Drake Johnson star-crossed football career is over, according to Michigan coach Jim Harbaugh.
Johnson suffered two torn ACLs in his career, one injury at the start of the 2013 season and one at the end of the 2014 season. In 2015, he saw action in 12 games and entered last season as a fifth-year senior set to compete for snaps at running back. Then, the versatile running back who also runs track suffered an scary injury at the indoor track facility in April 2016.
A forklift driver was moving a large cabinet at the indoor track building when he “felt a bump, stating he thought he ran over a starting block, when he saw Drake Johnson, a student-athlete, roll from under the forklift.”
Johnson recovered from the forklift accident but never again saw the field because of lingering hamstring issues.
“He’s not going to continue in football,” Harbaugh said Monday, via the Detroit Free Press. “Doesn’t think he’s able to. Medically, emotionally. Just hasn’t been able to do it at the level that it needs to be done in his opinion, and he’s not going to participate in football going forward.”
Those comments are much more somber than shortly after the forklift accident, when Harbaugh said, “It would have killed a lesser man.”
“He is blue, twisted steel, very flexible and amazing. It’s one of those miraculous things, but he’s done well as can be expected,” Harbaugh said in May 2016.
Johnson’s exit from the Michigan roster one one of two developments of note this week for the Wolverines, the other being a setback for left tackle Grant Newsome in his recovery from a leg injury that could keep the former starter out for all of 2017.
