Looking for Justice Haynes on an NFL depth chart this summer? He is not on one. The running back left Michigan after a single season, never entered the 2026 draft, and is now listed as a Georgia Tech senior wearing 22. We checked the school’s own roster page on July 29, 2026. We cover this in more depth in Hugh Freeze.
The short answer on where Justice Haynes plays now
He plays for Georgia Tech. After two years at Alabama and one at Michigan, the 5-11, 210-pound back transferred home to Atlanta for a fourth college season. Last fall he rushed for 857 yards and 10 touchdowns in seven games before foot surgery ended his year. His first Yellow Jackets game is September 3.
| Details about Justice Haynes | What we verified |
| Position | Running back, jersey 22 |
| 2026 team | Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets, listed as a senior |
| Previous schools | Alabama (2023 and 2024), Michigan (2025) |
| Size | 5 feet 11 inches, 210 lbs |
| Hometown | Alpharetta, Georgia; Buford High School |
| Best season | 2025: 121 carries, 857 yards, 7.1 per carry, 10 rushing scores |
| Health | Right foot surgery in November 2025; back on the practice field in spring |
| NFL status | Undrafted because he never declared; eligible for the 2027 draft |
| Next game | Thursday, September 3, 2026 vs Colorado, Bobby Dodd Stadium |
Key takeaways
- He is a college player in 2026, not an NFL rookie.
- Georgia Tech is his third school and his home state.
- Seven games in 2025 produced six 100-yard performances.
- A right foot injury at Michigan State ended his season in October.
- One more productive fall puts him back in the draft conversation for 2027.
Justice Haynes: From Buford to Tuscaloosa to Ann Arbor
Justice Haynes grew up in Alpharetta and played his high school football at Buford, one of the most respected football programs in Georgia. That pedigree is real. His father, Verron Haynes, starred at Georgia before being selected by the Pittsburgh Steelers in the fifth round of the 2002 NFL Draft.
The elder Haynes won a Super Bowl ring with the Steelers after the 2005 season. Alabama signed him out of that program. Two seasons in Tuscaloosa brought 104 carries and nine rushing touchdowns.
That is useful work for a young back, and nowhere near a feature role. Wanting the ball far more often, he moved to Michigan for 2025. Careers built across three campuses fill our athlete profiles and career journeys section.
How 2025 changed the way scouts saw him
Michigan handed him the job in week one, and he never gave it back. Across seven appearances, he carried 121 times for 857 yards, an average of 7.1 per attempt. Ten of those carries finished in the end zone, and 13 catches came with them. Michigan ran for 2,732 yards as a team that fall. Roughly 31 percent of it came from a back who played barely half the schedule.
Game by game, that average stops looking like an accident.
| Date | Opponent | Carries | Yards | TD |
| August 30 | New Mexico | 16 | 159 | 3 |
| September 6 | at Oklahoma | 19 | 125 | 1 |
| September 13 | Central Michigan | 14 | 104 | 1 |
| September 20 | at Nebraska | 17 | 149 | 1 |
| October 4 | Wisconsin | 19 | 117 | 2 |
| October 11 | at USC | 10 | 51 | 0 |
| October 25 | at Michigan State | 26 | 152 | 2 |
Six of seven games cleared 100 yards. Only the trip to USC kept him quiet, and Michigan trailed early there and abandoned the run.
Foot injury, surgery, and six missed games
The Michigan State win on October 25 brought his heaviest workload of the year. It also brought his last carry of 2025. That afternoon also wrecked his right foot. Surgery followed in early November, and a walking boot took up the rest of his fall. Michigan played on without him through Purdue, Northwestern, Maryland, Ohio State and a 41-27 Citrus Bowl loss to Texas.
Add the Washington game he had already missed on October 18 and the count reaches six absences from a 13-game season. Michigan never named the fracture, so treat the timeline as a benchmark rather than a diagnosis.
