Cade McNamara: Healthy, happy, and helping the Hawkeyes hang a 40

IOWA CITY — Injuries happen in football, way too often, and it stinks.

No one knows how rotten it is as much as the players who face long periods of rehabilitation and doubts that come from outside and inside their heads.

Quarterback Cade McNamara had surgery to a knee in the 2022 season at Michigan, transferred to Iowa to be a starter again, had a quad injury in a practice last August, and was never himself athletically in September. Then, he had a major injury to his other knee in the season’s fifth game. Surgery, again.

This summer, there was none of the previous offseason’s hype when it came to McNamara. Instead, he was seen as another question mark in an offense that wants to play its way out of being a national punch line.

Saturday at Kinnick Stadium, it was Iowa 6, Illinois State 0 at halftime. The dreary Hawkeye offense of 2022 and 2023 had carried into 2024. Then, however, Iowa started the second half with a touchdown drive and was a dynamo in rolling to a 40-0 win.

McNamara completed 13 of 14 second-half passes for 177 yards and three touchdowns. He scrambled for 12 yards on his only official carry, and had a 20-yard rush negated by penalty. The Redbirds almost sacked him a few times, but never brought him down.

On one of the near-sacks McNamara deftly avoided, he quickly adjusted and threw perhaps his best pass of the day, a 31-yarder to tight end Zach Ortwerth.

“Today it felt really good to be healthy and run around a little bit,” McNamara said. “I wasn’t expected to run as much as I did today, but it felt good.

“There were a couple of times I’m like ‘Hey, I could have stayed on my feet a little longer and tried to make a juke.’ But I’ll play it safe for the first game.

“This time last year, I wasn’t able to do a full week of practice, dealing with my quad. For me to be able to do a full week of practice and come out of this game healthy, it’s huge.”

Going through a second surgery, rehab and long layoff would be a soul-tester for anyone, let alone a player who had been a starting quarterback for Michigan’s College Football Playoff team in 2021.

Luke Lachey can relate. The superb Iowa tight end, who caught six of McNamara’s passes for 63 yards, injured an ankle in last season’s third game and was done for the season.

“It feels like it was yesterday when I got hurt,” Lachey said. “It also feels like it's been forever. It’s just an amazing feeling to be back out there on the field.”

Lachey’s comeback was never in doubt. Nor, he suggested, was McNamara’s.

“That's competitiveness,” Lachey said. “He’s so competitive in everything he does. I don't think you know you could ever tell him to stop playing because of injury.”

McNamara has never lost his Iowa teammates. He was named to his team’s 2024 Player Council. He is a team captain along with Jay Higgins, Quinn Schulte and Lachey.

He still needed to get some on-field results, though. This certainly was a start, one that left McNamara grinning widely as he waited to talk to a BTN reporter on the field after the game.

“I think moments like these, and really like picturing myself having moments like this, is what got me through rehab,” McNamara said.

“A lot of that motivation was being able to know what it was like to possibly go out there as 100 percent again. Because I know last year I played and I wasn't 100 percent, and I wasn’t able to move around the pocket as much.”

The road back, he said, required “a lot of visualization and mindset and really just relying on my teammates and those relationships.”

It didn’t matter if it were Illinois State or Ohio State, Iowa hung a 40 on someone. A sixth-year quarterback threw two touchdown passes to a first-year revelation, 6-foot-4 wide receiver Reece Vander Zee of Rock Rapids.

As a clever woman tweeted Saturday it was Cade to Zee. And for a refreshing change, the alphabet didn’t spell U-G-H or I-C-K when it came to the Hawkeyes’ offense.

You’ve probably heard rumors about crazy offensive numbers in faraway places, with first downs and long drives and even multiple touchdowns. Saturday, in a surgical second half, that happened in I-O-W-A.

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