IOWA CITY, Iowa — Cade McNamara returned to practice this weekend after sustaining a leg injury in an Aug. 12 scrimmage, but his status for Saturday's home opener is still up in the air.
Head coach Kirk Ferentz said he's questionable, despite being cleared medically.
"The thing we have to judge as we go along is how effective can he be? And, you know, can he go out and perform in a way that's represente the kind of player is?" Ferentz said. "He looked good in practice today, it's kind of day by day, we'll see where he is tomorrow."
With or without McNamara, Iowa has high goals. They start the work towards those goals Saturday against Utah State.
"We want to get to Indianapolis, we want to win. So we know that we got to get this offense going," said junior wide receiver Diante Vines. "All the work we've been putting in the offseason and all the work we're putting in right now is leading up for these moments. And I'm confident in our ability and I'm confident in the team for everything we've been doing."
For McNamara, he knows what it's going to take.
"We have an idea of what we want this offense to look like. It's week one and, you know, we're gonna continue to get better as the season goes on. But we're a confident group," he said.
And just because Utah State went just 6-7 in 2022, they aren't overlooking them.
"We've got total respect for our opponent and we need that each and every year. We had a pretty good football team in '09 and it took a miracle to win that game against an FCS team."
Kickoff is set for 11 a.m. at Kinnick Stadium.