? Right.

I'm going to pull a Jordan Palmer and say, I think you guys know because I don't want to get into it too much. But like, come on, man. You know what I mean? So I'm going to come back to something you said multiple times. This is what I want to end on. And that's how quickly can everything flip? So now that people are starting to come back a little bit,

whether it's interesting when this happens, like to come back to middle, because even the people that have been at the extreme high end of height, maybe they're coming down a little bit, not in a bad way. Yeah. But they're just, they're finding level. And then the people that have maybe been quicker to point out every little negative thing about Bryce or saying, man,

you know, I don't, this last thrower, you know what I mean? Like pointing to these moments versus, again, what I think has been a very linear progression. But if he comes out and he lights up Western Michigan,

how quickly. Because again, we love to build people up and we love to tear him down right as soon as you get to the top we're bringing you right back down so if he starts that climb back up again how quickly does the height become excessive where again your point if he's great against western and then he's great against oklahoma and michigan wins big there's going to be heisman articles about brice because that's just where it's going to go because that's what the conversation has to shift to because now something has to be excessive. So now it's going

to be the height. Right. And then it's going to be all of a sudden, you know, people are starting to remember this was the five star. Well, I should have been consensus number one overall recruit, but top recruit in the country, right? So are people going to, what am I getting at? If progress does translate to Saturdays, it is visible. It is tangible. Are people going to allow that progress and development to continue? Or is it immediately going to be like, Foop, okay, bars here now, right?

What's going to happen that first bad game after the hype gets excessive? That bad reception, right? Like, do they go back? Are people going to accept the linear progress? Or is it going to be like, nope, now we're back up again and nope, now we're back down? It probably is because it's Michigan and it's clicked. bake, so get ready for the roller coaster. But I just hope fans or whoever allow the progress to continue.

I think the coaches in that building are going to allow the progress to continue. They're not going to let him get too high, too low. That's such a good point. The outside. I talk about that a little bit too, with the outside noise, right? Yeah, the outside noise is going to be crazy. if he goes and lights up western Michigan, you're still going to have people that's going to say,

that's not good enough is Western Michigan. He deal what he's supposed to do. However, if he goes in the next week, and he don't even have to light up Oklahoma. Let's say he puts up 250, between 250 and 275. That's lighting up in Michigan standards. Yeah. Well, I'm talking about on the national level.

I understand Michigan fans would be a stasis. If he's a reason or the reason Michigan beats Oklahoma, I think the number of matters. Then the train is leaving the station for the Democratic Michigan stands. He's winning the highest men. We win in the national championship. And then there'll be people that will kind of still be a skeptic. Okay, but he's been at home. We ain't seen him do it on the road.

And so we'll see them at Minnesota. And, you know, there's always going to be skeptics, right, until he gets to the next biggest game, which will be Penn State, I think. I think that was Penn State in Indiana. So that's just what it is. That's where we are in college football. I think the great thing that he has this year is he has grownups,

and that's no disrespect. I'm not trying to disrespect the people that were in the building last year. He has true grownups that will guide him. It seems like they hold him accountable and keep him grounded. I was at home, Keegan, just looking at the chat. I was at home. But they'll have somebody that keeps him grounded. I will say this, Trevor.

I think we had it on the show script. What people got to realize is this was all. always there for Bryce. I remember watching the game with Trevor and Darbo. I don't know if he was in there, Trevor, maybe it was just me, Darbo and Lee, because Blake was at the game. I remember I was watching the USC game, and Bryce threw a pass to Marsh that was like, it was a nice pass. Marsh caught it in stride and they scored a touchdown, right? And I remember the camera flicked back to Bryce. And he had this. outer body experience where he took his helmet off.

Like he was so jacked up after he threw the touchdown. He like snapped his thing, took his helmet off and was like you would have thought they just won a national championship. And you could tell that it felt good, him throwing it. They scored. But I don't think you're going to be able to do that type of stuff with Jason, with Kyle Woodig able on the side. He goes to say, hey, come here, son. Because this could get us a 15-yard penalty. come over to the sideline if you want to celebrate over here celebrate over here but just know we

still down we still need you to lock in right and we need four more passes just like that i think that's what the coy debtmers of the world is going to be on the sideline tell him not to let him get too high but also when he makes those critical mistakes not to get too low because they're going to say hey yeah you threw that pick you can't get it back but we need you to lock in on the next set of reps right And he didn't really have that last year. Chip wasn't that because Chip had to worry about a whole bunch of other stuff that was going on outside of being also the OC. And so it's good that he's going to. When I say there's grownups in the building, that's what I mean, guys, when I'm saying growing up in a building.

