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Aug 18, 2026
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Michigan's 4 Captains Are February's 4 Captains. The 12 Names Underneath Them Are Not

Michigan's players voted on leadership twice this year, in February and again on Monday night, and the top of the document did not move: the same 4 men. The council underneath it did. 3 names came on and 2 came off, and 1 of the 2 who came off is the only tight end either vote has ever named on a roster carrying 8 of them.

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Wes FerryAug 18, 20266 min read
Every call on this site goes on a public ledger and gets graded. The misses stay up.
Troy Bowles, Michigan linebacker, in a posed roster portrait against a white background, wearing a navy suit jacket, a white shirt and a gray checked tie carrying a small maize block M. No jersey and no number are in the frame.

Michigan has published no depth chart and is not obliged to until game week. What it has published, twice, is a list of the players its own locker room voted to follow.

The first went out February 2: 4 spring captains and an 11-man council, with a note that the exercise would be repeated and the real thing elected in fall camp. The second went out Monday night at 8:35 and did exactly that, 4 captains and a 12-man council. Two documents, 6 months apart, sorting the same roster. The interesting part is not either list. It is the difference between them.

The 4 at the top did not move#

Quarterback Bryce Underwood (19), running back Jordan Marshall (23), safety Rod Moore (1) and defensive tackle Trey Pierce (95) were the spring captains in February and they are the captains now. Moore is the only returning captain from last season, and the program's release calls him the first player in school history to be voted a 3-time captain. Michigan's own archive complicates that. The Bentley Historical Library, the university's repository for its athletic records, carries a page headed "Horace G. Prettyman, Football Captain, 1884-1886." Whether a captaincy in 1884 was the teammate ballot the release is claiming a first for is not settled anywhere public, so the safe version of the sentence is that Moore is the first 3-time captain of the modern era and the athletic department is claiming more than that.

Which is why Kyle Whittingham introducing Pierce at Big Ten Media Days on July 30 as "one of our captains," per Trent Knoop of Sports Illustrated, was simply accurate 18 days early. Michigan took 3 players to Chicago and all 3, Underwood, Marshall and Pierce, already had the title.

The 12 underneath them moved by 5#

Nine carried over: Nico Andrighetto, Zeke Berry and Jyaire Hill (0) in the secondary, Cam Brandt and Enow Etta (17) on the line, Blake Frazier (77), Jake Guarnera (53) and Andrew Sprague (54) up front, and receiver Andrew Marsh (3).

On: linebacker Troy Bowles (18), receiver JJ Buchanan (6), defensive end John Henry Daley (90). Off: safety Mason Curtis (25), tight end Zack Marshall (83).

The new list is 7 offense, 9 defense, 0 specialists. Curtis is still in the mix at safety per Charles Post of Maize n Brew, so a name off a council is not a name off a two-deep, and a vote is not a depth chart. What it shows is where a locker room's attention moved over 6 months. It moved to 3 places and away from 2.

The tight ends had a name in February and have none now#

Zack Marshall is the only tight end either vote has produced, and he is Michigan's most productive returner at the position: 16 receptions for 199 yards and 1 touchdown in 2025, work he got while Hogan Hansen (80) fought injuries.

Twelve days before the vote, offensive coordinator Jason Beck answered a question about him in the language of leadership, naming him among the strength staff's summer standouts and saying Michigan anticipated him being a piece of the offense "based off his involvement last year, but also based off his leadership and work ethic this summer," per Drew Lenard of The Michigan Daily. Marshall missed all of spring practice injured, which is the plainest available explanation for a man being visible to a strength coach and less visible to a roomful of teammates on a field.

Whatever the reason, the room is now at 0 names out of 8 players, Marshall and Hansen alongside Deakon Tonielli (88), Jimmy Pisani (40) and 4 others. It is the largest group on the roster with nobody on the list, and the one Jacob Westendorf of Sports Illustrated described on August 12 as still waiting for a contributor to emerge.

The linebackers went the other way, and the specialists went nowhere twice#

February's council had no linebacker on it. Monday's has Bowles, on the unit with the most to replace: Michigan lost 3 of its top 5 tacklers from 2025 in Jimmy Rolder, Ernest Hausmann and Cole Sullivan, all linebackers, as Justice Steiner of Sports Illustrated laid out on July 24. It is 1 name out of 14 players, which is thin, and it is the only group on the roster that gained ground between the 2 votes.

