Michigan football will begin spring practice without 3 key players

Michigan football begins its spring practice window without a trio of players it hopes will be vital to a successful 2026 season.

The window, which opened Tuesday, March 17, will run through April 18 for the “Maize vs. Blue” spring game, the final of the team’s 15 practices.

Transfer EDGE John Henry-Daley (lower body), sixth-year safety Rod Moore (knee) and offensive tackle Andrew Babalola (ACL) are all expected to sit out the spring window, or at best be very mild participants with the team.

“They probably will not be available for spring,” Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham said Tuesday at his first press conference in Ann Arbor. “Maybe limited. One or two might have some limited action. Very limited.”

Henry-Daley comes off an All-American campaign under Whittingham at Utah, but it was cut short the final two games of the season after he reportedly tore his Achilles tendon. When he was on the field, he was among the most dynamic players in the country, racking up 17½ tackles for loss and 11½ sacks in 2025.

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Moore, meanwhile, played just three games for the Wolverines last season. He tore his ACL in 2024 spring ball, then needed another procedure in December 2024 to clean up his meniscus. He vowed not to rush back and sat out the 2025 nonconference season before returning against Nebraska.

The next week against Wisconsin he recorded an interception, but suffered a setback the following week at USC, and was shut down for the season. Moore was granted a medical waiver by the NCAA to return for a sixth and final season of college football.

Babalola, a class of 2025 five-star offensive tackle rated top 15 in the nation by 247 Sports’ composite rankings, tore his ACL in August and missed the season. Now, seven months later, he’s continuing his rehab process in hopes of competing for one of the starting tackle positions with the presumptive favorites, Blake Frazier and Andrew Sprague.

None of these updates are particularly surprising, especially in the spring, when trainers and coaches use heightened caution.

“We’re just trying to get them to the season healthy,” Whittingham said. “That’s the critical thing. They’re proven commodities and we know what they can do. We’ve got to make sure we do what we have to do to ensure we don’t have any setbacks.”

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Tony Garcia is the Wolverines beat writer for the Detroit Free Press. Email him at apgarcia@freepress.com and follow him on X at @RealTonyGarcia.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Michigan football spring practice begins without 3 key players