With the Michigan Wolverines needing a miracle in the final seconds of their season opener, JJ Buchanan didn’t overthink it. He had done this before.
Not in front of a packed Michigan Stadium. Not wearing the winged helmet. Not with the game hanging in the balance after a controversial officiating decision put a second back on the clock for one more Hail Mary. But when he put in the work with nobody watching.
So when the ball came his way against Western Michigan in the final seconds of the Wolverines’ Week 1 matchup, Buchanan, who played high school football at Coronado, trusted himself and came down with the catch as the roof blew off the Big House.
“I mean, not much,” Buchanan said when asked what was going through his mind during the final play. “I felt like, ‘This is gonna be a heck of a way to end your debut here at Michigan.’ Just go make a play. I’ve done it thousands of times in the dark with nobody watching. So, why not do it with a couple more people watching?”
For Buchanan, the moment was more than a memorable start to his Michigan career. It was another step in a journey that began in the Las Vegas Valley with a kid who wasn’t even sure he liked football.
His first memory of playing tackle football came when he was 6 years old with the Henderson Cowboys, and it didn’t go the way he expected.
“I hated it. Man, I hated tackle football,” Buchanan said.
Instead, he spent much of his childhood playing flag football. When he put the pads back on as a freshman at Coronado, he found himself trying to figure out where he fit.
His first two seasons offered little indication of what was coming.
As a sophomore, Buchanan caught two passes for seven yards. But rather than let the lack of playing time define him, he went to work.
He spent the offseason getting better, and by his junior year, the work started to become evident.
“Freshman and sophomore year, I didn’t play, and I was benched and didn’t get much time, if any at all,” Buchanan said. “I kept my head down and just worked all sophomore offseason, and junior year came around, I had a pretty good year.
“I’d say that the first game of junior year is when I really believed in myself that I could take this somewhere.”
That season, Buchanan caught 38 passes for 688 yards and three touchdowns, emerging as one of Coronado’s top offensive weapons. But he still carried the frustration of his first two seasons with him.
“That really fueled my fire for the rest of my career. I’ll never feel like this again, and I’m gonna make it undeniable. You cannot put me on the bench like that anymore, and that’s kind of just been my mindset ever since that moment.”
A year later, Buchanan took another leap, recording 58 catches for 1,009 yards and 11 touchdowns to close out his senior season with the Cougars.
Looking back now, Buchanan sees a younger version of himself who had the ability but perhaps didn’t fully understand what it would take to reach his potential.
“That version of myself was kind of carefree,” Buchanan said. “He was doing extra work, but I don’t think he was doing everything he could have been doing.
“I think that, when I got to college, I really understood the magnitude and the abilities that I had and I started taking it a lot more seriously. I just feel like I’m a lot more confident in my abilities now because of the work that I put into it.”
Buchanan continued his development during his freshman season at Utah, where he caught 26 passes for 427 yards and five touchdowns.
But after one season in Salt Lake City, his path took another turn following coach Kyle Whittingham’s departure from the Utah program to take on the coaching job with the Wolverines.
“The reason that Michigan was for me is because all my coaches had left (Utah), and I just felt like it was best for me to go in the portal and see what other options were there,” Buchanan said. “When I went in the portal and my coaches from Utah came calling, the ones that were at Michigan, I visited here and it’s just different.
“People say this place is different and they’re not lying.”
Whittingham wasn’t the only former Utah coach to make the move to Ann Arbor. Offensive coordinator Jason Beck, quarterbacks coach Koy Detmer Jr., wide receivers coach Micah Simon and offensive line coach Jim Harding also joined his Michigan staff.
During Michigan’s fall camp, Whittingham called Buchanan a “special receiver” who was “at times unguardable.” After Buchanan’s performance against Western Michigan, Whittingham had more praise.
“J.J. Buchanan was a huge bright spot on our team Saturday night,” Whittingham said.
For Buchanan, though, the moment was less about proving something to everyone else and more about trusting what he had already proven to himself.
“When I’m confident, I feel like I play my best ball,” Buchanan said. “So just always believing in myself is my main focus throughout the week. Just having that confidence in yourself, not cocky in any way, but just internally believing in yourself and your abilities, takes you a long way.”
The former Coronado receiver who once caught two passes in an entire season now has a Michigan debut defined by the biggest catch of his young college career.
