Cade McNamara Is Still So Bitter About Losing His Starting Job That He Has Started Calling Michigan "That Other Team"

This kind of sucks. I don’t want to turn this into a Cade McNamara bash fest. To be honest, until recently, I spoke highly of Cade McNamara. Was I ever that impressed by him as a quarterback? No, not necessarily I thought he was pretty milquetoast and average. Honestly, I feel like Iowa was a perfect place for a quarterback like him to go. But when you tell the story of the Jim Harbaugh Renaissance at Michigan University, Cade McNamara deserves a chapter in that book. He stabilized the Michigan quarterback situation in 2021 after years of frustration. When Michigan finally got over the hump and beat Ohio State in 2021, it was he who took a knee on the final play. But the guy seems bitter about his entire experience in Michigan, hurting his legacy. 

It can’t feel good to lose your starting quarterback spot, especially after you help lead a team to a Big Ten championship for the first time in 17 years. But it seems very apparent that Cade McNamara thinks he was done wrong here, and I just don’t really understand why. He had the opportunity to start the first game of the season last year against Colorado State; he looked pretty ineffective. He came in during the second half of the Hawaii game, and he got injured. Did he really not think that he would have to compete with a five-star quarterback after putting up completely pedestrian numbers in 2021? 

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Honestly, if there's any quarterback in Michigan's recent history who probably earned the right to have something of a diva attitude, it would be J.J. McCarthy. Pretty early on, he was anointed the next big thing. He was expected to be the savior of the program, and he didn't start his freshman year. The guy didn't pout. He spent his time developing relationships, and yeah, he got a fair amount of playing time as a freshman, but it wasn't his team. He went to work. Two years later, he still hasn't lost a Big Ten game. Clearly, Michigan made the right decision.

It's also worth pointing out that Cade McNamara can't stay healthy at all. Even if his skill set matched that of J.J. McCarthy, J.J. still would've won the job. Again, I don't want to rip the guy too much. He's responsible for some great memories at U of M. I hope he gets healthy and I hope he succeeds in Iowa. But it is bizarre to me that he seems to harbor some very hard feelings that don't feel justified.