ANN ARBOR, Mich. — In his short time with Michigan football, junior safety Brandyn Hillman has been known for his penchant for hard-hitting — both on and off the field. But when it comes to fall camp, Hillman takes it easy on his fellow Wolverines.

“No, I don’t do that. It’s my teammates,” Hillman said on Tuesday evening. “I try to keep them up, be safe, practice good practice habits, and just compete. That’s all we do. I mean, yeah, of course I hit my teammates because it’s not a soft game, so I hit them though.”

But there’s a fine line. And there’s a switch that needs to be flipped. And once gameday comes, Hillman flips it. And he has an easy way to know, OK, these are players who can be hit.

With that in mind, feel sorry for New Mexico.

“Pretty much pretty easy, just seeing a different color, you know,” Hillman said. “How I look at it is they got the same colors as the (expletive deleted) Ohio State, so I just play like that, to be honest.”

There’s been a certain confidence emanating from Schembechler Hall in recent weeks. Kind of a ‘you’ll see’ type of attitude. Hillman wears his emotions on his sleeve (he swore six times in his Tuesday evening media availability — and no, that’s not the norm in these circumstances). It wasn’t a cavalier type of mentality, more of an excited notion — everyone is going to know what 2025 Michigan football is going to be in quite a short order. After months of pontificating and posturing, those who had the Wolverines high up their list will feel vindicated, and those who doubt, particularly the defense, will realize that Mason Graham, Kenneth Grant, and Josaiah Stewart were huge players, but it’s next man up.

At least, that’s how Hillman sees it.

“We’ve got four days. Y’all will see,” Hillman said. “Of course, I don’t think no drop-off happened, no (expletive deleted) happened like that. Excuse my language again. It’s nothing changed. I ain’t going to lie. Everybody out there balling. 

“Yeah, I get it. First-rounders, we lost them and everything, but I don’t look at it like that. If y’all really come out and watch practice, know football, it’s the same 11. We try to keep it the same 11 on and off. That’s how it is.”

But why the confidence?

It’s not a cockiness that the players have had in fall camp, but something of a surety. ‘Y’all will see,’ as Hillman said. He says that they know the task at hand, and they (particularly the defense, but it’s not limited there) are more about being about it than speaking about it. And they’ve made the proper strides all offseason. Saturday should just be the revelation of the hard work put in, Hillman says.

“I think it’s just the fact that the players just understood last year was really like not what we wanted,” Hillman said. “So I think it’s like just like making sure that this year we actually do what we got to do and not just say it, but actually do it on the field, off the field. So I kind of think like that, that confidence that we’ve given off is just showing like the work that we put off over the fall and stuff like that.”

Indeed, we will see — one way or the other. That day is fast approaching, as Saturday marks the 2025 season opener against the Lobos at The Big House. The game will kick off at 7:36 p.m. EDT and it will be broadcast on NBC.

This article originally appeared on Wolverines Wire: Brandyn Hillman brings fierce confidence to Michigan’s 2025 defense