IOWA CITY — The fans were booing the new-look Iowa offense in the first quarter of the first game, a 40-0 season-opening throttling of Illinois State. Really, they were.
After showing what he and the Tim Lester offense are capable of this week, though, Cade McNamara just might have given the notoriously boisterous Kinnick Stadium crowd what it's been asking for all along: an offense to believe in.
McNamara didn't mention the boos in his postgame conference after Iowa's victory over the Redbirds. He clearly didn't let them affect him during the game, either, finishing with a 21-for-31, 251-yard, three-touchdown performance in the win and putting an exclamation point on his road back from last season's quad injury and subsequent season-ending torn ACL.
"Picturing myself having moments like this is what got me through rehab," McNamara said. "What it [would be] like to possibly go out there as 100% again."
If that's not 100%, God help the rest of the Big Ten, because McNamara's second-half stats almost beggar belief for an Iowa quarterback: 13-for-14, 177 yards, and all three of the aforementioned scores. His QB rating for the second half? A mere 269.8.
That? That'll do just fine, in Iowa City or any other stadium in the country.
"I'm super excited for Cade; he's come a long way after the injury," said tight end Luke Lachey, himself a returnee from a 2023 season-ending leg injury. Lachey finished with 63 yards and a game-high six catches in the win.
This was not only McNamara's best start as a Hawkeye, it was the best performance by any Iowa quarterback since Spencer Petras' 259-yard, three-TD game at Maryland in 2021.
That's 36 games ago.
The Redbirds won't get mistaken for Georgia any time soon, but it's still one of the better FCS teams out there. Blowouts against FCS competition aren't even the norm in Iowa City; Saturday's win is Iowa's largest over an FCS opponent since beating Maine 46-3 all the way back in 2008, and coming into Saturday the Hawkeyes averaged just a 13.4-point margin of victory against FCS foes since 2008's Maine event.
No, really though: this offense got booed, and for good reason.
The Hawkeyes didn't manage a first down until their fourth drive of the game, despite advantageous field position, and only logged 34 yards of offense in the first quarter. McNamara's mechanics looked shaky-at-best, and he missed an early touchdown opportunity to Lachey, throwing dreadfully behind the massive big-play target.
Illinois State deserves plenty of credit for keeping Iowa in check early by bringing pressure off the edge with startling regularity, mainly because the Hawkeyes didn't adjust to it until near halftime. The pressure hampered Iowa's slower-developing rush plays, to say nothing of McNamara's timing as a passer, and even unbiased observers were fair to wonder what had actually improved about this offense.
"They did a really good job, especially in the first half, of pressuring us," said McNamara. "They brought a lot of field pressure and edge pressure today."
By the end of the half, though, Iowa managed a 10-play, 49-yard drive that only resulted in three points — enough to double Iowa's lead by halftime to 6-0 — but also gave the offense some confidence to build on over halftime.
"It was one of those deals where you come in at halftime and you're in a 6-0 game and you've got the lead, but it's still one possession and something has to change," acting head coach Seth Wallace said after the game. "We did emphasize just trying to move the ball down the field, get in and out of the huddle a little bit faster, and not allow a defense that really feasts on looking at a picture and dialing into it."
McNamara's early struggles mirrored his Kids Day debacle, and fans had every right to wonder how far away his return to form still was, if it was coming at all.
"This time last year, I wasn't able to do a full week of practice, dealing with my quad," McNamara said. "To be able to do a full week of practice and come out of this game healthy, it's huge."
Fortunately, a play that didn't even count kickstarted the Hawkeye offense — and gave fans reason to believe this wasn't 2023 all over again.
On the first play of that second-quarter scoring drive, McNamara scrambled out of pressure into wide open field, scampering for 20 yards(!) and diving headfirst for extra yardage(!!) before tacklers could corral him. An illegal shift by Lachey negated the play, but McNamara would find his trusted tight end for a 17-yard catch and first down two plays later to push the ball back into Redbird territory — this time for keeps.
"I wasn't expecting to run as much as I did today," McNamara said. "But it felt good, some confidence was built with that, and there was even a couple times where I'm like 'dang, I could have stayed on my feet a little longer, maybe tried a juke,' but I'll play it safe for the first little bit."
Indeed, McNamara would scramble for 12 yards later in the drive, and Drew Stevens had no issues converting the 28-yard chippy near the end of the half.
"We really started to gain some momentum at the end of that second quarter, when we were able to go on a decent drive," said McNamara. "We weren't able to finish with a touchdown, but overall, when stuff wasn't going our way at the beginning, our tempo wasn't very good. Once we were able to gain some momentum and some tempo, that really set us up well for the second half."
Lachey praised McNamara's steady leadership after the game.
"He's just going to go out there and lead us, and that's the biggest thing," Lachey said. "He didn't really change much from the first to second [half]; things just started to click."
By the second half, McNamara was firing on all cylinders for the first time since his Ann Arbor days, and by the end of the third quarter he was stocking his personal highlight reel with some gems. That included a 31-yard dime to Jacob Gill for a score, then spinning out of a sure sack to find tight end Zach Ortwerth for a looping 31-yard pitch-and-catch, delighting the once-restless natives.
"They brought some good pressure," McNamara said. "I have to go back and look at the play to see if I was 'hot' or not, if I should have gotten the ball out earlier, honestly. Once I was able to get out of the pocket and [Ortwerth] was able to keep the play going, I was waiting on him to make a decision, whether it was to block or to take off. He took off and I thought it was a great decision, and all I had to do was just lay it up for him."
McNamara did not hesitate to say he wouldn't have been able to elude that sack last season with his quad at less than 100%. Truthfully, several recent Hawkeye quarterbacks wouldn't have eluded it either, even when healthy. His pocket footwork is finally resembling his Michigan days, and as he's already shown, that can make the difference between a drive-killing sack or one of the most productive plays of the day.
Does McNamara's strong Saturday effectively end the QB competition in Iowa City? Probably not, but it certainly reaffirms the coaches' decision to start him — and it takes a great deal of urgency out of the next slow start McNamara has.
Tim Lester's system has its proof of concept, FCS opponent be damned, and Iowa has a reason to believe its quarterback's slow start was just that: a slow start. In that sense, then, Iowa's season opener was a roaring success for McNamara and its offense.
"I think we're all thankful the way the game played out," Wallace said. "Everybody in the stands would have loved for us to come out and just start mowing people down and the scoreboard starts lighting up. That would be a good story. But when it comes to your team, your players, the next 11 games, the course of the season, this gives us a great opportunity to coach some lessons, some teaching opportunities."
Iowa will need to learn from those opportunities with Iowa State coming to town next Saturday. McNamara will have his hands full against a defense that just held North Dakota to 121 yards on 17-for-30 passing, a pick and a pair of sacks in a 21-3 season-opening win.
Or maybe, just maybe, that defense will have its hands full with McNamara instead. Now wouldn't that be something worth believing in?
