Alford said<\/a>. \u201cPowerful kid when he moves. You watch him just doing some drill work or conditioning, and he\u2019ll make a cut and change direction. It\u2019s impressive. Now, with that being said, I don\u2019t want to get too far off the ledge here, because I don\u2019t want to start putting expectations on this young guy that all of a sudden, if they\u2019re not met immediately, he\u2019s thinking a certain way about himself. And so there\u2019s a fine line there. There\u2019s a fine line of letting him go and pushing him.\u201d<\/p>\nHiter, who\u2019s six-feet tall and 210 pounds, ranked as the No. 12 overall player in the 2026 class and No. 1 running back. Hiter rushed for 1,440 yards and 24 touchdowns in his senior season despite missing three games. Hiter has a rare balance of bruising power and elite speed.<\/p>\n
Alford made a point that Hiter doesn\u2019t need to be ready to play here today in February \u2014 we\u2019re still long away from Michigan\u2019s season opener on Sept. 5 versus Western Michigan. Even the most talented of high school recruits need time to get acclimated to the speed and intricacies of Big Ten football.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re just going to keep moving him forward in a very methodical fashion,\u201d Alford said. \u201cBut I think he\u2019s got a chance to be a special player. Time will tell him. But up to this point, just watching him move and interact and do things in the way he learns, he\u2019s got a good football IQ. He retains information very, very well, which is good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Alford said that Hiter is the type of player who will go back and fix a mistake without being told to go do it again.<\/p>\n
\u201cHere\u2019s what I love about him the most \u2014 he\u2019s not a typical wide-eyed freshman,\u201d Alford said. \u201cI mean, he comes in, and he\u2019s kind of like an alpha right now. And he wants to compete at a high level.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hiter\u2019s role in 2026 is to be determined, as Michigan has an excellent lead back in Jordan Marshall, who rushed for 932 yards and 10 touchdowns last season. Further, Michigan has a capable backup in former walk-on Bryson Kuzdzal, who rushed for 326 yards and four touchdowns in 2025. However, if Hiter performs even remotely close to his high school highlights, he\u2019s destined for greatness sooner than later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Michigan landed the top running back in the 2026 class and he\u2019s already been making an impression on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":575715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7,580,52888,49,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-769830","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-news","11":"tag-ncaa","12":"tag-ncaa-football"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116116582982182758","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=769830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/769830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/575715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=769830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=769830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=769830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}