McNamara’s little moments have led Michigan into Big Ten finale
Let’s go back to early October, to Camp Randall Stadium, a rowdy, concrete college football shrine where Michigan hadn’t won in twenty years.
Let’s go back to the third series of the game, when U-M had the ball early in the first quarter on its 4-yard line, and was facing 3rd-and-7, and Cade McNamara took the snap, slipped to his right to avoid a collapsing pocket, looked, waited, scrambled some more, and then flipped a pass to Blake Corum who managed 8 yards for the first down.
After three more plays, the drive stalled and the Wolverines punted. The Badgers called for a fair catch at their own 34. They punted four plays later. U-M scored the next series and led the rest of the game.
Let’s go back to that moment and consider what might have happened if McNamara hadn’t made the throw to Corum, if he hadn’t found the calm to scramble from his own end zone, if he’d taken a sack or thrown an incompletion and left U-M’s punter taking the snap from the back edge of the end zone.
At the least, a short field gives the Badgers momentum. Maybe they don’t go three-andout. Maybe they kick a field goal and take a lead and the dominoes fall differently and the Wolverines end up losing at Camp Randall – again.
Football games can unfold like that. So can football seasons.
Sometimes an 8-yard pass on a drive that ends with a punt can change field position, change a game, remind a quarterback that when pressure builds, he won’t flinch. Such reminders can build, so that the next time a play needs to be made, the quarterback is ready.
As McNamara was a week later in Lincoln, Nebraska, early in the fourth quarter, the Wolverines trailing in an ocean of red under a river of light against a hard-luck team desperate to change its fourthquarter story.
There, in another Midwestern football shrine, McNamara dropped back on 3rd-and-8 and hit tight end Erick All on a crossing route for 14 yards. For a moment: silence. Also: first down. Which set up more first downs until, finally, Corum capped the drive sprinting around the left corner for a 29yard touchdown.
Fail on the 3rd-and-8 and give the ball back to the surging Cornhuskers and the Wolverines probably aren’t preparing to play Iowa in the Big Ten title game Saturday.
Call it the McNamara pivot.
There have been many this fall. When the junior quarterback absolutely needed to make an adjustment, make a read, make a decision, make a throw, he’s made it.
Jim Harbaugh called McNamara “cold-blooded” in the pocket that night in Lincoln. Not just for finding the quiet, but for finding it knowing he’s about to get plowed.
“He made a lot of those throws,” Harbaugh said after the win.
He could’ve said the same after Wisconsin and after Penn State, too.
He certainly could’ve said that after Ohio State. So, let’s go back one last time, to Michigan Stadium, to the second quarter, to a 3rd-and-3 from the Wolverines’ 25.
There, in that moment, the Buckeyes were leading, 10-7. There, in that moment, the Wolverines hadn’t scored on its previous three possessions. There, in that moment, against the weight of the rivalry imbalance, after some 20 years of losing, McNamara took the snap and flicked it to Cornelius Johnson for 11 yards.
First down.
Eight plays later, McNamara tear-dropped a ball through the flurries and over the shoulder of Johnson for 37 yards, setting up a 1-yard touchdown plunge from Hassan Haskins. The senior running back should never have to buy a meal in Ann Arbor again after his performance against Ohio State. Rightfully, so.
As Harbaugh said of his quarterback Monday: “In so many ways, you could say we are not where we are at without Cade McNamara. Hardpressed to find something he doesn’t do well. The things he does well are the most important things.”