ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Everyone knew what it was, until it wasn’t. And even then, it really was difficult to reconcile what felt like two truths and a lie. Michigan lost its season opener over Western Michigan on a Hail Mary pass as time expired. Then Michigan beat the Broncos when given a second chance, thanks to an extra second that almost no one but a Big Ten officiating crew saw coming, before ...

Michigan wide receiver JJ Buchanan catches a 47- yard, game-winning pass with no time left on the clock to defeat Western Michigan, 13-12, at Michigan Stadium on Saturday, Sept. 5, 2026, in Ann Arbor, Michigan.

Gregory Shamus/Getty Images North America/TNS

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Everyone knew what it was, until it wasn’t. And even then, it really was difficult to reconcile what felt like two truths and a lie.

Michigan lost its season opener over Western Michigan on a Hail Mary pass as time expired. Then Michigan beat the Broncos when given a second chance, thanks to an extra second that almost no one but a Big Ten officiating crew saw coming, before or after.

And when it was over — officially, if controversially — the scene that Michigan receiver JJ Buchanan described as “surreal,” as students came streaming on to the field to celebrate after he’d hauled in Bryce Underwood's 47-yard heave to escape with a 13-12 victory, no one knew quite how to feel.

“This game will go down in Michigan history,” said Kyle Whittingham, who was making his debut as the Wolverines’ head coach on Saturday. “I don't know if it's in a positive way. But it'll go down in history for certain.”

That’s certainly true. And so is this: That it came down to a desperate final play was the real story here for 60 minutes of regulation.

Because after an impressive opening drive to start the game for the home team, the rest was an offensive display of coaching and execution from the Wolverines. And it looked nothing like what everyone had been promised the last nine months, after Whittingham and his staff were brought in to restore order following Sherrone Moore’s dysfunctional tenure here.

The Broncos, who came in as four-touchdown underdogs, dominated time of possession in this one, finishing with a 2-to-1 advantage while Michigan managed just 12 first downs and 276 yards of offense — more than half of it coming on the first and last drives of the game. The Wolverines lost the turnover battle, 3-0, were penalized twice as much as their opponent, and eventually gave up the lead early in the fourth quarter after Western Michigan put together a 20-play scoring drive that chewed up nearly 14 minutes of the game clock.

“Well, we were flirting with disaster,” Whittingham said, shaking his head. “I mean, that would have been an epic loss.”

Rocky start

Indeed, it would’ve been just the second loss to a Mid-American Conference opponent in program history. And arguably the most embarrassing defeat ever for the Wolverines, right up there with the Appalachian State debacle nearly two decades ago.

Michigan hadn’t lost a season opener at home since 2008, when the Ann Arbor debut for Rich Rodriguez was spoiled by a Utah team coached by none other than Whittingham, whose postgame comments that day sounded a bit ironic now.

“It shouldn’t have been as close as it was,” the Utes’ coach said back then. “It’s a sign of a pretty good football team when you can not play your best and come away with a win, particularly in a venue like this.”

For what it’s worth, he said nothing of the sort late Saturday night, conscious of both the boos he heard from crowd of 110,879 in his venue he now calls home and the anger he heard from some of his players in the locker room.

“All this is squarely on my shoulders, there's no doubt about that,” he said. “I gotta do a better job preparing this football team. But I'm going to tell you right now, there was not a lot of hooting and hollering in that locker room. In fact, there was none. Because we understand that we've got a lot of work to do, and that we have got to be much, much better than we were tonight. … We know we're not going to win a lot of ballgames this year if we don't fix some things, and fix them right away.”

Where to begin, though? Because the effort on the offensive side of the ball looked even more disjointed than it did a year ago when Underwood was a true freshman starting at quarterback.

Not initially, perhaps. Michigan’s scripted opening drive featured a little bit of everything, from quick passes to seven-linemen jumbo packages and even those designed QB runs that new coordinator Jason Beck insisted would be part of the plan to unlock Underwood’s five-star talent.

But then the mistakes started piling up and the yards didn’t. An illegal formation penalty derailed one drive, and then Underwood nearly threw an interception to compound the problem. The sophomore also seemed to revert to some of his bad habits mechanically, misfiring off his back foot and then shooting himself in the other with a telegraphed throw into double coverage. He ran some more, but he also seemed unsure on some read-options, and it wasn’t hard to read the frustration on his face while he sat on the bench as things began to spiral.

Or in the end, frankly. As that initial Hail Mary sailed high and deep out of the back of the end zone and the visitors sideline erupted in celebration, Underwood stood dejected in the middle of the field.

“When I see zeroes on clock, it looked like we lost the game,” Underwood said. “I mean, that's what it was.”

Or was it?

“When I looked up at the clock, it was past zeroes,” Broncos coach Lance Taylor said.

Whittingham wasn’t so sure, though.

“As I glanced at the clock,” he said, “I was pretty sure there was one second left.”

Swirl of emotions

After an interminable wait, Jim Wharrie, the referee leading Saturday’s crew, made the announcement that few in the stadium expected. One second left. One more play to decide it.

Asked what he felt in that moment, Underwood shrugged, “I mean, a blessing. Like, that's the only way I can put it, honestly. And just another opportunity for us to believe in our guys and make a play.”

And once they’d made it, as Underwood sent up another prayer and this time made sure it could be answered in the end zone, it was bedlam. Michigan’s student section came pouring on the field, eventually engulfing the players who’d coming running down to mob Buchanan in the end zone after the catch.

But asked later how it felt to live in that moment, Michigan defensive end Dominic Nichols replied, “Yeah, that wasn't a moment we really wanted to be living in, to be honest. I mean, it's Western Michigan. … Sick to my stomach is the way I would explain the feeling of that game. It should have never come down to that.”

It did, though, and whatever the mix of relief and disappointment the Wolverines felt paled in comparison the emotions Western Michigan’s players felt Saturday.

Terry McAulay, NBC’s rules analyst, sounded baffled on the broadcast as he reviewed the play. The longtime former NFL official noted the clock that appears on TV is the same one fans see in the stadium and “the ball isn't even close to touching a player when it goes to zero.”

“The ball is clearly still in the air when the clock goes to zero, on our screens,” he continued. “The Big Ten is going to have to tell a lot of us how did they get to one second on this play?"

To his credit, Taylor handled it all with even-tempered grace in his postgame media session. So did Western Michigan’s president, Russ Kavalhuna, who also spoke afterward. He said he’d been in contact with Michigan’s interim president, Domenico Grasso, and would work with Mid-American Conference officials to try to find some answers.

“We’ll try to figure out if the end of the game was anything different than what we saw,” Kavalhuna said. “We’ll talk to our commissioner and we’ll try to see if there’s anything that we can ask for a review on. Frankly, I don’t know if we can. But I just want everyone to know that this football team deserves a second look if that’s possible.”

They deserve more than that, obviously. But based on the statement the Big Ten put out early Sunday morning explaining the video review and reaffirming the decision, what the Broncos saw — what we all saw initially, for that matter — isn’t what they’ll get.

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