It was one thing to lose. Beating good teams on the road is hard, and Miami is a good team.

What was frustrating was seeing almost every position unit that was supposed to be awesome fail Notre Dame so consistently in Sunday night’s 27-24 loss on the road.

The offensive line was supposedly so good that starting players were transferring to playoff teams so that they could be assured a starting job. The running backs were so loaded that the best among them was considered a Heisman candidate. The secondary was so ridiculously stacked that an incoming freshman (Cree Thomas) was dubbed “the next Ben Morrison” by a teammate and was almost immediately passed on the depth chart by two other incoming freshmen. The defensive front line was paid a huge compliment by coach Marcus Freeman just this week when he said he was as convicted about that group as he was any on the team.

Not that they were all train wrecks Sunday night, but none of them were good enough. Not really even close.

Irish get middle-8’ed

The ‘middle eight’ – last four minutes of 2nd quarter, first four of 3rd for you newbies – was such a topic of conversation in college football this offseason that it merited its own Athletic article, spotlighting how ND took the Sugar Bowl from Georgia in that span. Sunday, Notre Dame saw the opposite side of that coin. No pun intended. The Canes won the coin toss and took advantage by holding the ball for basically 13 straight minutes of game time, taking a 7-7 game to 21-7 and nuking whatever momentum CJ Carr created with his bizarre TD pass in the 2nd quarter.

That’s where we get to the first position unit that wasn’t what it needed to be: The defensive line. Very little pressure was created on Carson Beck, allowing the 6th-year senior to identify mismatches and exploit them. He did just that, particularly with freshman jitterbug Malachi Toney, who looks like he’s going to be a headache for a lot of defenses. Miami’s receivers definitely won the battle against Leonard Moore, Christian Gray and company, if maybe by decision rather than knockout.

Unfortunately, one time ND did get pressure on Beck, the veteran lobbed a pass into double coverage that CJ Daniels used Go-Go-Gadget arms to yank down for a touchdown when it seems like throws like that get picked off 90% of the time in this sport. (And Adon Shuler, who probably ought to have lowered his shoulder and crushed Daniels in the back, instead half-went for the pick, leaving no physical threat to Daniels.) Alas. Big-time players, big-time games, all that.

Offensive line

Here’s the one that really gets me. As I said above, ND had two different starting players transfer out to join other teams that made the playoff last year because they weren’t necessarily going to start in 2025. How, then, do we reconcile that they failed so often through so much of the game?

The line was caved in on far too many plays – the Irish averaged only 3.3 yards per carry, not counting the intentional grounding penalties that were de facto sacks – and while we may have been frustrated that ND kept running short passes with CJ Carr, it seems the coaches knew what they had in their O-line, and it wasn’t good. When sideline reporter Molly McGrath passed along in the fourth quarter that ND’s line was gassed despite Miami being the team who’d hogged the ball for much of the game to that point, it was a giant red flag. And the bigger one was when the line was straight-up whipped on the final drive. Captain and supposed star Aamil Wagner was turned into one of those inflatable tackling dummies, being turned around by his Miami foe on his way to smashing CJ Carr, who never had the slightest chance to get a decent pass off.

This is the one unit, maybe above all others, that we as fans should almost have been able to take to the bank was going to be at least good. And they were flat-out bad.

Weird offensive game plan

I get trying to get Carr comfortable. And if ND had good reason to believe the offensive line was going to faceplant, I get why they would call a bunch of short passes early on (though why we’re in a position where the coaches know the offensive line of all units is going to faceplant is beyond me). But why so many of those stupid WR screens? For one thing, I don’t know if that play has ever gained significant yardage in the history of football outside of the 2005 ND/BYU game where Charlie Weis decided to throw it to Stovall and Samardzija 700 times. And for another, more importantly, the Canes were wise to it, and on the interception where a DB miraculously tipped the ball 10 feet into the air with his foot (for serious, this was not a lucky game for ND), they had 2 guys ready to defend that exact play. Maybe try something else?

CJ Carr looked really quite good once ND stopped trying to get him comfortable and started (maybe by necessity) running an offense. Why did it take so long?

Whatever the reason is for Jeremiyah Love’s touches being so rationed – secret injury we don’t know about, double secret rev-share contract provision that he will never be excessively hit unless it’s a single-elimination game, whatever – I don’t care for it. He had a couple of brief moments, but unfortunately one was called back on a penalty and the others came, as it turned out, a bit too late.

Quick hitters

Some stray thoughts, mostly on the optimistic side:

– CJ Carr is going to be the damn truth. He was better than I could have hoped for. (Which made the fact that so much of the rest of the team, which in theory was supposed to carry Carr, flatlined all the more annoying.) He made mostly good decisions, he proved he can be a runner when needed, and he’s cool as a cucumber. Long term, this is going to be fun.

– ND continues to be resilient. I said when ND got the ball back in the 3rd quarter after forcing a punt that they had to score a TD or the game was probably over. They did. Then they scored the next 2 drives too. It’s cold comfort now, but Marcus Freeman teams never seem to surrender.

– The offensive line almost literally cannot be worse, so improvement is something to look forward to.

– One of my huge, huge, huge college football pet peeves is head coaches getting rewarded for coaching like weenies. Last year, NIU was playing not to lose from the moment the first fluke TD happened, and tonight Mario Cristobal basically stopped trying to score touchdowns for the entire 4th quarter. Karma didn’t come for either one. Oh, well.

– I think ND was the victim of some bad breaks in this game – the coin toss, the aforementioned insane TD catch, the miracle tip for an interception – but you can’t put forth a C effort on the road against a good opponent and expect to get away with it. This is college football and silly turns of fortune often play big roles; it’s your job to play well enough to keep them from mattering. (And to be fair, it definitely felt like ND got the better end of the stick from the officials, who let the Irish secondary get away with more than I thought they earned and made a couple of close calls on Miami.)

– That said, I don’t have the same feeling I did in 2017 when a Miami team I was absolutely certain was a fraud smashed ND to pieces and then spent the rest of the year proving that I was 100% right. This Canes team is hard-nosed, talented and is probably at this very early juncture the favorite in the ACC. I don’t know if that means they’re going to make the playoff, but at least I can be confident I’m not going to be cursing a stupid loss to a team I knew wasn’t actually very good in 3 weeks like I was then.

– Notre Dame’s schedule is not even close to good enough to reach the playoff at 10-2 unless something very unexpected happens with some later-season opponents. Texas A&M is the only one left who will be ranked on Tuesday. (Boise State. Woof.) So the Irish are back in the situation they were after NIU last year – win every game or you’re out. Maybe that will perversely work for this team the way it did in 2024. Unfortunately, it’s all but certain that we will be deprived of the comedy that could’ve resulted from a 12-0 ND getting a bye after the power 2 conferences threw a hissy fit because they were mad Boise got one a year ago.

– Texas A&M comes to town in two weeks. Hopefully the cliche that teams make big jumps from game 1 to game 2 is true, because the Irish probably need it.