A difficult loss for ND in the closing minutes. You have to give Miami FG player credit for making that 47 yard field goal under extreme pressure.
[QUOTE="Bobdawolverweasel, post: 210437, member: 1076"]Best game of the long Labor Day weekend. Irish clawed its way back into a game in a hostile atmosphere. Tough loss but with the present playoff structure, ND still is a very viable playoff team.[/QUOTE] Thanks, Bobda, for that insightful assessment. I agree with you. Losing always sucks, but there's a lot to like about last night: - Lou Holtz always preached, Never underestimate the opponent. In this era of the transfer portal, Miami has put together a very good supporting cast for its outstanding QB. It's way too early to tell, but he might be the best QB we'll face this season and possibly one of the best in all of college FB. Miami may or may not be a top ten team. I'm betting on the former. -There's a reason why Miami was voted a pre-season top 10 team. We saw it last night. There also is a reason why we were, in retrospect, pre-season overrated. We lost several difference makers from our defense, especially the front 7, and the new guys simply were not ready for Miami's OL. Coach said at halftime that we were not making their QB uncomfortable. There was nothing wrong with our defensive game plan. We just couldn't break the wall of Miami's OL with our - for the most part - rookie defenders, which in turn put immense pressure on our man-to-man secondary. This was a baptism of fire for our defensive front seven. We have the talent. We just need the experience. We got it last night. -On offense, there was nothing wrong with the game plan or our OL, especially given a new QB in his first-ever college start. Miami's defense was much better and faster than I, for one, expected. We simply couldn't execute to our ability often enough to get the upper hand. Their #4 had a lot to do with that. Carr predictably made mistakes, but in my opinion, the positives of his on-field leadership far outweighed the negatives. The speed and tackling of their DBs were major factors in holding our #4 and #24 from breaking away from the pack. -The biggest takeaway for me was the team's outstanding character, especially in the 4th quarter, coming back to tie the game, only to be unable to stop Miami's last minute drive for the winning field goal. For those who are concerned that we've dug a hole with the early loss, think back to our second game last season, the loss to Northern Wherever, a hole so deep that it seemed we wouldn't be able to climb out of it. There were calls for firings and heavy criticism of the team like we're seeing today. But we did climb out and went on to the championship game. That's likely not going to happen this year, but I like this team's character and its IQ. We'll learn, the rookie players will improve, and we'll go on to a good season. Who knows? Maybe we'll make the playoffs.
Well I think CJ was okay especially in the last 2 Qtrs. It was a hard spot to put a young QB in his first game especially bring on the road. Obviously Miami stopping our run game played a big part of that. On the positive side. We only need 11 straight wins to make to the playoffs.
From what I've read, the ill-fated flanker screen was not the original call but a check off that Carr made. The play was blown up with Greathouse whiffed on his block. He wasn't alone, on our first 2 possessions, our O linemen missed some critical blocks. And of course on our final drive this group of 4 and 5 star O linemen were overwhelmed by the Cane pass rush. Miami's second TD was quite a play. First of all the ND rush actually got to Beck who probably shouldn't have thrown with a defender draped on him and his WR double covered. However Daniels made a great one handed catch that our safety Shuler was anticipating picking off. He was standing there flat footed insted of moving toward the ball. He should have lit up Daniels who had the ball in one hand but he completely missed on the play. We have outstanding running backs. I don't see why we don't run play actions passes. Last night I saw one which was our tying TD. It worked perfectly. One other cause for concern is that I got the impression that we were out physicaled last night. Our D line too often was driven back. They better toughen up or it's going to be a disappointing season.
As Lou would say the most improvement a team makes is between it's 1st and 2nd game. We don't play next weekend so an open date to get ready for the Aggies visit to South Bend.
The Athletic only dropped ND one place to 7th and ranked Miami #4. It's a very weird ranking because LSU is #1 based on its defeat of prior #2 Clemson. Ohio State is #2 because it "only" beat prior #3 Texas. Oh yeah, its prior #1 team was Penn State. I'm posting this only because of the apparent respect accorded to ND despite the loss.
I expect to still be in the top 10 in all the polls. For all the pointing of fingers by ND fans we still only lost by 3 points on the road with a RS freshman with no experience vs a 6th year Sr in Beck who has played a ton of big time games at UGA. I Also expect Texas to still be top 5 .
Irish Women's basketball picked up a top 100 big this weekend. She's the 2nd member of the 2026 class. Notre Dame women's basketball gets commitment from two-sport player from Florida Look at the scholarship chart at the end of that article for a sobering look at next year.