Michigan celebrated a miracle against WMU. Does it actually feel like a win?

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — The course of a season can change in the tiniest sliver of time — or, if you ask Western Michigan, in no time at all.

One minute, Kyle Whittingham was the coach who was going to make everything right at Michigan. The next, he was the coach who was going to lose his debut to a team from the MAC. One controversial second later, Michigan fans were swarming the field to celebrate a Hail Mary that many impartial observers argued shouldn’t have happened.

Michigan got very, very lucky Saturday night. By the time Bryce Underwood’s first Hail Mary attempt whistled out of bounds, well beyond the reach of any eligible receiver, everyone inside Michigan Stadium had accepted that the Wolverines were going to lose. And let’s be honest: They deserved it. At no point after its opening touchdown drive did Michigan look like the better team. There was nothing flukey about the victory Western Michigan was preparing to celebrate.

Michigan’s victory, on the other hand, was shrouded in controversy. Underwood still had to throw the pass, and JJ Buchanan still had to catch it. Buchanan, the best jump-ball receiver on Michigan’s roster, made an incredible play to haul in a 47-yard prayer and give Michigan a 13-12 victory.

The play only happened because officials gave Michigan an extra second. Replays on the NBC broadcast made it appear that time expired before a Western Michigan defender touched Underwood’s first Hail Mary attempt. Early Sunday, the Big Ten released footage of the officials’ replay decision that showed a second on the stadium clock when the defender touched the ball. Maybe we should call it Schrodinger’s Second, both there and not there.

“When I see zeroes on the clock, I feel like we lost the game,” Underwood said. “That’s what it was. Then we had one second. The thought was, ‘Give my guys an opportunity,’ and that’s what I did.”

Michigan looked lost for most of the 59 minutes and 59 seconds leading up to that final play. The Wolverines couldn’t keep their offense on the field or get their defense off of it. Underwood looked like an even shakier version of the quarterback we saw last season, despite so much talk about his offseason breakthroughs.

The reactions from Whittingham and Michigan’s players showed exactly what they thought of their performance. While fans were going crazy, storming the field and soaking up the moment, the team couldn’t wait to leave that game behind.

“That wasn’t a moment we really wanted to be living in, to be honest,” defensive end Dominic Nichols said. “It’s Western Michigan.”

A statement regarding the results of tonight’s game between Michigan and Western Michigan. pic.twitter.com/DzJVN2ZLTc

— Big Ten Conference (@bigten) September 6, 2026

In one sense, Underwood’s Hail Mary changes very little. The Wolverines were outplayed for much of the night, and one lucky heave after a controversial review doesn’t change that.

In another, that play could change the tenor of Whittingham’s first season dramatically. Losing to Western Michigan would have been an albatross for him to carry for as long as he’s the coach at Michigan, just as Rich Rodriguez had to live with losing to Toledo.

Michigan was 37-1 against MAC schools before Saturday, that lone loss coming against the Rockets in 2008, Rodriguez’s first season. People still bring up that game to remind Michigan of its lowest days. That piece of unfortunate symmetry is something that Whittingham, the first true outsider to be hired at Michigan since RichRod, was well served to avoid.

Perhaps Michigan will turn things around and this game will become a footnote in Whittingham’s first season. It’s true that openers can be deceiving. But if there’s a good team lurking behind the ineptitude the Wolverines displayed Saturday, they concealed it well.

“We have a ton of work to do,” Whittingham said. “The degree of difficulty next week goes way up. If we don’t play a lot better, it’s not going to be pretty.”

No. 10 Oklahoma visits Michigan Stadium next week for what was supposed to be a marquee non-conference matchup. If the Wolverines play like they did Saturday, they’re going to get shellacked. It’s hard to imagine Michigan finding any quick fixes if an entire offseason’s worth of preparation couldn’t produce a better product than what it put on the field in its opener.

Whittingham clearly wasn’t happy, especially with his offense. He suggested the Wolverines needed to take a few more downfield shots to get out of their offensive rut and criticized the play that nearly resulted in a pick six at the end the first half.

“We just didn’t make a good call there,” Whittingham said. “That call made no sense. We should never have been in that situation.”

Whittingham insisted that the talk of Underwood elevating his game in preseason camp was true, even if the results didn’t show Saturday. Some of Underwood’s bad habits reappeared as he forced balls into tight windows, attempted off-balance throws and struggled with his accuracy.

Fixing Underwood was the No. 1 task for Jason Beck, Michigan’s new offensive coordinator. That task, it seems, is far from complete. Underwood wasn’t the only reason that Michigan’s offense went dormant, but he also didn’t do much to bring the Wolverines to life — at least not until his final pass.

That one throw, aided by some controversial officiating, helped Michigan avoid a loss that would have stained its entire season. If the Wolverines end up with 10 wins, no one except fans of Western Michigan will care that one of those wins happened in flukey fashion.

Michigan will have to improve dramatically to even think about something like that. If that improvement doesn’t happen quickly, Whittingham will have some decisions to make, starting with one about his quarterback.

If Michigan had lost, the noise around the program would have been deafening leading up to the Oklahoma game. With that one throw, Underwood bought himself and the program a little more time to get things right.

How much time? Maybe only the tiniest sliver.