Find yourself a partner who cares as much about you as Pat Narduzzi cares about tweaking Notre Dame.

A few days after inexplicably saying his team’s matchup against the Irish didn’t matter if they won the conference title (which they’re not presently in position to do, worth noting), Narduzzi rode two of several ridiculous penalty calls and an even more inexplicable timeout after running the ball up the middle into the end zone on the final play of a 37-15 Irish win. It was a dominant, if not always clean, effort that leaves very little doubt that this team is among the best in the country.

Some quick hitters from ND’s 8th straight win:

Jeremiyah Love

How could I start with anyone else?

It was a virtuoso performance from the Irish’s hopefully soon-to-be Heisman finalist, who ripped off an only-Love-could-do-that TD run to open the scoring:

He also caught a couple passes out of the backfield and laid a wicked block on CJ Carr’s TD run late in the game.

Final tally – 25 touches, 167 yards. He’s simply a player worth enjoying. ND gets three more – as Freeman would put it – guaranteed opportunities to watch #4 in the blue and gold. Treasure each of them.

Chris Ash

Actual line from the writers’ room chat during the game: “Chris Ash should be up for the Broyles Award.”

Imagine reading that 2 months ago today when our only data points for the ND defensive coordinator were Miami and Texas A&M. Imagine reading it a week later after the Purdue game.

And yet, that’s where we are. Pittsburgh had had a ton of offensive success leading into this game with freshman quarterback Mason Heintschel taking the snaps, and Chris Ash made the kid look like he’d never played at this level before. Heintschel was under 50% completions with a delicious Tae Johnson pick-6, which must be shared:

But more to the point, the poor guy was running for his life most of the game. Only several failures to finish off sacks, resulting in some scramble yards, allowed Heintschel to finish the game with 7 rushing yards on 9 carries.

The Irish defense pretty much put the clamps on a unit no one in the ACC has been able to solve with Heintschel – at one point, Love was outgaining the entire Panthers’ team. Pitt RB Desmond Reid (75 offensive yards) made a few plays before unfortunately leaving with an injury, but other than that, no one in light blue did much of anything.

Whatever Ash did after Purdue, it worked. This defense, since then, has been every bit as dominant as the 2024 unit was. And that’s going to be very important going forward, not least because:

By his standards, CJ Carr struggled again

It wasn’t a terrible game statistically from the freshman quarterback: 21/32, 212 yards, 2 TD, 2 INT, and a rushing score. The two picks, though, were very poor decisions, one because he didn’t see a safety and another because the play was hilariously telegraphed. This was less his fault, but Carr also failed to convert a 4th-and-1 pass on a call this author felt was too cute by half; I know, I know, the Irish have struggled with short-yardage run blocking, but that doesn’t mean you never run in those situations again, does it?

Anyway, Carr was mostly fine – his lob to Malachi Fields on one of the easiest free plays drawn in the history of college football gave us one of the year’s funnest highlights:

But it just…wasn’t quite all there for him Saturday. And the nice thing about the team around him is, it doesn’t have to be. However, the Irish are hopefully two more wins away from seeing a large uptick in competition, and it’ll probably take better games from Carr to win those matchups.

Notre Dame has only one job to do

It’s out of the Irish’s hands, as the stress we’re all feeling during Iowa/USC, Alabama/Oklahoma, Georgia/Texas, etc. can’t help but note. All they can do is win, and preferably in dominant fashion. Eight straight double-digit victories, seven of which were never really in doubt, and the advanced metrics show the Irish are top-10. Marcus Freeman has done a commendable job of keeping the focus on what ND needs to do. He’ll have to do it two more times against Syracuse and Stanford.

This is fun, though, right?