Notebook: Broncos QB battle, Milivojevic shining in backup role, Chippewas OL growth

With respective fall camps for the five Michigan FBS programs underway, there’s plenty of news and notes to address from position battles to backup quarterbacks to offseason award watchlists. 

Here’s a quick rundown of some extra reporting from the first week of fall camp. 

Who plays quarterback for Western Michigan? 

There are two main options for the Broncos and head coach Lance Taylor to replace graduating starter Hayden Wolff: Broc Lowry and Brady Jones. 

Lowry, a redshirt-sophomore quarterback who transferred to Western Michigan from Indiana prior to the 2024 season, played sparingly in a running quarterback package last season. He went 4-of-8 for 21 yards in his small passing sample, while adding 129 yards and three touchdowns on 24 carries on the season. 

Jones, a junior transfer from junior college, starred at Riverside Community College, where he amassed 4,456 yards and completed 64 percent of his passes while throwing for 44 touchdowns in 2024.

“I think both of those guys could start in our league,” Taylor said. “They're both talented enough where they could be starters in our league. So that's a good situation to be in.”

And after both quarterbacks progressed through the spring and summer equally in Taylor’s estimation, it’s really a matter of seeing who can separate as the clear-cut option in the next two weeks of camp. 

“Really the next two weeks will be critical in deciding that,” Taylor said. “I want the competition to decide itself on the field. You know, we talked about, one of our mottos in the off season was ‘earned not given,’ so I want them to earn it. Whoever's the starting quarterback game one, he will have earned it out here.” 

Alessio Milivojevic rising in backup role for Spartans

It’s Aidan Chiles’ offense in East Lansing, surely, and the Spartans’ success in 2025 hinges heavily on how he plays. But backup Alessio Milivojevic has those in the building excited about his progress and potential for the future. 

"We're fired up about Alessio,” offensive coordinator Brian Lindgren said. “Big arm, and he's done a really nice job of picking up the offense. Really sharp, sharp guy and puts in the time. And I would feel really good about putting him in the game.”

Milivojevic was one of the top players in the state of Illinois in the class of 2024 and signed with the Spartans as one of the first major building blocks of the Jonathan Smith era. 

And while he’s yet to play more than a few live college snaps, the redshirt-freshman quarterback has seemingly carved out a stable role behind Chiles, particularly with how he impressed the coaching staff during the spring.

What was a competition with a potential to send the coaches to the portal after spring practice quickly became an answered roster question.

“That was a conversation we had going into spring ball, was letting those guys get reps and see what it looks like to see if we needed to go get like maybe a veteran backup quarterback type thing,” Smith said after the first spring practice. “Alessio had a great spring, he’s our backup quarterback. We have a lot of confidence in him. He threw a couple of nice balls today. So, he’s really taken a step that he would be the next man up.”

Offensive line critical for Year 1 success under Matt Drinkall for Central Michigan

Central Michigan is perhaps the biggest question mark of all five FBS Michigan teams entering the 2025 season, a natural downstream effect of a new coaching staff. 

Add in the fact that Central Michigan has competition at quarterback, is working back a bevy of receivers who were hurt in 2024, a reworked running back room and no shortage of questions on the offensive line, and there’s plenty of work for Drinkall and Co. to get after. 

At the top of the list? Building a bulldozing offensive line unit. 

“That group has to operate as one, large entity together,” Drinkall said, including running backs and tight ends in his analysis. “We like all those guys and one big thing that's different for us right now than in spring is we have a couple of the key guys back from injury that are now, helps the depth. So some of the guys we heard about, we're seeing them now.”

At this specific practice, Drinkall wore a maroon trucker cap emblazoned with a simple slogan in gold lettering: “RUN THE DAMN BALL.”

Coming from an Army program that runs the ball as much as any team in the country with an option attack, where he himself was the offensive line coach, Drinkall and his staff could be the salve and solve to help a Central Michigan running game that finished averaging 166 yards per game in 2024. The same offensive line also ranked No. 77 nationally in sacks allowed. 

Leading any improvement is likely to be Brady Ploucha, a redshirt-junior lineman who started all 12 games at right guard in 2024. And he’s already noticed a difference.

Ploucha estimated that the current offensive line group is in a better spot at this point in the calendar than the 2024 group was, relatively. 

“I'm going to say we're slightly, a little ahead of where I originally thought we'd be,” Ploucha said on Aug. 1. “That may just be me and how we did last year going into camp. I feel like we've definitely progressed a lot more than we have in the first week than we did last year, especially under the new coaching staff.”

Broncos und Wolverines gehen Deutsch

That translates to “Broncos and Wolverines going German,” by the way.  

While it was relatively old news by the time Western Michigan head coach Lance Taylor spoke about it after the Broncos’ first spring practice, he is still fired up about the prospect of kicking off the 2026 season against Michigan in Europe.

“You know, the first college football game ever in Germany is pretty, pretty cool,” Taylor said on July 30. “Pretty special.”

And in case you missed the news: It was reported and then announced by the schools in late July that the programs were working toward opening the 2026 season with a game in Frankfurt, Germany, played at Deutsche Bank Park, the home stadium of Bundesliga side Eintracht Frankfurt. 

The venue, formerly known as Waldstadion, was completed in 1925, more than a year before Michigan Stadium was completed, and has hosted countless soccer — or fußball — matches and other major events over the years, including some of the NFL’s past and future games in Germany. For American football games, the stadium has a capacity of 48,000.

The game between the Broncos and Wolverines, originally scheduled for Sept. 5, 2026, at Michigan Stadium, would instead be played on Aug. 29, 2026, with Michigan still serving as the home team. 

While not officially confirmed at this point, if the game does come to fruition, it would be the first game for Michigan outside of the United States. Western Michigan has played internationally twice, once in Canada and once in the Bahamas, both for bowl games. 

It would also be the first time Michigan plays a team from the Mid-American Conference in a venue other than Michigan Stadium. 

Preseason award watchlist season

It is that time of year, and we’re keeping track of them all here. 

So far, lists have been released for the Maxwell, Nagurski, Outland, Butkus, Thorpe, Wuerffel, Hornung, Groza and Guy awards. 

And there are still seven more preseason lists to come, which will be added as the week rolls along. Make sure to see which players from across the five teams landed on the respective lists.