Michigan football has a new starting quarterback: Get to know Davis Warren (2024)

I didn't get any sleep that first night, because I didn't get really told until past midnight. Don't really get any sleep in the hospital, and it's the weekend, so none of the doctors are there. They have to come in and do these tests and this and that, so we didn't really know that much at that point.

I didn't think about it that much until I had a real sit-down with my doctor who was the best — Doctor Bhojwani — and she was unbelievable in helping me out. And she laid out, 'Okay, this is the type of leukemia you have. This is the treatment plan.'

They told me I had acute myeloid leukemia, which is a little less common in adolescents. And they told me five to eight months of treatment. In my head, I was thinking, 'Okay: April, May, June, July, August. That's five months. Then the season starts in September. Man, I think I can play by October.'

Of course, I asked her, 'So how fast can I play football again?' She laughed at me. At the time, I was pissed off, because I was like, 'Man, she doesn't understand how I think and how I feel.'

Now, after going through what I went through, and being in those hospital floors of chemo patients and seeing kids not make it out and not get back to doing the things they love — even though they have a great attitude, even though they have great doctors — it was very naive of me to think I was going to come back and play football that fast.

My perspective changed as I saw the reality of childhood cancer.

I held that mindset throughout the whole time. I set that date, October 3, we were playing against the Hill School. I told my coach, I told my parents, 'I'm gonna go play in that damn football game.'

Really, from the day I was diagnosed, everything went exactly how it was supposed to. The first round of chemo, they told me it was gonna be three to five weeks. I was out of the hospital in 21 days. The second round, they told me it was gonna be four-and-a-half to six weeks. And I was out of the hospital in 32 days.

And so I didn't really have any hiccups along the way. The chemo worked exactly how it was supposed to. Everything really went according to plan.

I really am just am super grateful and lucky. But the whole time, I was thinking about playing in a football game. I was trying to do as much as I could to go on walks, go bike.

After the first round of chemo, when I went home, I went to the field with my dad and threw a football. The doctors were like, 'Why would you do that? You shouldn't do that. That's not smart.' But I just needed to feel the ball come off my hand, all that stuff. That kept me going.

I think your mind is such a powerful like tool, and I think I used it to the best of my ability to help get me to where I wanted to be. But at the end of the day, there was a lot of luck, and a lot of stuff to be grateful for that was out of my control.

I lost it all. I was 185 pounds when I went to the hospital. Pretty strong. Not the strongest guy in the room, but pretty strong, pretty quick. And I lost all that. I dropped probably 35 pounds, just from not eating and not doing anything.

I'd sit in bed for five days straight and watch Game of Thrones — which was another key of getting me through it. I went through that whole series. It kept me sane.

As I got into those last two rounds of chemo, I started to do more. Started to do more push-ups, little things like 30-second plank, 10 push-ups. Worked with my quarterback coach, Taylor Kelly.

You guys talk a lot about Tom House and what he did with JJ McCarthy. Taylor reached out to him because they have worked together in the past — he's kind of like an offshoot of Tom House — and helped build a plan for me to get back to throwing and with the weighted balls and all this different stuff to get my arm ready.

I was doing that in the hospital. I started by throwing 10 footballs to my dad in the garden. In downtown LA, there isn't any space, so there's this little garden and this little turf strip that I would throw to my dad on. I just did those little things, and when I got back to school, worked with the strength coach there, and literally we started from scratch. Got the go-ahead from the doctor and was able to play in that game on October 3, which was pretty unbelievable.

That first game I played, I could only play a couple of drives. (Coach Chris Malleo) gave me that opportunity, let me sling the rock when I was in there. And I will forever be grateful for him and giving me that chance.

Then I had a game where I couldn't play because my blood counts weren't high enough. So it was a thing every week. He researched what I needed to do to get my platelet level higher. And we got this papaya juice extract, so I was taking shots of papaya juice extract to try to raise my blood counts to play in the next game. And I was able to play in the last game of the year, led a big two-minute drive at the end of the half to get us going.

Even after the season, we'd work out. I really didn't feel 100% healthy until January of 2020. It took me that long to feel like, 'Okay, I'm back. I'm ready to roll.' And then COVID hit.

As a prospect, I just didn't have anything. I didn't have the film and all the stuff that I needed to get recruited at a high level. And he was the one who was like, 'You're a Power Five quarterback. You're one of the best quarterbacks in this country. You just haven't had the chance to do it yet. You've been stuck on a triple option offense and then you had cancer and now you there's this global pandemic going on. You have to go to the best school you can you have to play high-level football. Don't settle. Go to the best school you can. And then get your foot in the door.'

People will be like, 'Wow, this kid can spin it. He can play here.' And it turns out he was right.

His trainers had connections to Coach Josh Gattis and Steve Casula and Grant Newsome at Michigan. Theypressed Jim Harbaugh until the Michigan coach connected with Warren in the fall of2020:

Three of them, along with along with my coaches in Southern California, were definitely in Coach Harbaugh's ear: 'You gotta take a look at this kid.'

I knew I wasn't gonna get a scholarship anywhere big. But I had a couple preferred walk-on opportunities in the Power Five, and Michigan was the biggest one. And the academics were important to me — still are. So I knew it was the spot that I wanted to be.

It'd been since the fall of 2019. But I wasn't 100%, like I said, so it had really been another full year. It had been a while since I'd played in a game.

I was lucky enough where last season, I played a ton of scout — I was pretty much all scout team — playing against Hutch and Ojabo and Dax and Ross and Brad Hawkins. Those were game-like settings every day, which helped me out a ton and really was huge for me. That was the best thing I could have been doing at that time: taking a million reps, dropping back and figuring it out. That put me in a position where last spring I felt like I was super comfortable dropping back against a college-level defense, and being able to read coverage, and understand what we're doing offensively. And I think that really set me up for for a good spring.

I know I have more. I have goals that I want to achieve at Michigan and things I want to do in college football and beyond. I'm not afraid to say I want to want to play at the next level as well.

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Now, Warren takes the next stepin his career by starting for the defending national champion Michigan Wolverines against Fresno State. Kickoff is scheduled for 7:34 p.m. ET before a sold-out crowd at the Big House. The game will air on NBC;Noah Eagle (play-by-play), Todd Blackledge (color) and Kathryn Tappen (sideline) will be on the call.

The showdown represents the first-ever meeting between the Wolverines and Bulldogs. Michigan is 13-1 all-time against Mountain West Conference schools, while Fresno State is looking for its second-straight Big Ten upset after knocking offPurduelast year in West Lafayette.

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