Cade McNamara wasn’t supposed to be the starting quarterback.
McNamara was a freshman in a new situation, the kind of player who’s expected to get in line and wait his turn. The team was united behind a veteran leader who’d earned the starting job. But something about McNamara — his confidence, his swagger, the way the ball came out of his hand — made him impossible to ignore. He refused to back off or go easy in practice. Whether they wanted one or not, his coaches realized they had a competition on their hands.
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Four games into the season, his coach made the switch. It nearly set off a mutiny.
“It was the first time for me as a head coach in any sport that I’ve had a locker room split like that,” said Shawn Dupris, who coached McNamara at Damonte Ranch High School in Reno, Nev.
As McNamara prepares for what we assume will be his first start at Michigan, it’s worth looking back at the last time he was involved in a quarterback competition. He was a high school freshman, 6 feet tall and maybe 150 pounds, barely old enough to get his learner’s permit. His team had a returning all-conference quarterback who was well-liked in the locker room. As a football decision, the choice was clear: McNamara was winning the battle on the field. But when it came to managing locker-room loyalties, the switch brought bitter feelings from players and parents who viewed McNamara as an outsider.
“We had heard of him that he was coming in,” said Jacob Covert, an offensive lineman who was two years ahead of McNamara at Damonte Ranch. “The dude that was starting, we had rolled with him my entire childhood. We weren’t really wanting any change. But the moment he stepped on the field, it just kind of clicked.”
McNamara eventually won over his offensive line with sushi dinners and other edible expressions of gratitude. When Covert hurt his knee as a senior, McNamara was the first player at his side. Early on, though, players viewed the ultra-confident freshman with suspicion. The bitterness spilled into the grandstands and the school hallways, making for a miserable year as McNamara navigated the transition into high school.
“That was a tough time in his life,” said Gary McNamara, Cade’s father. “High school is different than college. You’re like the only guy on the team that doesn’t drive. Your mom has to pick you up. Going from eighth grade, walking the hallways, the older kids in the school are friends with the guy who was the quarterback the year prior.
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“It was a very unique situation that was not fun to be part of.”
Gary wanted to intervene on Cade’s behalf, but because he was coaching baseball in the same community, he felt a need to stay neutral. Adding to an already unpleasant situation, Damonte Ranch finished 4-7 Cade’s freshman year and lost early in the playoffs. Transferring to a different school would have been the easy solution, but then everything Cade endured as a freshman would have been for nothing. “The tough part’s over,” Dupris texted him, and it was true. Jordan Palmer, McNamara’s longtime quarterback coach, reminded Gary that if Cade went on to play in college, heated competition would be the norm. Cade was ahead of the game after experiencing locker-room conflict at such an early age.
“I think it made him tougher,” Gary said.
The lessons from that experience become vivid now that McNamara is poised to take over as Michigan’s starting quarterback. He was fourth on the depth chart last season behind Shea Patterson, Dylan McCaffrey and Joe Milton. Entering the offseason, most people pegged the quarterback competition as a two-man race between McCaffrey and Milton. When McCaffrey opted out, all signs pointed to Milton as Michigan’s quarterback of the future.
The whole time, McNamara was competing as if the job was his to win. He didn’t sulk, didn’t take a day off, didn’t allow himself to be discounted. Dupris isn’t remotely surprised that McNamara played his way onto the field, then performed so well that it was impossible to put him back on the bench.
“That was something I saw for five, six years with Cade,” Dupris said. “He’s not going to be denied. Nobody’s going to tell him he can’t do it. He’s not going to listen.”
After that difficult freshman year at Damonte Ranch, McNamara entered his sophomore season as the undisputed starter and showed why Dupris risked a locker-room rift to get him on the field. McNamara threw for more than 3,500 yards and 46 touchdowns that season while leading Damonte Ranch to a regional championship, quieting any critics who still doubted that he was the right choice.
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“Once he gets in there and he moves the football, a lot of question marks disappear,” Dupris said. “People can say all they want as long as the ball’s moving.”
