If you had a Nintendo 64 back in the day — and I hope you did! — you know that the game cartridge wouldn’t always work. There wouldn’t be anything wrong with it, per se. Sometimes it just got all gunked up over the course of using it. Maybe you weren’t careful with it. Maybe you weren’t using it the way that you should. But oftentimes you could reset the issues by simply pausing, ejecting the cartridge, and blowing the dust out of the bottom. You weren’t always sure if that’d fix things, but often turning the console off and on again after making that change would reset the system.
Or consider a hockey team down big after the first period. You’ll often see them replace the goalie. Sometimes it’s because the starter just isn’t making basic saves. Sometimes it’s a bit of bad “puck luck” that’s got him rattled. But there are also times where the goals aren’t totally his fault — the offense can’t get shots, the defense isn’t clearing the front of the net, the penalties are piling up — and he still gets pulled. Is it fair to solely blame him? No. But the team needs a hard reset. A spark.
Bryce Underwood has not been — and is not currently — solely to blame for Michigan offensive ineptitude. He has faced his (un)fair share of balls and calls not going his way (see: Andrew Marsh getting blatantly interfered with but still catching the ball until he didn’t). He was playing for a head coach who’d rather be on Instagram, an offensive coordinator without a dedicated QB coach for a true freshman starter, and then another offensive coordinator obsessed with rhinos and perimeter runs.
And yet, Underwood remains culpable for many of his own problems. He cannot make the basic saves, as it were. Unless a defense trots out the simplest of schemes (Iowa), he’s unable to read it or adjust to it. As his frustration mounts, so do his mistakes (see: Northwestern 2025, Western Michigan 2026, among plenty of others). There has yet to be a road game where he hasn’t looked completely overwhelmed. He remains consistently inconsistent.
No, Bryce Underwood is not the only problem with the offense. But if you’re going to be a starter, a quarterback, and a captain at Michigan? You must take responsibility. You must be held accountable. Some would argue it took Kyle Whittingham far too long to do so (you know who you are). But at long last, down 3-0 to a hapless Penn State team, the Wolverines had seen enough.
#StartTheCarr, kids. We’re going on a drive.
I am not naive enough to watch 30 minutes of football against a sub-average Penn State team and think that Tommy Carr is now a magician and a Heisman candidate. Thankfully, I don’t believe anyone is suggesting such things. Rather, finally turning over the keys to the Carr has a fanbase feeling . . . oh, what’s the word . . .ah, yes, “hopeful.” Which is something that we haven’t seen much of over the Sherrone Moore years and thus far into the Whittingham era.
As a side note, how long does one have to coach for it to be considered an era?
If you coach for one year and a new AD immediately fires you, is that still an era?
Asking for no reason in particular.
But Tommy Carr felt poised. Confident. And not a “they’ve never seen a freshman like me” confidence. One that was – well, frankly – based in reality. He delivered a perfect ball to Hogan Hansen while under duress. He burst through a seam and nearly took one to the house with his legs. Then he DID take it to the house on a perfectly-run option play that Bryce probably hucks over the running back’s head.
And it wasn’t just Carr. Jordan Marshall found some juice. Savion Hiter showed why he was the best running back recruit in the country. Bryson Kuzdzal (!) ripped off a massive touchdown run. And sure, there’s Xs and Os reasons for it. Many have been posited elsewhere: pistol formation, defense having to respect the pass game again, Beck remembering the whole “north-south” run thing. Those are all likely true. But that intangible juice, moxie, momentum, what-will-you is the common thread running through Michigan in that second half.
Was it perfect? Of course not. But this was the first time in multiple games that I actually believed Michigan could move the football when they had to. It was the first time in multiple games that this OFFENSE looked like they believed they could move the football. The defense created three turnovers. The offense cashed in on three turnovers. Complementary football! Who knew!
Sure, there’s always a chance Tommy Carr is firmly average and just playing against an average defense. But there’s also the chance he’s pretty dang good. We’ll learn a lot more this weekend against Indiana in a game I’d bet the farm on Tommy Carr starting.
At least for the next six days, sports are fun again.