There are people who are going to be the guard will to keep the person who all his life has been told he's the best at something, right? to still level set him. Because I don't think y'all realized last year was the first time Bryce probably has ever faced at true adversity in his whole time playing football. I think that's important to understand. And he's, to be clear, too, like, I'm not, sorry, I'm not pushing back on you in any way, but, like, I was very impressed, like, during the, what we were hearing behind the scenes for the few months before the Bryce recruitment story started to break.

like he's got some good people around him and his parents are awesome yeah right and i think they've done a really good job too but when you talk about adults in the building too it's not that those people on an individual like nobody gets to that point without having some level of success whatever but it's about cohesiveness and and everybody being on the same page from the coaching staff down and then, you know, anything toxic can be so poisonous in a football team, right? And if it's happening at the top, man, that's just a really, really tough obstacle to overcome, right? So I just want to see if there are struggles. That doesn't mean any of the offseason progress was wrong, right?

multiple things can be true it wants to and you know i know what your average fan is talking about here kind of on your note too like when the camera caught him he brings up as long as he's not signing autographs after throwing for 86 yards i i don't want people to care about that stuff man like when's the right time to tell a kid yes or no on an autograph right and again the context of everything like the camera catches him doing this and that doesn't tell the whole story but because they're losing or because he did this or because he didn't meet this metric everything gets judged through a different lens right we talked recently we had the jim harvall conversation right about even some chargers people's and that charger people now are starting to get frustrated with

all the antics and stuff that they love from the beginning right why because the winning is not where they want it yet because there's been injuries on a team whatever Michigan we saw it the love for harball the hate for him it's time for him to go the love comes back it's amazing what winning does man the nitpicking of winningham's comments about Ohio state and Bryce and whatever is because Michigan lost to Ohio State last year yep that's it right so antics behavior the things the camera catches in those moments whatever what you're willing to accept and what you're willing to let bother you is almost completely dependent on winning and losing it's it right so and that's what happened with bryce last year they lost to ohio state and they lost in that bowl game and then the staff got blown up so guess what now i'm seeing the negative that's all i see and i'm pessimistic and i'm not going to buy into this hype and this optimism. And if I have been pessimistic and I'm letting you buy in a little bit as soon as he

struggles, I'm going to come right back and tell you I was right. Or he's going to do well and I'm going to go all in on the hype so that I can come crashing. You know what I mean? It's just let's get off the roller coaster, man. Let's just ride the progress. But yeah, I am happy that some people are coming around on what coaches him is saying and the information that's been out there. And again, I'm not telling you Bryce is going to do anything. I'm not, you know, Miss Cleo. I know Miss Cleo's not either. That's a bad effort. Chop!

Um. Oh, God. Sorry, I get distracted so easily, like the dogging up. I had to explain John Edwards to somebody the other day. You remember him? The psychic guy. And I had to tell them like, well, they got busted. Like, they would have people posing in line that worked for the show.

who are you hoping to talk to? Who are you hoping to hear from? And then they'd come back and be like, okay, this was the name. That's how he did that stuff. Anyway, I'm willing to adjust.

If we've talked about the muscle memory and what he's learned in the off-season happening on Saturdays, right? Just wait for trends is all I'm saying. I think there's been a trend this off-season, and that's what I'm buying into. And in the season, there could be highs,

there could be lows. But let's let some trends develop before we start to talk about right and wrong and future projection, whatever. But hey, I've been optimistic about Bryce since he got here. I've been optimistic all offseason. And I'm still optimistic because I've been hearing great things. And I hope it translates to Saturdays because Michigan games are a lot more fun when they're winning and we're not upset because he signed an autograph or whatever, right?

