Rod Moore didn’t have to come back to Michigan.
Coming off a national championship and a season starting for the best defense in the country, the then-junior safety could have moved on. He could have decided that he’d accomplished the biggest team goal possible at the college level and shot for the next level.
Instead, though, Moore came back. He announced his return to fans’ jubilation, and set his sights on his senior season. As a leader of the defense bursting with talent and experience, Moore geared up for an arduous schedule, hoping to help guide the Wolverines into a new era.
Then, his leg put those plans on hold.
“It got quiet, you know,” graduate safety Makari Paige said Thursday. “Everybody took knees, got quiet, but we didn’t really know what happened as it happened. It was just kind of like, ‘What happened to him?’ ”
Moore shed more light on what happened that day, sharing details of a special teams rep during spring camp. He tried to slow down, planted his foot, and felt weird. Once he put his leg back down, it gave out on him entirely. An MRI soon confirmed that he had torn his ACL.
“I cried,” Moore said. “ I cried because this was a season that on a schedule, like I circled. It was the season that I really wanted to come out and show who I really was as a player, especially as a leader, too. And first, it was hard, I would say probably that it took me a month to really realize, like, ‘Okay, this is the position that you’re gonna have to deal with it and go forward with it.’ ”
After the injury, Moore had to find himself in that new position. He couldn’t be the leader on the field, so he had to learn more about how to be a leader off of it. He went to California to rehab for a couple of weeks, and took his mind off the injury by sitting on the beach and listening to the waves.
When he came back, it was back to work. His physical recovery is still ongoing, but he says he’s getting stronger each day and says he thinks he could play this season. In the meantime, he’s trying to share his knowledge of the ins and outs of Michigan’s defense with some of the newcomers. Specifically, he’s helped the Wolverines three incoming transfers at defensive back — graduates Aamir Hall, Wesley Walker and Ricky Johnson — find their footing .
“Guys like Wes, Amir and Ricky, they came in, they’re vets, so they kind of really know how to study the playbook,” Moore said. “It’s really like the small things that they ask about, and me, Makari, (defensive backs coach Lamar Morgan), (junior cornerback Will Johnson) have helped them kind of transition while coming in here.”
For summer and fall camp, that’s been Moore’s role. He currently doesn’t have the chance to show who he is as a player like he wanted to, but he’s still showing who he is as a leader. While he might not have the headset in his helmet, he’s still quarterbacking the defense in any way he can. Those qualities led to his teammates choosing him to be a captain, even despite his injury.
“At first, it was real hard, especially going down in the spring,” Moore said. “I wanted to get better. That was a time for me to get better … My family told me that you got to take this and turn it into a positive and just look at the bright side of everything. I just took my role as being the leader and the vocal guy and pushing forward from there.”
When Moore chose to come back for his senior season, he likely didn’t envision that most of it would be spent on the sidelines. But whether he’s ‘Coach Moore’ or ‘Player Moore,’ he’s still a key leader on Michigan’s defense, and he has the captain title to prove it.
The post Captain Rod Moore embracing new role amid ACL recovery appeared first on The Michigan Daily.
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