The competition, per Post on August 12, is Bowles, Nathaniel Owusu-Boateng (12), Nathaniel Staehling (44) and Chase Taylor (29), with defensive coordinator Jay Hill having singled out Bowles and Taylor on day one. Staehling is the useful absence. He arrived from North Dakota State with 75 tackles and 3 interceptions in 2025, missed spring injured, and is getting his first real look at this defense in August. Whittingham on him, per Matt Hartwell of Maize n Brew: "he's a guy that's going to figure prominently in the defense this year." A head coach saying that is a stronger claim about the two-deep than a leadership vote is, and Staehling could not have been on either one.

The specialists are the hardest number here. Michigan carries 3 kickers, 3 punters and 4 long snappers. Across 2 votes, 6 months apart, this locker room has named 18 different men and not one of the 10. Nobody has published a starter at any of the 3 jobs either.

Three open line jobs and a 4-day deadline#

Michigan has 19 offensive linemen, 3 of them on the list. Guarnera has center, on the flattest sentence this staff has produced about anything: offensive line coach Jim Harding said it would take Guarnera "really screwing something up for me to not feel comfortable playing him on the 5th of September," per Anthony Broome of On3. Sprague has right tackle, which Harding called his to lose. Left tackle is a 3-man race between Frazier, Andrew Babalola (65) and Evan Link (71), per Post. Frazier started 8 games there last season after Link's season-ending injury, and Babalola is a redshirt freshman back from an ACL injury, a full participant as of early this month per Harding. The 2 guard spots are contested by Nathan Efobi (55), Brady Norton (70) and Link. Whittingham believes Michigan is 10 deep on the line. He has not said which 5.

Harding has put a date on it. Asked in the first week of camp for a timeline, he declined to give one and then gave one anyway: he wants the group "solidified" roughly 2 weeks out, at the end of the second scrimmage. Michigan held the first of its 2 scrimmages on Saturday, August 15, per Tony Garcia of the Detroit Free Press. Two weeks out is about August 22, which is 4 days from today.

The captain nobody describes the same way twice#

Rod Moore has been a captain in both votes and has barely played in 2 years, and in a single week 3 outlets put him in 3 different places. Post wrote on August 12 that he is "fully healthy" and that Whittingham has him and Chris Bracy (7) with the inside track at the 2 safety jobs. Westendorf wrote the same day that he was expected to be full go by the Oklahoma game on September 12, a week after the opener. Hartwell wrote on August 17 that he is "once again practicing." Michigan publishes no availability report in August and is not required to, so the state of its most decorated leader 18 days out is that he is practicing and that the people who watch him do not agree what that means for September 5.

Whittingham named the condition himself in Chicago, before any of it was contested. "We've got some work to do in the depth department at a few positions," he said. "I think in a year or two we'll be right where we need to be across the board."

Michigan's players have now answered that question twice. The second answer is mostly the first one, and where it is not, it is a linebacker moving up and a tight end moving off.

Sources: MGoBlue.com for the February 2, 2026 spring captains and leadership council release (Dave Ablauf and Chad Shepard), for the August 17 captains and leadership council release, for the 2026 football roster and for every jersey number and position-group count in this piece, all read off the official roster page. Brandon Carr, All About Ann Arbor, August 18, 2026, for independent corroboration of the August captains and council. Trent Knoop, Sports Illustrated, July 31, 2026, for Whittingham's Big Ten Media Days remarks on Trey Pierce, Blake Frazier and offensive line depth, and February 2, 2026 for the spring captains. Drew Lenard, The Michigan Daily, August 6, 2026, for Jason Beck on Zack Marshall and for Marshall's 2025 production and spring absence. Matt Hartwell, Maize n Brew, August 17, 2026, for Whittingham on Nathaniel Staehling and for the state of the safety and linebacker rooms. Charles Post, Maize n Brew, August 12, 2026, for the offensive line, linebacker and safety competitions and Jay Hill's day-one remark. Jacob Westendorf, Sports Illustrated, August 12, 2026, for the cornerback order and the tight end room. Justice Steiner, Sports Illustrated, July 24, 2026, for the 2025 linebacker departures. Tony Garcia, Detroit Free Press, August 17, 2026, for the August 15 scrimmage. Anthony Broome, On3, August 6, 2026, for Jim Harding on Guarnera, Sprague, Babalola and the August timeline. Michigan's 2026 schedule for the September 5 opener. The Bentley Historical Library's football captains index, bentley.umich.edu, for Horace G. Prettyman, 1884-1886. Nobody from this site was at any practice, scrimmage or press conference described here.

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