At the 3rd annual Champions Circle Golf Classic, QB Bryce Underwood talked with Maize n Brew about how Wink Martindale and the Michigan defense are helping his development:
Fall camp is just a week away for the Michigan Wolverines, and one guy that is eager to get things rolling is freshman quarterback Bryce Underwood.
In case you’ve been living under a rock the past eight months, Underwood — the top ranked player in the 2025 class — flipped from LSU to Michigan in November, changing the offensive trajectory of this squad overnight.
Underwood told Maize n Brew on Monday he can’t wait for the season to get started.
“I love going into the season because that brings most of the joy into my mind,” Underwood said at the third annual Champions Circle Golf Classic. “Going into this fall camp, competing with my teammates every day, whether it’s my receivers, my defensive line, DBs, or linebackers every day.”
The development process can be a tricky one, even for a quarterback as talented as Underwood. Not every quarterback gets to practice against a defensive coordinator with play calling experience at the NFL level, but Underwood is the beneficiary of that chaos, learning a collegiate offense in a trial-by-fire sense.
“Me coming from a high school level, I’m not used to seeing certain defenses or blitzes or pressures that he brings,” Underwood said. “Just for that, I feel like he’s honestly preparing us for the next level, and by us, I mean our offensive side of the ball.”
Underwood said he’s been doing throwing sessions on his own this offseason to sync up the timing with receivers, sometimes as early as 6 a.m. and as late as 10 p.m. His work ethic sounds top-tier, with the Belleville native saying that working on building a bond on and off the field is important.
When asked about the tutelage he’s received from other quarterbacks, Underwood says he has learned from one of his teammates.
“I got a lot of advice from Jadyn Davis,” Underwood said. “Just being myself and knowing that football is football, no matter where you are and do, what you’ve been doing your whole life.”
Underwood admitted he’s not much of a golfer, but he does consider another sport his happy place. It’d be easy to guess what that sport was if you paid attention to where he spent a lot of his free time after flipping from LSU to Michigan this fall.
“I’m excited for this upcoming (basketball) season,” Underwood, a frequent attendee at Crisler Center this past winter, said. “We got some of my guys like Trey McKenney as well; I’m excited to see him play for Maize and Blue. I’m excited to see that. But it’s just like a peace thing. Basketball brings me a lot of peace, so I’m just glad to see that.”
We’re still more than a month away from the football season, which only builds anticipation for Underwood and the rest of the quarterback room to come to the Big House. But when the Wolverines hit the field on Aug. 30 under the lights against New Mexico, he and the rest of his teammates will be ready to start the season.
“I’m very excited for the atmosphere and to see how our team has come together, and see how strong our bond actually is to go dominate,” Underwood said.