Detroit is college football’s new cradle of QBs. Is Donald Tabron the next Bryce Underwood?

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For this year and years to come, a 45-mile corridor in southeast Michigan has a chance to be known as a cradle of College Football Playoff quarterbacks. To illustrate the point, all you have to do is put a pin in the map and connect the strings.

One piece of string stretches from Detroit’s Martin Luther King High School to Eugene, Ore., where Dante Moore starts for the sixth-ranked Oregon Ducks. Another connects the town of Saline with South Bend, Ind., where CJ Carr is a first-year starter for No. 12 Notre Dame. The short strand connecting Belleville with Ann Arbor represents Bryce Underwood, the star freshman who will get his first true taste of the Michigan-Michigan State rivalry when the No. 25 Wolverines face the Spartans on Saturday night.

There’s another piece of string, length yet to be determined, set aside for Donald Tabron II, who plans to attend the game in East Lansing with his family. Tabron, a sophomore at Detroit’s Cass Tech, is widely regarded as the region’s next great quarterback prospect. He’s already been labeled a five-star recruit as the No. 39 player in the 247Sports Composite rankings for the Class of 2028. And he’s already ignited a heated recruiting battle that includes the Spartans, Wolverines and a host of other Power 4 programs.

Two weeks ago, Tabron was in Los Angeles to watch USC beat Michigan. Last week, he was at Michigan Stadium to watch the Wolverines beat Washington. A few weeks before that, he was at Texas A&M. His high school season? That’s going pretty well, too. Tabron had 340 passing yards last week, including a 99-yard touchdown pass, as Cass Tech beat King to improve to 8-0 and win its fourth consecutive Detroit Public School League championship.

“Of course, the season comes first — the games, practice, all that, comes first,” Tabron said. “My coach realized we have some guys on the team who want to go out and travel and see other colleges. He encourages it.”

State Record!!!!!!!!!!

Cass Tech 2026 WR/CB/S Will Sykes Jr. (Ferris State commit) from Cass Tech 2028 QB Donald Tabron II 99 yard TD.

#1 Cass Tech (7-0) leads #8 Detroit King (5-2) 35-19 2:02 left in the 4th quarter@DetKingFootball @Detroit_CTFB @WillSykesjr13_… pic.twitter.com/d5O5sWqNVb

— The D Zone (@TheD_Zone) October 18, 2025

The Underwood comparison is inevitable for any five-star quarterback prospect coming out of the Detroit area, and it fits in at least a few ways. Underwood and Tabron grew up training with the same quarterback coach, Donovan Dooley of Quarterback University. Both led their teams to state championships as freshmen. Both have the alpha mentality, the ability to shred a defense with their arms and the athleticism to make plays with their legs.

They’re also different players. Underwood was the phenom, the anointed one, the best player on every youth-league team. Tabron wasn’t. Dooley said Tabron was a “three-play kid” when he was young, meaning he’d come into the game and quickly head back to the bench. Tabron’s father, Don Tabron Jr., coached some of his youth-league teams and didn’t see a star quarterback in the making.

“I was fairly clueless,” Don Tabron Jr. said. “He played running back, safety, defensive end. Never quarterback, though.”

It wasn’t until Tabron started working with Dooley that the quarterback thing started to click. He became the starting quarterback for the Oldtown Ducks, a youth-league team on the east side of Detroit, and had scholarship offers from Michigan, Michigan State and Maryland by the time he entered high school. Tabron wasn’t a late bloomer by any stretch, but in this day and age, quarterback scouting starts young — like, really young. Not being the best player in his age group at 10 years old meant Tabron had to do a little extra to get noticed.

“A lot of kids who are successful in high school football, a certain number of them have always been the best player on the football field at different levels,” Tabron’s father said. “That wasn’t the case for Don. I think there’s a sense of, not humbleness, but a sense of groundedness. He really had to prove himself that he deserved to be in this position.”

Tabron comes from a long line of athletes. His grandfather, Don Tabron Sr., was a shortstop for the Chatham All-Stars, an all-Black baseball team that competed in Ontario, Canada, before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in Major League Baseball. Don Tabron Jr. was a linebacker at Northwood University in Midland, Mich., and football was a shared family passion.

The youngest Tabron remembers watching Michigan-Michigan State games as a kid, but he didn’t have a strong allegiance to either side. He grew up rooting for a different Big Ten team led by one of his favorite quarterbacks.

“I was — I am — a Penn State fan,” Tabron said. “I love Trace McSorley. I watched all the Penn State games when he was doing what he was doing.”

Penn State’s firing of James Franklin shows how much things can change between now and 2028, when Tabron will arrive in college. For now, he’s still taking it all in, traveling to different campuses and building relationships with coaches around the country.

Just like the quarterbacks before him, Tabron will have to choose between his Michigan roots and opportunities elsewhere. The Wolverines went all in with Moore, a top-five prospect in the Class of 2023, but he had his sights set on the West Coast, signing with UCLA before transferring to Oregon, the program he committed to in high school. Michigan prioritized Jadyn Davis in the Class of 2024, a decision that’s open to second-guessing now that Carr, the grandson of former Michigan coach Lloyd Carr, is flourishing as a first-year starter at Notre Dame.

Underwood’s decision to spurn LSU and sign with Sherrone Moore and Michigan shows how one quarterback can alter the future for a coach and a program. It also shows the powerful microscope that’s trained on a five-star prospect who decides to play the role of homegrown hero.

Dooley, Underwood’s longtime QB coach, has his own perspective on Underwood’s first seven starts. It’s easy to focus on the imperfections, including the two losses and a completion percentage that has hovered around 60 percent, at or near the bottom for Big Ten starters. Dooley sees an 18-year-old quarterback who’s carrying a lot on his shoulders and playing beyond his years.

“He’s a young man living in a fishbowl,” Dooley said. “Everything is scrutinized. The fan base is always a real thing. Ultimately, they want you to live in perfection, which is the total opposite of what the quarterback position is.”

Tabron will have to decide whether that fishbowl is for him. He could have an Underwood-like impact for Michigan State, a program that’s struggling to find its footing in Year 2 under Jonathan Smith. Or he could join the competition to be Underwood’s heir apparent at Michigan in 2028 or 2029. Or he could do something else entirely, just as Carr and Dante Moore did before him.

Right now, Tabron is holding a pin, a piece of string and the hopes and dreams of college football fans in Michigan and beyond. He’s established himself as the next great quarterback prospect from the Detroit corridor, but calling him the next Bryce Underwood is a compliment that doesn’t quite fit.

These Michigan quarterback prospects take pride in where they’re from and celebrate each other’s success. But they’re also competitors, and the competition never stops.

“I don’t want to be remembered as the quarterback who played like Bryce Underwood,” Tabron said. “I’m just building my own path. He won two state championships. I want to win three, four state championships. I want to build my own legacy.”

This news was originally published on this post .

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