So that's simple. I just, and I'll wrap it up because I know we up against it. I just want to employ the Michigan fans this. I know it's hard, Paul's, to trust the process because this is a new coaching staff. This is we won the national championship a couple years ago. That feeling felt amazing to feel on top of college football and to laugh at all of our haters. What I want you guys to do is. to take the 12 games in totality and let the staff develop this kid into what he could potentially be.

Are there going to be some great games? Yes. Are there going to be some good games? Yes. Are there going to be some so-so games? Yes. And will he have a bad or one, two, or three bad games this year? Possibly so. That's football. Please understand that. That is football. So don't let the peaks and the valleys disturb you on the ultimate goal. The ultimate goal for me this season is I want Bryce to come out as when we get done with this season,

somebody say that's a top quarterback next year. He's the name to watch. We're really high. We're really high on this guy. It looked like it clicked this year, and next year is going to be special. If I get special this year, I'm a I was going to say anything above that. I agree.

Yep. I'm ecstatic, but that's land gap. I wasn't expecting it. Just give me what I wanted last year, which is consistency, make the right reads, right? And it look like everybody's having some fun. Receivers, catch the ball, offensive line, and make sure you get your blocks, and just lock in. Outside of that, anything else is laying up, and I'd be pleasantly surprised. and happy with it, but I'm not expecting you to do it.

So to my Michigan, fam, brethren, just let the process play out. And at the end of the year, if it still looks bad, we can have a different conversation. I don't think it's going to look bad. Based on what I've, the people I've talked to, based on what Trevor's told me the people you talk to, and it kind of coincides. So we're not being lied to. But they're different people. So it's under the lens of different people.

I don't think we're going to have that. type of season. But if we do, we figure that out at the end of the year. But right now, let the kid be developed. Don't be out here. He got to win a highsman. It's a failure if we don't make the playoffs. It's a failure if we go nine and three. Just let the development happen. These kids are freshmen and sophomore. We are a young team. There's some juniors. There's a sprinkler of some seniors. But go look at the captain vote. I didn't see one true. senior on there except for rob more who's been here yours is a senior is you who trey pierce is a senior did tray pierce start with us or was the transferring yeah yeah he started

okay okay so tray peers and rob more three times we're used we used to the whole dang thing being seniors and maybe a sprinkle of a junior so this team is is young led let's grow with the team as a fan base. David pointed out he's right. The autograph thing was at the MSU game. I think I was thinking of laughing at Oklahoma or no, at USC. Yeah, it was the USC guy. He was on the sideline.

I think I was mixing those two things together. But I don't remember the last thing I was going to say. It probably doesn't matter that much. Oh, no, something else he said about fun. Like, yeah, let's have some fun again. Right. I think that's a big thing for me. Yeah, like you said, seeing the better coaching, the progress on the field.

I don't think stats in the end are going to matter because it's going to be how it feels, right? But like when we've talked about a big stride for Bryce this year, if he's completing 65% or a little more of his passes, if he throws for 2,500, 2,600 yards, if his TD interception ratio is 2 to 1, 3 to 1, and if he runs for 800 yards and gets some touchdowns on the ground, that's a hugely successful season and one of the best seasons of Michigan quarterback has had, and it's actually not that far off from what he did last year. When he did run the ball, he was getting a lot of yards, he didn't run it very much. We've talked at length about what happened at Utah with Dampier

and how you can kind of easily figure out what Bryce will do running the ball. And throwing the ball, you fix the drops a little. bit. You throw in a JJ Buchanan and a Moa and a Johnson and a Goodwin who looks like he's taking some strides and better pat. Like it's not crazy, but it's really not. So, yeah. I just want to say this real quick, guys. I would take Bryce rising over his freshman year peaking. And I don't want to take a shot at this quarterback that I'm about to say. but he was revered in our fan base and people he was the golden standard for like 10 years right everybody remember chad hennie and if you don't know chad hitting you're too young for that go look

it up true freshman he peaked freshman year 60 percent completion through for almost 2 800 yards 25 touchdowns 12 interceptions now go look at his years after that sophomore year decline he had an uptick in a completion percentage, but its yards went down. Senior year, yards went down. So I'll take the opposite of that. Let Bryce start here and just go up instead of him peeking as a freshman. Then we're comparing everything to that. It can only go up.

