Rod Moore injury update: Michigan star discusses recovery, role as a 'coach'

Michigan Wolverines football senior safety Rod Moore went down with a torn ACL during a special teams drill in a March spring practice and is on the recovery. During the offseason, he left open the possibility of returning at the end of this season but didn’t give an exact timetable.

Appearing on the ‘In The Trenches’ podcast Wednesday, Moore discussed his rehab.

“It’s going pretty good,” Moore said. “It kinda hit a rocky point right now. I was supposed to be running, but I haven’t started running yet because of some other stuff. But we figured it out, so we’re kinda going from there, trying to take strides.”

Moore has 6 career interceptions, having appeared in 37 games with 27 starts over the previous three campaigns. He’s totaled 141 tackles and 13 pass breakups.

The 6-foot-0, 198-pound Dayton, Ohio, native also battled a knee injury at the start of last season and didn’t perform up to his standard. He was named third-team All-Big Ten despite missing three contests. That injury was part of the reason why he returned to Michigan for his senior season.

“If you go back to the season, I kinda missed I think it was the first three or four games,” Moore noted. “If it wasn’t the fourth game, I came back and still had a bad game. I wasn’t playing up to what I should’ve been playing at. And then toward the end of the season, I started to hit my stride, and that led to the Ohio State interception.

“In the national championship, I played terrible. I blew probably about three coverages, and I was like, ‘I don’t think I like how I went out.’

“And it was just too much up-in-the-air stuff. It kinda was like, ‘Oh, you could go here, based off of this, that and the third,’ and it was just like, I don’t think I played well enough, and I know I can play better to where I can move my stock up.

“And then coming back for my senior year. My mom, she was like, the focus of coming here was to get my degree and play football. And she was harping that in my ear, so I was like, ‘Maybe she’s right. I do need my degree, because there’s always life after football.’”

Moore, who’s majoring in communication, has not only attacked finishing off his degree and getting healthy, but he’s also become a coach of sorts for his teammates. Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore, defensive backs coach LaMar Morgan and and others have lauded his ability to help the Wolverines out in a different way this season.

“When it first started was when I went down, just in the meeting room, I don’t know if you guys heard Coach Morgan say it, the next day I was in the front still asking about coverages,” Moore said. “I’d be in there, I’ll ask some questions so he can teach a little bit more toward the guys that haven’t been here, don’t know a lot about the system.

“And then when it transferred to the summer — when [graduate defensive backs] Wes[ley Walker], Aamir [Hall] and all those transfers came in — whenever we had meetings, I would kinda try to help them with the little stuff. Obviously, they know football — they’re older guys — but there are still a lot of wrinkles in this defense that you have to learn.

“Just right now, during the season, I’ll be out there for practice, because I still have to work out during practice. But over half of the practice, I’m just out there trying to coach when I can or whenever the coaches want to keep coaching on the field and somebody messes up, I’ll bring them over and tell them, ‘Oh, you gotta do this and that.’ And then in the meeting room, I’m doing the same thing.

“And then game days, I’m just pumped like I’m about to play. I’ll just be in everyone’s ear, telling them what to do. Like when they’re in the huddle during timeouts, I’ll be in the middle of the huddle just screaming at them, telling them, ‘Get off the field! You gotta get off the field here.’ Little things like that, just being in their ear and keeping them going.”

Moore believes seeing the game in a different light will help him when he returns to playing, whether that’s at Michigan or the NFL.

“A lot more,” he said. “I tell a lot of people that I’ve probably gotten smarter right now than I was playing, just because you’re looking at it from a coach’s point of view, where you’re not playing.

“A lot of the game, I’m sitting there on the sideline, calling out what they’re about to do. They can’t hear me — I’m yelling at the defense, but they can’t hear me.

“It honestly surprises me with the stuff that I’m able to see with the way people line up and watching the game, and when we’re watching as a team. It’s crazy. 

“I’ve been telling myself, if I ever got to play again — either this year or next year, if I come back — the amount of plays that I could make just by off of what I know I’ll get … it’s different when you know what you’re gonna get, because you play faster, you don’t guess yourself. I think I’ll play a lot better if I — when I’m able to play again.”