Confident' Michigan running back Donovan Edwards ready to make his next move

West Bloomfield — Michigan running back Donovan Edwards has taken up chess, playing multiple times a day. He enjoys the strategizing and challenge of thinking ahead, each move calculated to reach the end goal, while trying to throw your opponent off-balance.
Chess has layered meaning for Edwards.
Michigan running back Donovan Edwards finished last season with 991 rushing yards and seven touchdowns and 200 receiving yards on 18 catches and two touchdowns.
“You have to sacrifice to get to your objective, your goal,” Edwards said Monday at the Champions Circle Golf Classic to raise money for Michigan’s NIL. “You’re thinking three, four, five steps ahead. You have to apply that same thing to life.”
And playing running back?
“You can convert it to anything,” he said.
For Edwards, chess is about thinking ahead to future moves while also remaining in the moment and not looking too far ahead. That is applicable to how he approaches his progress as a running back, each play, each game, the entire season and his future. You can’t get there — to his goals and those of his team — without focusing on the now.
Edwards has recovered from a right thumb injury that was protected by a cast last season and required surgery. He also played with an injury to the patellar tendon, which connects the patella to the tibia (shin), in his right leg and underwent surgery in February. He missed spring practice, and returning to the field this week when camp opened was his first time in pads since the national semifinal loss on New Year’s Eve.
“Emotionally and mentally, it’s the best I’ve been in college,” Edwards told The Detroit News. “I’m going into this third year with a lot more confidence than I did going into my sophomore year and my freshman year, too, even though I didn’t play as much. Selfishly, I wanted to, but I know at the same time I was behind two fantastic Michigan legend running backs, and I’m putting myself in that same category.
“My confidence is back where it’s always been. I know that I am the best dynamic running back who can catch, run, throw the ball. I can play DB if I wanted to, kick the field goal, hold the extra point for the kicker, I can do all of that, and I pass block. I’m confident. Very confident.”
Edwards enters this season for the second straight season as part of a running back tandem with Blake Corum, who was in the Heisman Trophy conversation until suffering a knee injury in the final home that that ultimately ended his season after he tried to play at Ohio State the following week. With Corum sidelined, Edwards took over and rushed for 520 yards in his final three games, including 216 with touchdown runs of 75 and 85 yards against the Buckeyes.
He finished the season with 991 rushing yards and seven touchdowns and 200 receiving yards on 18 catches and two touchdowns. Edwards is a versatile back and his position coach Mike Hart, Michigan’s all-time leading rusher, has said the junior could be a starting slot receiver anywhere in the country.
With that in mind, Edwards has the goal of becoming Michigan’s career leader in receiving yards as a running back. He currently is eighth with 465 yards while Anthony Thomas (1997-2000) has the record with 810 yards.
“Hell yeah it’s doable,” Edwards said when asked if he can gain 346 yards receiving this year to pass Thomas. In 2021, Edwards had 265 yards, ninth all-time for single-season receiving yards by a Michigan running back.
Although he is a junior, Edwards is strategizing his next career move. His NFL aspirations have never been a secret, and this could be his final season with the Wolverines.
“That’s my plan, but whatever God’s plan is for me, I’m gonna embrace it,” Edwards said. “But my plan is, yeah, I want to declare after this year.”
To reach that point, though, there is an entire season ahead beginning with Michigan’s opener Sept. 2 at Michigan Stadium. The Wolverines are two-time defending Big Ten champions and an informal Big Ten media poll of reporters has them projected as the conference favorite.
“I have aspirations of going to the NFL and I can’t think eight months ahead or I can’t think about a national championship if I can’t win today,” he said. “If I take every day, day-by-day, and be in tune with myself mentally, physically and emotionally, then the sky’s the limit. I can’t look a week from today, I can’t look a year from today or what my NFL’s contracts going to look like, because that’s going to sort itself out when it gets there.”
Edwards was looking forward to the start of camp and getting back into football shape considering he missed spring practice with the tendon injury. He will not need to wear a brace.
“I haven’t put the pads on since January vs. my teammates who participated throughout spring camp,” he said. “They know what it’s like being back in pads, and that was no more than three, four months ago, and for me it’s been seven months.
“I’m continuing to strengthen it. I’m six months in and all I’ve got to do is build the confidence, and the confidence comes in in training camp, like one-on-ones with linebackers and the DBs, running the ball in between the tackles. It’s all gonna come back to normal and even better than I previously was.”
Corum believes it won’t take long for Edwards to return to football form.
“He’s great and has a great personality,” Corum said. “He’s a good man on the field and off the field. And he’s electric. He can always break one. You have to watch the game at all times when he’s in, because you just don’t know. It might take him three carries, might take him one catch, you don’t know. Might take him one to take it 70.”
Edwards enters this season with a plan. He also knows that no matter how many moves ahead he is considering, what he does now is what sets the plan in motion
“I’m working on being the best version of myself every day,” Edwards said. “And being more of a leader for the team. I understand I have a voice that people will listen to. It’s embracing where I am today, being were my feet are, because that will take care of everything else.”