Western Michigan Ran 67 Plays And Never Reached The End Zone

Michigan 13, Western Michigan 12, at Michigan Stadium, in front of 110,879 people. Nine things from a night the Wolverines needed a replay review to survive.

1. The last play only exists because a review put a second back on the clock#

Michigan trailed 12-7 with 35 seconds left. On second down from the Western Michigan 47, Bryce Underwood threw for Andrew Marsh in the end zone, incomplete, and the clock on NBC's broadcast read 0:00. Western Michigan's sideline started onto the field. The crew went to the monitor and came back with one second.

The Big Ten defended the call in a statement afterward, saying video review determined that a Western Michigan defender, Micah Davis, "started his jump from an established out-of-bounds position" and touched the ball with one second left, and that the ruling came off a side-by-side of the play and a direct shot of the stadium clock.

NBC's rules analyst Terry McAulay said on the broadcast that the stadium and broadcast clocks were in sync and that he could not account for the ruling. "The ball is clearly still in the air when the clock goes to zero," he said, per CBS Sports.

Kyle Whittingham said he had thought there was time. "I glanced at the clock, and I was pretty sure there was one second left," he said. Lance Taylor said "it was past zeroes before we touched it," and said he had expected a review because it was the last play. Western Michigan's president, Russ Kavalhuna, told reporters the school would ask its commissioner whether a review of the ending is possible, because "this football team deserves a second look."

2. Michigan won because Western Michigan could not score a touchdown#

The Broncos ran 46 rushing plays and threw 21 times, 67 snaps from scrimmage, and every point they got came off Dieter Kelly's right foot: field goals of 52, 45, 39 and 33 yards, four attempts and four makes.

They snapped the ball inside Michigan's 20-yard line on three of their 11 possessions. Those three trips produced two field goals and a turnover on downs. The closest they got all night was Michigan's 12-yard line with a minute and a half to play, and they lost two yards on the next snap and kicked.

Western Michigan gained 132 yards on 46 carries, 2.9 a carry, and Broc Lowry completed 15 of 21 for 89 yards with no touchdown. A team that runs 67 plays and averages 3.3 yards on them has been made to earn everything, and it never earned the last 12 yards.

3. Michigan's offense produced two drives and nothing else#

The first: 11 plays, 75 yards, finished by Underwood on fourth-and-goal from the 1. Michigan's own account is that he completed all five of his throws on it for 72 total yards, including a one-handed catch and run by JJ Buchanan. Jalen Hoffman caught the first pass of his career on that drive, in his first career start.

The last: six plays, 75 yards, 35 seconds, a touchdown.

Between those two, Michigan had eight possessions. They produced six punts, an interception and a lost fumble. No points. Michigan ran 48 plays all night to Western Michigan's 67, and had four possessions after halftime.

Part of that is where the drives began. Michigan started all 10 of its possessions inside its own 30, not most of them, all of them, and the average start was its own 17. Ryan Millmore punted six times for a 40.0 average and dropped four inside the 20. An offense that never begins past its own 27 has to string first downs together, and Michigan went 3 of 10 on third down, 30%.

4. Every giveaway became Western Michigan field position, and two became points#

Marsh muffed a first-quarter punt at Michigan's 28 and Western Michigan recovered at the 27. That one cost nothing, because the defense got a stop on downs at the 19.

The other two cost six. With 49 seconds left in the first half Michigan took the ball at its own 2 and went after points. Two runs and a nine-yard completion to Buchanan moved it to the 22, a Western Michigan offside gave it a first down at the 27, and on the next snap Dillon Moore intercepted Underwood at the 30 with 12 seconds left. Kelly kicked a 45-yarder as the half ended.

Then, with 1:50 to play and Michigan trailing by two, Underwood ran for 13 yards and fumbled, forced by Joshua Franklin, and Western Michigan recovered at Michigan's 31. Five plays later Kelly kicked from 33 yards and Western Michigan led by five.

Half of Western Michigan's points came off Michigan's three giveaways, and the one that put the Broncos ahead was a quarterback fumbling on second-and-14 after gaining 13.

