Former Michigan Football star Zak Zinter cleared ‘for pretty much everything’

INDIANAPOLIS − Sometimes in life, it’s hard to know what you have until it’s gone.

Zak Zinter can attest to that firsthand.

A Michigan football captain and star, his senior season was playing out like a dream until one day, it wasn’t. The fifth-year guard went to block on a run play against rival Ohio State when an opposing lineman fell on his left leg. Just like that, his collegiate career was over.

Ninety-eight days after he was carted off the Michigan Stadium field on his senior day, Zinter fielded questions at the NFL combine downtown Indy, a few blocks north of Lucas Oil Stadium, the site of the first of U-M’s three postseason games he missed as the team put the finishing touches on its national championship run.

While Zinter still wishes that life-changing moment never happened, Saturday morning, he acknowledged it did benefit him in some ways.

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“I know that 100% and think it made me, like, fall in love with the game again,” Zinter said, discussing the moment that became the conclusion he never wanted to his All-American season. “I’ve been playing forever, so just that feeling I got not being able to play just showed me how much I loved it, how much I do love playing this game.

“It brought that spark back, I wanted to get back out there, it was pushing me to rehab this leg, get it back in fighting shape.”

The leg is in near-fighting shape, but not quite back. Zinter called it the “best, worst-case scenario” given that he had a clean break of his tibia and fibula but suffered no damage in any of the ligaments in his ankle or knee.

That’s put his rehab a bit ahead of schedule, he said, before he added he’s moving around well and has been cleared for “pretty much everything.” At this point in the recovery, he’s again trying to add strength to “build it back up.”

“I’ll be ready to roll in a month,” he said.

The two-time All-Big Ten right guard isn’t participating in any physical drills over the weekend, but said he was hoping to put up around 25 reps on the bench press and “move around in front of everybody” at U-M’s pro day later this month in the comforts of its home headquarters, Schembechler Hall.