When it came to quarterbacks, it took Jim Harbaugh nearly a decade at Michigan to find and develop the one he wanted. Then he found two.
What was he looking for? A few things: a quarterback who played with unbridled passion and toughness; a player who wasn’t afraid of being hit, yelled at, or hurt – just call him “someone who wasn’t afraid”; a soccer junkie whose confidence bordered on delusional.
Clearly, he wanted himself.
He found that out when Michigan signed Cade McNamara before the 2019 season. Harbaugh and McNamara hit it off immediately when they first met in Harbaugh’s office on a recruiting trip when McNamara was committed to Notre Dame but was pretty sure he wanted to play at Alabama instead. By the end of that first football interaction with Harbaugh, he had completely changed his mind.
Less than a year later, Harbaugh found JJ McCarthy.
“He’s better than me,” Harbaugh admitted publicly — perhaps for the first time in his life, to a QB in the history of football — after McCarthy’s first road win as a starter in 2022. That win, ironically, came against Iowa, McNamara’s current team and Michigan’s opponent in the Big Ten championship game on Saturday.
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Mentally, one could argue that Harbaugh and McNamara are more similar. NFL quarterbacks who have trained with McNamara all come to the same conclusion: McNamara believes he is actually a better player than them. McNamara was not McCarthy’s boyfriend when they were together in Ann Arbor. He was his competitor and his teammate – sometimes more of the former than the latter. He’s still not happy with how the competition went and there’s a good chance he never will be.
Tell me, Harbaugh, the player would have handled this differently.
Michigan and Iowa will meet again this weekend, and the biggest bummer is that we won’t see McNamara and McCarthy — former teammates who hold special places in Michigan history — compete while McNamara continues to recover from ACL surgery.
Maybe next year. Maybe in another football world, in another place or at another time.
First, let’s take a look at another big test for McCarthy, against another pretty great Hawkeyes defense.
Regardless of position, there may not be a more polarizing NFL Draft prospect in this upcoming class than McCarthy. This is the case for a number of reasons. Perhaps the biggest problem is that his offense severely limits his options compared to most of his QB peers. Michigan’s offense is simply different and therefore the context for evaluating McCarthy is different.
Take Michigan’s win over Penn State, for example. In that game, McCarthy, without his head coach, was asked to throw the ball eight times on the road against a team that couldn’t stop the run. None of his throws missed that day. He got the ball out when he was supposed to, made sure every run call was properly checked, and won the game. Again.
The lazy narrative that day was that he didn’t play well. The real story was that he did exactly what was asked of him to win without complaining.
McCarthy’s concern right now is whether he’s ready to properly manage an NFL team for a calendar year. He’s 20, doesn’t have many attempts, and there are still inconsistencies in ball placement downfield. We could use more tape against strong opponents.
Luckily for McCarthy and every NFL evaluator, Iowa will provide exactly that.
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Strictly from a coverage standpoint, Iowa’s defense is the best-coached group Michigan has played this season. Penn State has more NFL talent. Ohio State was at least as good (if not a little better) than Penn State. However, Iowa is different. Even without star DB Cooper DeJean, Phil Parker’s zone-heavy group is smart, disciplined and can be very opportunistic.
McCarthy has shown growth in several areas this season, particularly in the pocket and on third downs. He’s had strikeouts at times, but his expected points gain (EPA) per attempt versus the zone has increased to 0.53 from 0.22 last year. He has also improved his EPA compared to the man (from 0.32 to 0.50).
His worst day of the year came in a non-conference game against Bowling Green, when McCarthy missed more than 30 percent of his throws and had three interceptions. Two of those interceptions came against Cover 3. Maryland, another team McCarthy struggled with, also showed Michigan a lot of Cover 3.
And that coverage happens to be Iowa’s specialty. The Hawkeyes are also experts at variations of Cover 2 and Cover 6. Even without DeJean, Iowa has dangerous DBs in Sebastian Castro and Quinn Schulte. Michigan isn’t going to get many man coverage looks in this game, no matter how well it runs the ball early.
Up front, Iowa doesn’t have the horsepower we’ve seen from some of Kirk Ferentz’s other division winners, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad group. Junior Logan Lee (6-foot-1, 220 pounds) has some Lukas Van Ness-like qualities as an interior runner long enough to make plays at the rim. Aaron Graves (6-4, 293), a sophomore, could be the best of the bunch in terms of future opportunities.
Discipline is still Iowa’s greatest strength, however, as the Hawkeyes tackle better than anyone in the country – Iowa is No. 1 nationally in yards per rush allowed after contact (2.08). There is no Jack Campbell on this year’s depth chart, but senior Nick Jackson and his fellow linebackers fit well in the run and are very difficult to deceive.
The other factor on Saturday will be health in some areas.
Michigan will be without its best offensive player for the rest of the game after guard Zak Zinter broke his leg against Ohio State. Zinter is arguably the best guard in the country, so it’s a huge success for Michigan, but it’s not a disaster either. The Wolverines’ backup plan here worked out great last Saturday and the line is still loaded with talent. Karsen Barnhart, formerly Michigan’s starting right tackle, moved inside to guard after Zinter’s injury. )It fits better there anyway). Trente Jones, who started Michigan’s win over Iowa last year, then came in at right tackle and reminded people that he, too, is a pro prospect.
McCarthy’s health is another matter. He has been hampered by an ankle injury in recent weeks. While this situation looked much better against the Buckeyes than it did against Maryland or Penn State, it’s probably still concerning to some degree.
Michigan’s biggest challenge for Ohio State was backup QB Alex Orji, who came into the game to take away Michigan’s designed QB-run package from McCarthy. Orji is a 6-foot-2, 220-pound runner with an extreme mix of speed and agility as a runner, so much so that Harbaugh considered using him as a kick returner at some point this season.
Against Ohio State, Michigan hired Orji (who made Bruce Feldman’s “Freaks List”) to run its QB Bash series – a run-read package McCarthy has used since Michigan inserted him in rotation with McNamara as a true freshman in 2021.
Therefore, this should come as no surprise to Iowa. However, it will be interesting to see if Michigan shows more of Orji in this game – and as a potential playoff matchup progresses – beyond the Bash series.
McCarthy has found great success with duo reads this season, and Michigan has plenty of other similar concepts up its sleeve. If Orji can be trusted to throw the ball even a little bit, Michigan could add a really valuable piece down the stretch and salvage some of McCarthy’s health.
For the Hawkeyes, the path to victory is the same as it is every week: Find a way to upset the opponent, no matter what’s going on with the offense.
QB Deacon Hill is a massive 6-foot-1, 258-pound sophomore with a massive arm. However, he has yet to use it. Of the 116 FBS quarterbacks with at least 200 attempts, Hill’s off-target rate is … 116th, so Iowa will try to control the game as usual. But like when Iowa lost 31-0 to Penn State earlier this year, Michigan’s defense could make Saturday’s game a laugh if the Hawkeyes can’t find a way to run the ball a little.
For McCarthy, the biggest — and most legitimate — question scouts and evaluators have is whether he can test his team if his running game isn’t working. The Ohio State game provided more data than the Penn State game, but hardly an overwhelming amount.
To me, McCarthy is a QB prospect who should go in the back half of the first round of this draft. But he could end up closer to the middle of the second round on some boards simply because there isn’t enough of the desired data. His arm talent, acceleration, IQ and competitiveness are all things that scouts love.
Iowa’s offense is bad. Everyone knows that. But his defense is outstanding and it will be another great test of McCarthy’s NFL readiness – and a chance for him to add to his ring collection.
(Photo by JJ McCarthy: Keith Gillett / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)