So I see the chat. I see y'all going crazy. We'll definitely have some interactions with you guys probably next week, week at a game, probably get some questions from you guys but yeah I think that was a great way to end it Trev and I'm excited

I mean we got one more this is week zero we got one more Saturday of nine Power 5 schools or the big ones next Saturday we're kicking it off and I'm super excited I'm so like disappointed that we're playing a night game to start it off because I'm ready to like get after

So the fact that I'm going to have to wait into 630 Central to watch them play. Like I said, though, if you want to talk about having fun, watch this transition. If you want to talk about having fun and you want to take advantage of a night game, then a seven-hour Blue by 90 tailgate is going to be the way to do it. Right? There you go. Yeah. So leave it go.

Yeah. So on that note, Blue By-90 shop, again, if you haven't checked that out, VIP, Tailgate packages are available. Information on the tailgates there as well. I would love for you guys to stop by Justin and crew getting everything ready right by the stadium. Perfect spot to tailgate and then head over before the home opener against Western. I believe some of the Oklahoma stuff's come together as well. DJ is going to be their food, drinks a great, great, great time.

You can't beat a Blue by 90 tailgate before Michigan football game. And then as long as the weather is nice, you know, hopefully we've got a very relaxing and enjoyable you know, big win over Western so we can spend the next week at Oklahoma talking ourselves into all the crazy stuff you talked about. We're natty back, baby. Well, I'm going to tell the conversations

are going to be when the whistle and whiskey get in them. There we go. All right. And yeah, I think we'll probably get closer to being able to share a little bit more of the roster and tell that's out there. There's some stuff that, like, I'm just not going to be the guy that does it.

I'll be frank with you. You know, Whittingham was pretty honest again about they've already picked the starting offensive line. We talked about position battles and after two weeks what the next week would look like. So I think you can draw some conclusions from his comments. But after this week and going into next, I think we can really start talking about some solid depth chart stuff. And I'm going to be excited to because the part we won't know until game started is to see how guys rotate and how they're used in these versatile roles. And I'm just excited to see the translation from the talk to the real game and see what it looks like for Michigan.

So yeah, I'm with you. I'm getting pumped. I've got high school football this week. So I'm already like buried in some football stuff. Fun little rivalry game in my neck of the woods as well. So falls almost here and it feels good. It feels good. I had Sam Adams, Octoberfest.

as well this last week. So get some of the fall food out here, and I'm cooking, man. Yeah, I think it's going to be good. Oh, press conferences today, guys. If you want to get some info, I'm pretty sure we'll talk about them tomorrow and Thursday. I'm pretty sure they'll have one offensive guy today and the defense of a guy. Well, they'll probably have offense and defense of that because it is game week prep. So we're probably here from one of the position coaches on both sides.

to the boss since we got coordinators last week. I haven't checked my email yet, so I don't know who it is yet. But Dennis Fithian has been there for us, tracking the audio, sending the audio our way. So we've been able to parse through some of those comments. And again, hoping to be able to post those soon. So, all right, another busy week here on Blue By 90 Podcast Network. We'll be back tomorrow here with Rise to the Victors and Darnell and Toski. I'm sending over the link information today.

We are expecting to come up. 8 o'clock, 8 o'clock east. 8 o'clock, Central, 9 Eastern. There you go. Oh, 9 Eastern. 9 Eastern. I remember you could take this. So cut-ups.

Toski to Goat now back tomorrow. That'll be fantastic. And you'll have OGs with Justin and Joel back as well. And then we'll be here four days a week. Then I got Butros and myself, Michigan Weekly on Wednesday. And then next week, what's the game start? we'll have Dennis Fithian's postgame live joining us as well. So pretty excited again if you're not already liking, subscribing.

This is the one area where the Blue By 90 count is low. We have tons of followers everywhere. So I'd really like to see the subscriber, subscriber count start to rise here on Blue by 90. So make sure you're subscribing, liking notification bell for when we do go live. And if you haven't seen for those that have asked, I have resolved the podcast issue. So you should be seeing that on Spotify and your podcast. podcast networks if you'd prefer listening audio there instead of here.

My point is we everywhere. Everywhere. Everywhere. All right, guys. That's it for Rise of Victors. We will see you tomorrow. Blue By 90 Podcast Network. Thank you.

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