Should Michigan Bench Bryce Underwood?

Michigan is 3-2, 0-2 in the Big Ten, and sitting on a bye week with Penn State, Indiana, Oregon and Ohio State still on the schedule.

So the question is going to get asked all week whether anybody likes it or not. I asked it myself after Minneapolis.

Here's my honest answer, and it's not the one I expected to land on when I started writing.

The numbers

Through five games, Bryce Underwood is 67 of 113 for 881 yards — 59.3 percent — with 5 touchdowns and 4 interceptions. That's a 132.3 rating and 176 yards a game. He's run it 57 times for 212 yards and 2 scores, and taken 8 sacks.

The interception number is the one that stings. Half of them came in a single afternoon at Minnesota.

Break out just the games against real defenses and it gets worse. He completed 52.9 percent against Oklahoma, 60.7 against Iowa, 47.6 at Minnesota. He hasn't cleared 61 percent against a Power opponent all year. That's not a slump, that's five games of the same thing.

For a roster built around the idea that year two is when he takes the leap, those are not leap numbers.

What the tape actually says

This is where the easy version of the argument falls apart.

Western Michigan (13-12 W). 12 of 22, 170 yards, a touchdown and a pick. The only reason that night ended in a win was the second-chance Hail Mary to JJ Buchanan after the replay crew put a second back on the clock. Nobody's defending that performance.

Oklahoma (17-10 W). 9 of 17 for 111 yards and no passing touchdown and Michigan beat the No. 11 team in the country anyway. Underwood ran 18 times for 87 yards, including a 38-yard touchdown, and he didn't turn it over once. The defense won that game. But he didn't lose it, and I picked Michigan to lose it.

UTEP (52-17 W). 19 of 25, 223 yards, 2 touchdowns. The version the staff described in camp. Also UTEP.

Iowa (20-19 L). Season-high 276 yards on 17 of 28 with 2 touchdowns. He threw a red-zone interception to Deshaun Lee, his own former high school teammate, which is the kind of detail that only happens to Michigan. And then Iowa went 91 yards and won it on a 16-yard touchdown with two seconds left.

Read that again. Michigan's quarterback threw for a career high and Michigan lost because the defense gave up a 91-yard drive in the last minute.

Minnesota (20-14 L). 10 of 21 for 101 yards, no touchdowns, two interceptions, three sacks. Michigan finished with 180 total yards, converted 3 of 10 on third down, and held the ball for 22 minutes. That one's on him and it's on him badly.

So of the two losses, one was a defensive collapse in a game he played his best football of the season, and one was the worst game of his career. That's a meaningfully different story than "the quarterback is costing us games."

The Tommy Carr problem

Carr is the name people keep saying, and I understand why.

He's a true freshman out of Saline, the grandson of Lloyd Carr, the son of Jason Carr, the younger brother of Notre Dame's starter. Michigan named him QB2 before the season, which told you what the staff thinks of him. He's a Michigan football story waiting to be written.

And his entire college résumé is one drive.

Against UTEP in the fourth quarter he led an 8-play, 51-yard touchdown drive, went 2 for 2 for 23 yards with a 19-yard score to Salesi Moa, and ran twice for 18. The reviews out of his debut were the ones you'd expect — bright future, all of that.

Two passes. In garbage time. Against UTEP.

That's not a sample. It's a highlight. Anyone telling you one drive proves he's the answer is telling you what they want to be true.

And the games on the other side of this bye are Penn State at home (which should be broadcasted on the Comedy Channel at 3 AM) on October 17 and Indiana the week after. You do not hand a kid with two career attempts his first start against Penn State.

What the bye week is actually for

Here's where I land.

The question isn't "Underwood or Carr." That framing is a trap, because the honest answer to it is obviously Underwood and it lets everyone stop thinking.

The real question is whether this offense is built to let a sophomore quarterback succeed. Michigan has scored 13, 17, 19 and 14 points in four of five games. The protection has been shaky with 8 sacks allowed and a steady diet of second-and-long. The run game disappears for whole halves. Against Minnesota the entire operation produced 180 yards.

You can put Tommy Carr behind that and watch the same thing happen to him.

What the bye is for is fixing the structure around the quarterback, not swapping the quarterback. Simplify the reads. Get Jordan Marshall more than ten carries in a game Michigan is trying to control; he averaged 5 yards a pop at Minnesota and touched it ten times. Stop living in third-and-long, where Michigan went 3 for 10 and never held the ball.

If that happens and he's still putting up 101-yard afternoons in November, then it's a real conversation. Right now it's a reaction to one terrible Saturday in Minneapolis.

The verdict

No. Not yet, and not against Penn State.

But I'd be lying if I said this looked like the season I predicted in August, and I'd be lying if I said the Minnesota tape didn't scare me.

Underwood has four games to prove the leap is still coming. Penn State, Indiana, Rutgers, Michigan State. If Michigan is 5-4 going to Oregon with the same quarterback putting up the same numbers, the conversation won't be about whether to bench him.

It'll be about whether anybody on this roster even cares anymore.