What Michigan staff is working on with Bryce Underwood before spring ball

Michigan Wolverines football offensive coordinator Jason Beck is also the team’s quarterbacks coach, but he has another dedicated staff member working with the position in Koy Detmer Jr.

A former BYU quarterback, Detmer played a year under Beck, then the quarterbacks coach with the Cougars, and coached with him at Syracuse (2022-23), New Mexico (2024) and Utah (2025). His father, Koy Detmer, was an NFL quarterback for the Philadelphia Eagles and his uncle, Ty Detmer, won the 1990 Heisman Trophy as the signal-caller for BYU and went on to have a long career in the pros.

“I’m football, through and through,” Detmer said on the ‘In The Trenches’ podcast with Jon Jansen. “I’ve grown up around it my whole entire life, with my dad playing, my uncle playing and then my grandfather being a longtime high school head coach. Being around that game for so long, I’m so passionate about, obviously, the game of football, but developing young men and watching them grow. I always believe that these are the most important years of their life, because they’re going to affect the next 30 to 40 years.”

Detmer is now tasked with developing Michigan’s quarterback room, which features a returning starter in sophomore Bryce Underwood. The 6-foot-4, 228-pounder completed 60.3 percent of his passes for 2,428 yards and 11 touchdowns with 9 interceptions while opening all 13 games a year ago. He added 392 rushing yards and 6 scores on the ground.

Upon taking the job in late-December, new Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham seemed surprised that Underwood didn’t have more quarterback coaching under the previous staff. Now, though, Detmer and Co. have gotten right to work with the Detroit native to fine tune his skill set.

“Bryce is a kid that holds himself to such a high standard, and he has big goals for himself,” the Michigan assistant said. “What I love about Bryce is the kid works his tail off. A lot of kids and a lot of players have high expectations or high goals for themselves, but maybe the actions or what they do on a day-to-day basis don’t align. And, with Bryce, he shows that every single day.

“He wants to be so great. He wants to be such a good player — and he works his tail off to do so, both in the film study and then in the weight room, working really hard. 

“For him, this spring, just kind of sharpening up his tool box, so to speak, whether it be with his feet or timing on certain throws and things like that. We’re spending a lot of time in the little bit that we get now to kind of work a little bit one-on-one with him before weights. That’s kind of what we’re working on.

“But the kid is super, super driven, and I’m in the position where I’m just super thankful to be able to work with him, because he is a talented young man, but the kid works his tail off to be who he wants to be.”

The starting quarterback has to be the leader of the team, Detmer said, and show great toughness.

“You’ve got to put in the extra time,” Detmer said of non-negotiables at the quarterback spot. “You’ve got to put in the extra work. Finding more time than what is asked of you to do extra study and extra film study, extra training in the weight room. Extra training with the guys on your team that you’re going to play with in the fall, I think, is huge.

“Some thing I always talk about with our guys is you’ve got to be the toughest individual on the team, and that doesn’t always mean being some meathead muscle dude, but when those guys look at you and they see you out there on the field and you’re getting hit and you’re popping right back up, man, that says a lot. So, being the toughest — both physically and mentally — is important and is a non-negotiable, really, for us in the quarterback room.

“And then just training your tail off. Every single day, when you walk through those double doors and you go into that weight room, you’re training your tail off and giving everything you’ve got — not just for yourself but for every single guy in that room. So, those are some non-negotiable habits that I try to instill in our guys.”

Michigan begins spring practices March 17 and will conclude with an April 18 intrasquad scrimmage at The Big House.