With his team trailing 31-7 at halftime, McNamara led a dramatic comeback to give Damonte Ranch a 49-45 victory in the regional championship game that season. The performance caught the eye of Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly, who offered McNamara a scholarship after his sophomore year. For a player from northern Nevada, being recruited by a blueblood like Notre Dame was heady stuff. McNamara accepted the offer without much second thought.
As time went on, the relationship with Notre Dame started to fray. McNamara blossomed into a four-star prospect, an Elite 11 quarterback and one of the top pro-style passers in his class while setting state records for passing yards and touchdowns. Other big-time programs began to communicate their interest, and the McNamaras caught wind of some negative comments that made them wonder if Notre Dame was still the best fit. McNamara visited other schools and ended up sitting in Jim Harbaugh’s office on Super Bowl Sunday, watching film and talking football.
“The second that he met Jim, I could just tell that they hit it off immediately,” Gary said.
Playing behind Milton and McCaffrey on the depth chart, McNamara didn’t have an easy path to the field. Based on public perception, he was the third player in a two-way competition to replace Patterson as the Wolverines’ starter. It didn’t help that spring practice was canceled, costing McNamara a chance to showcase his abilities.
McNamara spent the spring at home with his parents in Tennessee, where they relocated after he graduated from high school. He was working out every morning with his brothers — including his younger brother Kyle, a wide receiver who started his career at Michigan before transferring to Western Kentucky — and preparing for the season. When he returned to campus in June, he came with a mindset to win the starting job.
That didn’t happen, at least not right away. Michigan went with Milton, a redshirt sophomore who won over the locker room with his strong arm and his unselfish attitude. Things started off well, but after two straight losses and a disastrous first half against Wisconsin, the Wolverines needed a change. McNamara entered the game in the third quarter and ripped off three straight completions, including a dime to Mike Sainristil for a touchdown.
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The Wolverines saw enough to reopen their quarterback competition in practice. After evaluating both players, Harbaugh decided to stick with Milton for Saturday’s game against Rutgers.
“Obviously as a competitor I’m going to be disappointed,” McNamara said. “I’m a confident player. I think my preparation is good. I just have a lot of belief in myself.
“The coaches really challenged me that, yeah, as a competitor I might be feeling down a little bit. It’s still my job as a teammate on this team (to make sure) that I’m prepared for this game and not to let my emotions get the best of me.”
With Michigan trailing Rutgers 17-0 in the second quarter, Harbaugh made the switch. On his first series, McNamara made a sharp read to pull the ball and hit Sainristil for an easy completion. One play later, the Wolverines caught Rutgers in a blitz and McNamara found Cornelius Johnson running wide open for a 46-yard touchdown. Any jitters were gone, and Michigan’s anemic offense found some life.
McNamara finished the triple-overtime win with 260 passing yards and four touchdowns, plus another on the ground. The Wolverines haven’t said who will start Saturday’s game against Penn State, but McNamara’s performance appeared to solidify him as the starter moving forward.
“Personally I feel like I’ve done enough for me to be put in that position,” McNamara said. “Whatever’s best for the team, that’s Coach Harbaugh’s decision. But from a personal level I feel like I’m confident in myself that if my number’s called again, I’ll perform the same way. It’s my job as a leader to help lead these boys to another victory.”
Changing quarterbacks can be a delicate thing, especially when it involves a player as well-liked as Milton. Just a few weeks ago, fullback Ben Mason was delivering a heartfelt pregame speech, telling Milton the entire team was behind him. Numerous issues have surfaced since then, many of them unrelated to Michigan’s quarterback play, and it became apparent that the Wolverines needed a change. As much as everyone was pulling for Milton, players say it’s been easy to put their trust in McNamara.
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“The energy he gives off, it translates to everybody,” tight end Erick All said. “Everybody wants to feed off the energy he gives out.”
That’s been the story for McNamara since he was a scrawny high school freshman. The first time he went through this, it took some time to get the whole team on his side. That experience taught him some valuable lessons, including this one: As long as the ball’s moving, everybody’s happy.
“It was the worst time for us,” his father said, “but in hindsight it was probably the very best thing that could have happened to him.”
(Photo: Rich Graessle / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)