It was a tale of two halves for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. If we are getting technical, it was a not-so-great three quarters and a comeback attempt in the fourth. However, Notre Dame ended up losing the top-10 match-up season-opener to Miami, 24-27. How did it happen? And where does Notre Dame go from here?<\/p>\n
After a dismal three quarters of football, the Fighting Irish finally got things moving in the fourth quarter. Despite a late-game comeback, it wasn’t enough to overcome Miami on opening weekend. Despite not naming a quarterback until the final hour<\/a>, CJ Carr<\/a> didn’t have an awful showing at the helm. He played in only one game in 2024, and while he finished the game nearly even on the stat book with Miami starting quarterback Carson Beck, it took the redshirt freshman time to get comfortable under center.<\/p>\n Carr finished his first game as the starter by going 19-for-30 with 221 passing yards. He also threw two touchdowns. The first to tie it in the second quarter and the second to cut the lead to one score in the fourth. Carr also used his legs to bring the Irish back. He had a seven-yard touchdown run to tie it with just over three minutes left in the game. Unfortunately, Notre Dame left too much time on the clock for veteran quarterback Beck. Beck took the Hurricanes right down the field, and Miami won it on a 47-yard field goal. Thwarting Notre Dame’s comeback attempt.<\/p>\n On paper, it looks like Carr did well, and he did, but he had one thing Beck did not: an interception. That interception led to a field goal for Miami, taking the lead in the fourth quarter to 24-14. Now, this interception was by all accounts crazy. There is no other word for it. The ball was hit in the air and looked like a game of hot potato before the Hurricanes came down with it. But winning the turnover battle in a game like this is huge, and Miami did that when it counted.<\/p>\n The offense did not produce in three of the four quarters of this game. Yes, defense wins championships, but the offense needs to put the defense in a position to succeed. The Fighting Irish didn’t really do that in this contest until the end. The rushing attack was non-existent. Star running backs Jadarian Price<\/a> and Jeremiyah Love<\/a> didn’t score a touchdown. Additionally, the duo was held to under 100 yards rushing. Neither of them hit 50 yards on the day. Carr got the rushing touchdown for the Irish, something that needs to be done by one of these two. It was a pass-heavy day for Notre Dame.<\/p>\n The offense was held to 94 yards rushing, and that includes Carr’s 16 rushing yards on 11 carries. Love averaged just over three yards per carry, which is not something Notre Dame can afford to occur the rest of the season. The Irish need to get Price and Love more involved moving forward. These two are a dynamic threat and should be utilized more than 16 carries in the ball game.<\/p>\n Get the defense off the field. There were too many three-and-outs for the Notre Dame offense for the defense to be productive. Yes, the unit gave up 27 points, but 14 of those came in the second quarter when the Irish couldn’t get the ball moving. By the time the offense started producing in the fourth quarter, this defense had been on the field doing a lot of work in the first three quarters. Still, this unit held Miami to two field goals in the fourth, even with a very short field post-interception.<\/p>\n While there are a lot of improvements that need to be made to get to the College Football Playoff, there is time to do it. The Irish have a very early bye this week before taking on Texas A&M at home on September 13. Cleaning things up throughout these next two weeks will be huge for Head Coach Marcus Freeman. The main thing: how to get Love the ball. He is a playmaker who shouldn’t be held to only 10 carries. Getting the ball in his hands and getting him in a rhythm will be key to Notre Dame’s success this season, especially with a young, inexperienced quarterback. Longer drives and taking time off the clock allow what should be a strong defense to get the rest they need. There is a lot of season left to play. Expect the Irish to come out fighting against the Aggies.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Main Image: Sam Navarro-Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It was a tale of two halves for the Notre Dame Fighting Irish. If we are getting technical, it was a not-so-great three quarters and a comeback attempt in the fourth. However, Notre Dame ended up losing the top-10 match-up season-opener to Miami, 24-27. How did it happen? And where does Notre Dame go from […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2195,"featured_media":77000,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10906,11,2,17,35676],"tags":[6734,6850,94,259],"class_list":["post-76999","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cfb","category-independents","category-featured","category-news","category-notre-dame-fighting-irish","tag-carson-beck","tag-marcus-freeman","tag-miami-hurricanes","tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish"],"modified_by":"Michael Kovacs, ADMIN","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76999","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2195"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76999"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76999\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77004,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76999\/revisions\/77004"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76999"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76999"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/collegefootball\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76999"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Does Notre Dame Need to Do?<\/h3>\n
Looking Ahead<\/h3>\n