A 2024 review in the journal Sports pooled six studies covering 285 Jones fractures, which is the foot break football surgeons repair most often. Every one of those NFL-caliber players returned to play, and the average return times ran from 6 weeks to 27 weeks.
Georgia Tech opened spring practice in March 2026 with him on the field. That is the clearest health signal available before camp opens. Recovery stories like his sit alongside the rest of our match analysis and sport coverage.
Why his name never came up in the 2026 NFL Draft
Plenty of people assumed a back averaging 7.1 yards a carry would turn pro. That is not what happened. His name appears nowhere in the seven rounds of the 2026 draft, because he was never in the class. Instead, he entered the transfer portal in January 2026 and chose a fourth college season in his home state.
Look at the back-to-back teams that did take that April. Three went inside the top 90.
- Jeremiyah Love of Notre Dame, third pick of the draft, to Arizona.
- Love’s Notre Dame backfield partner, taken 32nd by Seattle.
- Kaelon Black of Indiana, pick 90, to San Francisco.
Michigan still had five players drafted. Edge rusher Derrick Moore went to Detroit at pick 44, and Jaishawn Barham went to Dallas at 92. Portal entries and draft boards move together, and we track both in our football transfers and league news coverage.
What Georgia Tech actually needs from him
Quite a lot, as it happens. Georgia Tech went 9-4 in 2025, finished 6-2 in the ACC, and lost 25-21 to BYU in its bowl game. Its leading rusher that year was quarterback Haynes King, who gained 953 yards on the ground and has now used up his eligibility.
That leaves a genuine hole. Georgia Tech’s 2026 backfield lists seven names. Its two most productive backs on paper are the senior transfer from Michigan and Malachi Hosley. Chad Alexander, Trelain Maddox, Shane Marshall, Jayden Barr and JP Powell fill out the room behind them.
Nothing about the schedule eases anyone in. Colorado visits Atlanta on Thursday, September 3. Tennessee comes to Bobby Dodd on September 12. Mercer follows on September 19, then a late night at Stanford, and the season closes at rival Georgia on November 28.
There is a neat symmetry here for anyone who followed the 2025 Yellow Jackets. They already had a Haynes carrying the ball, and he played quarterback. Now they have one whose day job it is.
Career numbers in one place
| Season | School | Games | Carries | Yards | Avg | TD |
| 2023 | Alabama | 12 | 25 | 168 | 6.7 | 2 |
| 2024 | Alabama | 12 | 79 | 448 | 5.7 | 7 |
| 2025 | Michigan | 7 | 121 | 857 | 7.1 | 10 |
| Total | 31 | 225 | 1,473 | 6.5 | 19 |
Three seasons, 1,473 rushing yards, 19 scores on the ground and 30 catches. Trend line beats total here. His 5.7 yards a carry in a final Alabama season became 7.1 in a single Michigan season.
What to watch this fall
Two things decide his year. Start with workload. Never in three seasons has he handled more than 121 carries, and Georgia Tech may ask for 200. Backs who jump that far often fade in the second half of a schedule.
Next comes the foot, and November will judge it rather than September. Rushing yards in week one prove nothing about a repaired metatarsal. What matters is whether he is still taking 20 carries a game after Halloween, through Louisville, Clemson, Wake Forest and Georgia.
Frequently asked questions
No. Justice Haynes is a senior running back at Georgia Tech for the 2026 college season, and he becomes eligible for the 2027 NFL Draft.
Haynes entered the portal in January 2026 and said he wanted to finish his career back in Georgia. Georgia Tech’s campus sits a straight run down Georgia 400 from his hometown of Alpharetta.
A right foot injury suffered against Michigan State on October 25, 2025, treated with surgery in early November.
Verron Haynes, a Georgia running back who played for the Steelers from 2002 to 2007 and the Falcons in 2009.
Thursday, September 3, 2026, against Colorado at Bobby Dodd Stadium in Atlanta, at 8 p.m. Eastern on ESPN.
