Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh has named Cade McNamara the team’s starting quarterback — but only for the season opener against Colorado State.
In an appearance on the athletic department’s podcast, Harbaugh said the competition between McNamara and challenger J.J. McCarthy remains inseparable with a week remaining before the team’s first game. The plan he and his coaching staff have devised is for each quarterback to be given a chance to start in Week 1 and Week 2, respectively, before a final decision is made ahead of Michigan’s third game against UConn.
“Both quarterbacks have played great,” Harbaugh said in an episode of the podcast published Saturday evening. “Done everything they could have in every way to win the starting job. Coming out of camp I just feel like we have two quarterbacks, Cade McNamara and J.J. McCarthy, that we feel very confident we can win a championship with either of those two quarterbacks behind center. Great thing for our team.”
“But there’s only one ball, so there can only be one quarterback out there at a time. We’re not ready to say who that starting quarterback is. But the decision we’ve made is Cade McNamara will start the opener against Colorado State. J.J. McCarthy will start the second ball game against Hawaii. And then after Week 2, we’ll make a decision going into Week 3 on starter/backup.”
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The announcement comes two days after McNamara was one of five players elected captain in a players-only vote. Harbaugh told reporters in mid-August that it would be obvious to players and coaches alike if one of the quarterbacks pulled ahead of the other, so many assumed the players’ decision to vote for McNamara was a sign of where he stood relative to McCarthy. Nose tackle Mazi Smith even referred to McNamara as the starter and said it’s crucial for the person playing quarterback to have the respect of players around him.
But Harbaugh told host Jon Jansen the captaincy won’t factor into the quarterback race because “when it comes to the depth chart, that’s…