How Cade McNamara, a ‘Michigan legend,’ found renewed purpose at Iowa

Michael Cohen

College Football and College Basketball Writer

IOWA CITY, Iowa — Last December, on Christmas morning, Cade McNamara awoke atop the Costco mattress he’d placed on the floor of an empty office building. Beside him was Grizz, the 155-pound English Mastiff whom McNamara drove from Ann Arbor, Michigan, to his makeshift home in Southern California. Down the hall were his brothers, Kyle and Jake, both football players at UTEP, who brought their own dogs and crashed on air mattresses in enclosed-glass rooms.

In a few days, Michigan would face Texas Christian in the College Football Playoff semifinals, a second trip in as many seasons for head coach Jim Harbaugh. But McNamara — the quarterback who anchored Harbaugh’s team the year prior — was seven weeks removed from surgery to address tears in his MCL and patellar tendon, separate injuries that occurred nearly 11 months apart. The procedure was performed in early November by renowned Los Angeles-based surgeon Dr. Neal ElAttrache, the lead physician for the Rams and Dodgers, and McNamara moved into the vacant building in San Clemente because of its proximity to a rehab facility. The addition of a Christmas tree helped brighten the place, which had been recently purchased by a friend and loaned to McNamara. He and his brothers had more than 30,000 square feet to themselves, including a kitchen with a mostly functional refrigerator.

The McNamara parents, Gary and Nicole, had traveled to California a few days earlier to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary. They joined their sons later that morning to exchange gifts. 

“It was one of those things where it’s like, ‘What Christmas do you remember the most?'” Gary McNamara said. “It’s going to be hard not to remember that Christmas just because of the location we had it.”

Cherished though that memory may be, it was a staggering juxtaposition from where Cade McNamara stood exactly one year prior. On Dec. 25, 2021, he stepped off a plane and onto the tarmac at Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport for the Wolverines’ inaugural trip to the College Football Playoff. Michigan would get mauled, 34-11, by Georgia, the eventual national champion, but McNamara’s name was already etched in program lore as the quarterback who upset Ohio State and claimed the school’s first Big Ten Championship in 17 years. His was a leading voice among the upperclassmen credited by head coach Jim Harbaugh for repairing Michigan’s culture. “Love Cade,” Harbaugh said at Big Ten Media Days in 2023.

So how did McNamara wind up sleeping on the floor of an office building while the Wolverines returned to the national semifinals last year? How did a player described by one coach as “a Michigan legend” all but vanish after absorbing the hit that damaged his knee in Week 3? How did McNamara hop into and out of the transfer portal before the Wolverines even arrived at Lucas Oil Stadium to win a second consecutive Big Ten title? And how did he claw…