Immediate Impact: Underwood to Michigan

By Chris Marler

Early Thursday evening Bryce Underwood announced via Hayes Fawcett on Twitter that he was flipping from LSU to Michigan.

The nation’s No. 1 overall player in the 2025 class had been committed to the Tigers since January 6th of this year. Now, Underwood has decided to stay close to home and attend a school that he hadn’t visited in over 14 calendar months despite living 30 minutes away door to door.

The remainder of this season, and the future of the program will most certainly be under a microscope as the natives get restless in Baton Rouge. LSU doesn’t have another quarterback commit in this class, and with signing day less than a month away they’ll need to act fast. Or they could make a play for whatever elite signal callers enter the portal when it opens in the next few weeks.

For the moment, the overall impact of losing Underwood hasn’t changed anything in this class besides its national ranking. Following the news LSU dropped from No. 3 to No. 6 in On3’s Team Composite Recruiting Rankings, falling behind Georgia, Alabama, Ohio State, Texas and Auburn. With the addition of Underwood, Michigan moved up two spots from No. 10 to No. 8 overall.

Outside of the rankings shift the impact has initially been minimal. And if you’re Brian Kelly you need to keep it that way. A spot in the playoff may be gone, but keeping this recruiting class together for the future building blocks of the program could arguably be just as important.

Beat Vandy. Keep the recruiting class intact. And once that’s done maybe swing by The Dunham School and start building a relationship with Elijah Haven who lives down the road and is the top ranked quarterback recruit for the 2027.