One of Michigan's running backs behind Jordan Marshall might be 'second fastest' on the team

ANN ARBOR – The Michigan Wolverines are fresh off a bye week and preparing for a showdown with Northwestern on Saturday at the Friendly Confines of Wrigley Field.

Good health and stacking victories down the stretch are essential, but perhaps for nobody more than sophomore tailback Jordan Marshall.

Chicago is the epicenter of the region, and no tailback embodies the Midwestern style and values than Marshall, though. Whether it’s wind, rain, sleet or snow, Michigan head coach Sherrone Moore is confident the Ohio native can deliver when it matters most.

“He was [Ohio’s] Player of the Year, so he’s played in this type of weather, been through it, but it’s his mentality,” Moore said on Monday. “It’s his mentality and how he runs. He’s a physical runner. And you can see it from the first game he ever played when he played down there in the rain in Tampa. And he just got better with more carries and more carries. And how he’s built, how he works, how he studies the game is just kind of, he’s a back that in November he’s going to thrive.

RELATED: Michigan football: Sherrone Moore updates injuries heading into Northwestern game

“We’re just excited for him, excited to see what he continues to do, but also excited for the other guys in the room and let them get their opportunity as well because he can’t carry the ball 40 times a game. We want to limit those carries as much as we can, but we’re going to allow him to be who he is.”

Marshall’s workload is something that Michigan wants to mitigate with Justice Haynes week-to-week with his foot injury. A return does not seem likely in the short term, so U-M has to make sure it keeps its other lead-back healthy.

That means more opportunities for both freshman Jasper Parker and junior Bryson Kuzdzal, who have been thrust into larger roles with the Haynes injury.

“[Jasper is] in a great place,” Moore said. “Keeps getting better and better. He and Bryson Kuzdzal, you’ll see both those guys on Saturday. Both of those guys will get a chance to carry the ball and protect and do different things because you’ve got to keep it balanced. You can’t just have them in there and run the ball. They’re in there, they just scream out run [if they are not doing anything else].

“They’ll both be in there to do a couple of things to help take the load off Jordan. And they’ve done a really good job throughout the week. Coach [Tony] Alford and Coach [Fred] Jackson do a great job of coaching them. They coach them hard. They push them. So we’ll see more of them as we go through the week.”

Kuzdzal, a former walk-on and Grand Rapids native, has earned his spot in the Michigan running back pecking order, and Moore thinks that he might be just a notch below Haynes in terms of his explosiveness.

“He’s probably the second fastest behind Justice, if not close to his speed,” Moore said. “He’s a fast dude, man. I would love to see him get out in open space and see what happens, see if anybody can catch him, because I don’t know if they will. But he hit some of those runs in the last game. I think he only had like four or something carries.

“But he hit them hard. He hit them physically, ran as physically as we’ve seen him run. I was really proud of how he ran in that game, especially when you know it’s a run and you’ve got to stop the run. And he ran downhill. He ran fast. He ran physically. And he can make people miss. So it’ll be interesting to watch him in the game because it’s always different in practice to see guys execute. But I was really proud of how he played.”

Michigan and its tailbacks will be back in action on Saturday at noon from Wrigley Field, set for a noon ET kickoff on FOX.