Cade McNamara appears to be back at practice
A picture is worth a thousand words. In the case of Saturday’s picture from Iowa football practice, it was worth a thousand smiles for Iowa football fans.
The Hawkeyes held one final practice at Kinnick Stadium prior to season opening game next week again Utah State and it looks like starting quarterback Cade McNamara is back in uniform.
Let’s rewind to August 12th when Iowa held their only open practice of fall camp, the Kid’s Day practice. Approximately halfway through the practice, McNamara went down with a non-contact injury on a scramble. He walked back to the huddle and limped to the locker room.
McNamara emerged from the locker room still in his football pants, but without his helmet, shoulder pads, and jersey. He also had no wrap or ice on his right leg, which appeared to indicate that the injury wasn’t season altering.
At the time, Kirk Ferentz shared that McNamara had sustained a “tissue” injury. We reported at the time that he had strained is quad and it was shared later that McNamara had an MRI on Monday.
This past week, Ferentz offered up an update on McNamara and his status.
“I think everyone has a realistic change to start working in later this week,” Ferentz said. “We will know more with Cade at the end of the week, but I am really optimistic, so we will see.”
Since McNamara missed much of last season when he was at Michigan due to injury and was limited this spring, Ferentz said he needs time on the field in real game situations heading into the 2023 season.
“Cade needs work with our team right now because he was basically out last fall. There is that timing part. Thus far it’s been a recovery process and they have a procedure for it. Everything looks like it’s on schedule and hopefully he can start doing some things at the end of the week.”
Iowa will be releasing their first game week depth chart on Monday and it appears that this is a sign pointing to McNamara being listed as QB1.
