Michigan's 2026 Draft Class: Six Picks, No First-Rounder For The First Time Since 2018

Michigan's 2026 NFL Draft was the sound of a championship roster finally fully turning over. The Wolverines had six players selected, and for the first time since 2018, not one of them went in the first round. The program that put a wave of talent into the league off its 2023 national title team — including a 13-player draft haul the following spring — has regressed to the middle of the pack, and the 2026 class is the clearest marker yet of that descent toward average.

The class led off in the second round with two picks. Edge rusher Derrick Moore stayed in-state, taken by the Detroit Lions at No. 44, and tight end Marlin Klein — a German-born prospect viewed as a mild reach — went to the Houston Texans at No. 59. Linebacker Jaishawn Barham followed in the third round to the Dallas Cowboys at No. 92. That was the entirety of Michigan's Day 1 and Day 2: zero first-rounders, two second-rounders, and one third.

Day 3 added three more names. Linebacker Jimmy Rolder went to Detroit in the fourth round at No. 118, giving the Lions a second Michigan defender. Fullback Max Bredeson, a genuine throwback at a near-extinct position, went to the Minnesota Vikings in the fifth at No. 159. And defensive lineman Rayshaun Benny closed the class in the seventh round, taken by the Baltimore Ravens at No. 250. Six picks, spread from the second round to the next-to-last selection of the draft.

The first-round shutout is the number that defines the class. Michigan had produced a first-round pick in seven consecutive drafts before 2026, a run that peaked when the 2023 title team flooded the top of the 2024 board. The last time the Wolverines went a full draft without a Round 1 selection was 2018. That a program three years removed from a national championship could not place a single player in the first round is the post-title regression the topic anticipated — talent acquired and developed under one regime cycling out, with thinner classes behind it.

The coaching instability frames the regression. This was the second draft of the Sherrone Moore head-coaching tenure, and Moore was fired following the 2025 regular season — meaning Michigan entered the 2026 draft cycle already searching for direction. A program that wins a national title, loses its title-winning coach, churns through a successor, and then fails to produce a first-rounder is following a familiar post-championship arc: the roster that won it all leaves, and the replacement talent is not yet at the same level.

The one streak that survived is worth noting because it is genuinely rare. With Derrick Moore's selection, Michigan extended its run of consecutive drafts with at least one player taken to 88 straight years — one of the longest such streaks in the sport. The Wolverines have not been shut out of an NFL Draft since before World War II. So while the first-round run ended, the deeper marker of sustained relevance held: Michigan still produces NFL players. It just stopped producing early ones, at least for a year.

The verdict is that Michigan's 2026 class is the textbook image of post-title regression. Six picks is a respectable mid-tier total — it placed the Wolverines in a tie for around 16th among all schools — but it is a steep drop from the championship-roster classes that immediately preceded it, and the absence of any first-rounder is the kind of result that does not happen to a program operating at full strength. The 88-year streak says Michigan is not falling off the map. The first-round zero says the climb back to the top of the draft board starts now, under whoever the program hands the rebuild to next.