Cade McNamara Pleased with 1st Step

QB Says Iowa Offense Capable of More

Iowa’s Cade McNamara (12) throws Illinois State Saturday, Aug. 31, 2024 at Kinnick Stadium in Iowa City, Iowa. / Julia Hansen/Iowa City Press-Citizen / USA TODAY NETWORK

Cade McNamara liked the day-after feeling that comes with being a college quarterback.

McNamara made his first start at Iowa in almost a year in last Saturday’s 40-0 win over Illinois State at Kinnick Stadium. He wasn’t sacked, but he absorbed the usual hits that come with the position.

“I felt a couple of bruises for the first time in a long time,” McNamara said on Tuesday. “It felt really good.”

The last time McNamara had played in a game was Sept. 30, 2023, when he injured his knee in the Hawkeyes’ 26-16 win over Michigan State.

His comeback was made complete last Saturday, when he was 21-of-31 passing for 251 yards and three touchdowns. McNamara, who wasn’t even healthy at the beginning of last season as he battled through a sore quad, proclaimed last week that he was “100 percent”, and while those bruises maybe take that down a couple of percentage points, he says he still feels good, because he’s playing.

McNamara said last summer that there is a loneliness that comes with being injured, but his phone was quite busy after Saturday’s game.

“I have a lot of text messages and everything, which is really cool,” McNamara said. “Some people I haven't heard from in a while, and some people that I've been relying on a lot through this process, and I was just really happy to hear from those people.”

It took a while for McNamara to get into a rhythm. He was just 3-of-8 for 17 yards in the first quarter, 5-of-9 for 57 yards in the second quarter. But he completed his first eight passes of the second half, and threw two touchdown passes to Reece Vander Zee and one to Jacob Gill.

“We definitely left some plays out there,” McNamara said. “I felt like I definitely left some plays out there in the first half. But I think, kind of like what I said after the game, was we're not really too worried about the 40 points. We're just worried about, you know, how can we play our best every single week.”

“He has game experience,” Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz said. “That's in his pocket. That's a good thing for him. But that two-year gap is something that he's had to work through.

“It was good to see him. He looked relaxed, looked confident, and that was in the second half, and those are positive things. You can't hand that to a player. They have to go out and experience it and earn it.”

McNamara targeted 10 different players on passes, a sign that not only is he healthy, but that Iowa’s passing game has a lot of options.

“Yeah, it's encouraging,” Ferentz said. “It's a combination of a lot of things. I think the line, we're a little bit more veteran up there. I thought the guys overall protected pretty well. It didn't seem like that was an issue at all for us, so that was helpful. And then the receivers did a good job for the most part going and getting the ball, running good routes, things like that.”

McNamara has had to rebound from two serious injuries in his last two seasons — the injury to his leg he suffered in the 2022 season at Michigan, and the one he suffered last season.

That’s why Ferentz was glad to see how he played on Saturday.

“You just hoped it was coming, but there were no guarantees on that one,” Ferentz said. “He's always been confident and I think he knows what to do, all those types of things, but at some point you have to do it, and then you have to sample some success or taste it a little bit and experience it.