By now, Rod Moore can predict the question he’s going to hear when he speaks to someone outside the Michigan football program.
A starting safety for the Wolverines and the first three-time captain in school history, Moore has played just 85 snaps from scrimmage since walking off the field as a national champion following the 2023 campaign. He’s endured three surgeries since then — all on the same stubborn left knee — and spent his recovery pondering his future in the sport. So he understands why one question’s been thrown at him repetitively.
How are you feeling?
For the first time in a long time, Moore doesn’t mind them asking. There is no lingering discomfort for him to downplay, no awkward prognosticating about the timetable. “Healthy,” Moore told me during a recent telephone conversation, “finally healthy.” The relief in his voice is noticeable. Moore’s biggest individual goal as the 2026 season approaches — his sixth with the Wolverines — is for his body to still feel this good whenever the final snap is played several months from now.
Rod Moore recorded 38 tackles and two interceptions in 2023, his last fully healthy season at Michigan. (Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)
His career wasn’t supposed to unfold this way — not after Moore, a former three-star recruit, forced his way into the starting lineup as a true freshman because of a heightened understanding of former defensive coordinator Mike Macdonald’s system and a fiendish approach to film study that drew steady praise from head coach Jim Harbaugh.
Not after he recorded a famous interception against Ohio State his junior year and earned third-team All-Big Ten honors on the way to Michigan’s first national championship in 26 years.
Not after he believed the initial surgery to address the torn ACL would be “smooth, peaches and cream,” and then he’d return better than ever for one final collegiate season.
But then came the complications.
In addition to damaging his ACL, which was successfully repaired during the first procedure, Moore told me he also suffered a bone bruise and subsequent tears in both menisci. Issues with his meniscus and some lingering scar tissue triggered a second surgery. He recovered enough to make three appearances last fall — against Nebraska, Wisconsin and USC in the middle of the season — but never played again. He underwent a third surgery to clean out even more scar tissue, which doctors hoped would address Moore’s persistent discomfort, this past January.
“There would be days, you know, in the past two years, where I would wake up, and I’m continuously in pain,” Moore told me. “Sometimes I really didn’t understand why it was still hurting, so some days I wouldn’t even want to do anything — or even sometimes thinking, ‘Will my knee ever feel normal again? Will I ever play football again?’
Rod Moore and former Michigan QB J.J. McCarthy celebrate Michigan’s 2023 CFP national championship victory over Washington. (Photo by David Buono/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
“But now, just coming in here every day, it pushes me to work, to continue pushing the guys and just work as hard as I’ve ever worked because this makes you have a different perspective of the game. Especially when you can’t control what happened — and you’ve been sitting for so long, looking from the outside in — it just gives me a sense of gratitude for the game.”
Moore’s time at Michigan transcended the program’s turmoil. He first committed to Michigan on May 10, 2020, before Harbaugh’s salary was halved after a losing record during the pandemic-shortened campaign, before the Wolverines resurrected themselves with three consecutive Big Ten titles and three straight trips to the College Football Playoff, long before anyone outside Ann Arbor knew the name Connor Stalions.
He handled the media frenzies that accompanied Harbaugh’s lucrative tenure. He stayed when Sherrone Moore replaced Harbaugh and then endured yet another national scandal with Moore. He remained at Michigan for a third regime change to current head coach Kyle Whittingham.
Rod Moore looks on before the 2025 game against USC. (Photo by Luke Hales/Getty Images)
Moore does his best not to “live in regret,” but there were times, he told me, when he would imagine what might have been.
He considered turning pro after Michigan won the national championship in 2023, to capitalize on a season in which the coaches voted him third-team all-conference. But Moore promised his mother that he would complete his degree in communications and media, so he remained in Ann Arbor. He then suffered the career-altering knee injury in practice the following spring.
“I feel like it was a blessing in disguise,” Moore told me. “I live through [the idea that] everything happens for a reason, but I think after sitting those two years and then coming back and being able to play again, it will put me at a different perspective of knowing the game and kind of being ahead of everybody else because I was essentially a coach the last two years. I learned the game from a coach’s perspective rather than just playing and playing and playing.”
He operated with a coach’s mindset, too. Under the direction of former coordinator Don “Wink” Martindale, the defensive coaching staff leaned on Moore like a graduate assistant.
He became a teacher during defensive back meetings in classroom settings and wore a headset during games, learning how the lines of communication operated and hearing how much profanity was exchanged amid legitimate Xs and Os discussion. Moore says he’ll pursue coaching whenever his playing career ends.
In between the coaching experience came endless hours in the training room, where Moore watched many of his teammates with less serious injuries recover quickly. Fellow defensive backs Makari Paige, Will Johnson and Quinten Johnson checked on him daily, as did defensive tackle Rayshaun Benny, whom Moore described as his closest friend on the team. Beyond football, his primary support group included his mother, his godbrother and several friends from back home in Dayton, Ohio, and the surrounding suburbs.
“Making sure that my mental is OK because a lot of people’s mental isn’t always strong going through that type of injury,” Moore told me.
Moore finally returned to the field earlier this month after missing all of spring practice while recovering from his third surgery. Though Moore is fully cleared by the medical staff, Whittingham and his staff instituted a “pitch count” ahead of the season opener against Western Michigan on September 5.
“It feels like, as long as he stays on the path he’s on — no setbacks — he’s going to be good to go this fall,” Whittingham said at Big Ten media days in July. “He’d be the quarterback of the whole secondary. He’s a difference-maker and an all-Big Ten-caliber player. And if he’s back there in the lineup, that makes us a whole lot better.”
But no matter how well Moore performs this season, concerns from NFL teams about his long-term health will persist.
For now, though, as the Wolverines embark on a new era with a new regime, Moore can finally contribute for the first time in roughly 30 months. After enduring more hardships than anyone on Michigan’s roster and coming out the other side, it’s the perfect time to ask Rod Moore how he’s feeling.
