During his press conference on Thursday morning, Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham announced that redshirt sophomore running back Micah Ka\u2019apana will miss the 2026 season due to a lower-leg injury.<\/p>\n
\u201cOne big downer, Micah, running back, Ka\u2019apana, is out for the season,\u201d Whittingham said. \u201cLower-leg injury, so we\u2019ll miss him. It\u2019s unfortunate, but so far we\u2019ve been healthy other than that. That\u2019s a loss for us, something that I\u2019m sure he\u2019ll return from and be back for the \u201827 season, but it looks like he\u2019s gonna be out for the \u201826 season.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a shame, too, because he was having a good spring. He\u2019s a tough kid and he\u2019ll be missed.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ka\u2019apana was a three-star recruit in the 2024 class and has played minimally for the Wolverines his first two seasons in Ann Arbor. He has 10 rush attempts for 38 yards to his name, along with two receptions for 12 yards in six total games played (two in 2024, four in 2025).<\/p>\n
Michigan will rely on Jordan Marshall, Savion Hiter and Bryson Kuzdzal at the running back position in 2026. Ka\u2019apana was facing an uphill battle for playing time, but Whittingham did say he was set to be RB4 this season. His injury shouldn\u2019t not have a huge impact on the upcoming season for the Wolverines, but depth is always important and losing him this early is not great news by any means. Whittingham and Tony Alford will now be tasked with finding another option to be the fourth running back this year.<\/p>\n
Hopefully Ka\u2019apana\u2019s recovery goes well and he is able to get back to it in 2027.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"During his press conference on Thursday morning, Michigan head coach Kyle Whittingham announced that redshirt sophomore running back…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":574184,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[399,579,142745,103090,398,396,397,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-574183","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-michigan-football","10":"tag-michigan-football-injuries","11":"tag-michigan-football-news","12":"tag-ncaa","13":"tag-ncaa-football","14":"tag-ncaafootball","15":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=574183"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574183\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/574184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=574183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=574183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=574183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}