5. The third quarter was one Western Michigan possession#

The Broncos took the ball at their own 8 with 9:00 left in the third and did not give it back until 10:28 remained in the fourth. Twenty plays, 71 yards, 13 minutes and 40 seconds, and it ended in the 39-yard field goal.

They faced five third downs on that drive and converted four, including a third-and-14 with seven seconds left in the quarter that Aveion Chenault turned into 16 yards. Half of Western Michigan's eight conversions on the night came on that one possession.

Possession finished 40:08 to 19:52. The unit credited with holding this team to 12 points was on the field for two thirds of the night.

6. Dom Nichols and Troy Bowles, in their first career starts#

Nichols set career highs in tackles with nine, sacks with 1.5 and tackles for loss with 2.5. Michigan's postgame notes put the denominator on that last one: his 2.5 in the first half alone was more than any Wolverine managed across a full game in 2025, when Jaishawn Barham's 2.0 three times was the season best.

Bowles led everyone with 12 tackles, seven of them solo, and matched his career high with two for loss. Both were making the first start of their careers, as was Chase Taylor. John Henry Daley, who was on a pitch count in August, made his first start as a Wolverine and finished with three tackles and a quarterback hurry.

Michigan finished with two sacks, six tackles for loss and six quarterback hurries against an offense that ran 67 plays, and gave up one sack.

7. Buchanan was the passing game, and the receiver job Michigan argued about all August produced nothing#

Buchanan caught six passes for 126 yards in his Michigan debut, career highs in both. That is 74.1% of Michigan's 170 passing yards, and Underwood finished 12 of 22 for those 170.

Two of Michigan's three third-down conversions were Underwood to Buchanan on the final drive, both on third-and-10. The first went 28 yards. The second went 47 and won the game.

Behind him, the spot Michigan spent a month settling did nothing. Channing Goodwin, named the third receiver on August 31, started and was targeted once, an incompletion on the second play of the last drive. Travis Johnson made his college debut and was not thrown to. Marsh, who led this team in receiving in 2025, caught two of the five thrown to him for 15 yards.

8. Nine penalties for 80 yards, a new left guard and a two-deep with holes in it#

Michigan was flagged nine times for 80 yards to Western Michigan's five for 40. Three were holding calls, two of them wiping out plays on the same third-quarter drive and one of those on Underwood himself. On a second-quarter Western Michigan possession, a pass interference on Jyaire Hill and an unnecessary roughness on Smith Snowden gave the Broncos 30 yards between them, and the Broncos punted anyway.

Michigan's participation release lists Evan Link at left guard, his first career start there after six starts at left tackle and 11 at right tackle.

The release also carries a line reading RHINO, with Avery Gach and Manuel Beigel under it. The sixth-lineman package Jason Beck carried from Virginia to Syracuse to Utah is now a position on Michigan's own paperwork.

9. On injuries, Michigan published nothing#

The postgame notes run to 14 bullets on attendance, program records, career highs and debuts and carry no availability item. The participation release names every man who played, including 47 special-teams contributors, and lists nobody as unavailable. No Michigan player is recorded in the play-by-play as having left the game.

That is not the same as saying nobody was hurt. College football has no mandatory injury report and this staff has said it will publish no depth chart, so the participation release is the only instrument there is, and it records who was on the field rather than who is healthy.

What it does record is that Andrew Babalola, who Whittingham said on August 31 was still on the shelf, appears nowhere in it, not in the two-deep and not on special teams. And that the two men Michigan managed through August, Daley and Rod Moore, both started and both made tackles.

Oklahoma is here Saturday at noon, ranked 10th.

Sources: Michigan Athletics, all opened September 6, 2026: the September 5 game recap for the score, scoring summary, team statistics, attendance and the opening drive; the September 5 postgame notes for the career highs, the Barham comparison and the starts and debuts; the September 5 player participation release for the lineups, the RHINO line and the special-teams contributors. CollegeFootballData's play-by-play and drive files for the week-one Michigan game, read September 6, 2026, for down and distance, drive starting field position, the penalty log and the third-down sequence. David Cobb, CBS Sports, September 6, 2026, for the Big Ten's statement, Terry McAulay's remarks on the NBC broadcast and the postgame quotations from Kyle Whittingham, Lance Taylor and Russ Kavalhuna.