For all the talk of Leave No Doubt, for all the talk that things had changed, the first game of Notre Dame’s two-game season was basically a replay of the 2025 Notre Dame team’s first game of what ended up amounting to a two-game season.

BYU defeated Notre Dame 28-24 in a game that, outside of one drive, Notre Dame never once looked like it was the better team or deserved to win. Had CJ Carr managed to pull a rabbit out of his hat at the end – and for all the talk of ND’s storied history, when was the last time they actually delivered one of those magical drives to come from behind in a game that meant anything? – it would have been an undeserved escape job. But Notre Dame fans are used to their team not getting away with subpar play. They certainly didn’t tonight.

A couple of quick things to think about:

The triumphant return of Texas A&M Chris Ash in the first half sunk things early

Notre Dame supposedly ‘fixed’ whatever was up with Chris Ash’s defense in the third game of the 2025 season after, to be charitable, uneven efforts in games one and two. You start to wonder if Ash just doesn’t have it in him against the best opponents.

For some ineffable reason, Ash and the Irish went back to the maddeningly soft zone coverages that doomed them against Miami and A&M last season for the first half of tonight’s game and were predictably torn to shreds. BYU got basically anything it wanted on offense early on, and those points ended up being the difference in the end.

ND’s defense adjusted and mostly did the job in the second half; it’s hard to fault them too much for the final BYU drive considering the only reason the game wasn’t a rout was because they picked up the offense’s slack after halftime. But Ash’s defense far too often looked passive and reactive, rather than the decisive “violence” trope we often hear from Marcus Freeman.

Well, except for Boubacar Traore, who decided to take “violence” too much to heart and committed what was, outside of blatantly dirty cheap shots, maybe the stupidest targeting penalty in the history of football on the first possession of the game and got tossed out. Any chance Traore could have been a factor in pass rush on key drives later on in the game? I don’t know. Just asking.

CJ Carr was mostly very, very bad

The official 18 Stripes position is that we love CJ Carr. He is smart, gregarious and seems to be a natural leader. But for the most part, he was pretty bad in this game.

Carr left 4 points on the field when he overthrew Jordan Faison for what should have been an easy touchdown on the Irish’s first drive. He left 7 more on the field when he overthrew Jack Larsen (hey guys, if we’re gonna throw jump balls to the corner of the end zone 6 times, HOW ABOUT TRY NOT THE BACKUP TIGHT ENDS) before halftime, then committed a stupid fumble on a spike reminiscent of Everett Golson against Syracuse. Hey, any chance those 4 points (had ND managed a field goal) would’ve mattered at the end? I don’t know. Just asking.

Carr showed some gumption on the final drive, making a few clutch throws to get the team into position for a final shot. Then he missed, badly, every time he threw it to the end zone. He wasn’t good enough. He wasn’t close to good enough. It’d be nice if he had Jeremiah Smith to throw to, but he had receivers good enough to win tonight. Jaden Greathouse, who admittedly had a couple of contested balls thrown his way that a player of his caliber should come down with, did put together a pretty monster game, with 125 receiving yards and some clutch catches. Most of the others were never really given much of a chance.

What is this team, honestly?

I couldn’t help but think back, when it was 21-10 and things looked like they’d come off the rails, to discussions in our writer’s room about advanced analytic formulas like SP+ and FEI and whatever other numbers you know about. As you may know, Notre Dame ranked extremely highly in those ratings coming in, so much so that they were at one point a double-digit favorite in this game.

Our discussions, from 2021-23, centered in part around Michigan, and how we were skeptical of how good they really were because of our belief – and I think this has been corroborated by others in the educated CFB sphere – that these formulas overvalue beating the hell out of bad teams. We were largely vindicated on that until whatever the hell happened in 2023 happened. But it looks like we were vindicated in a very different way about that again tonight.

Kalani Sitake, to his credit, ate Marcus Freeman’s lunch in the first half by a far wider margin than Freeman won the second half – despite Sitake’s utterly nonsensical fake punt call that ND failed to make him fully pay for – and that’s why his team and fan base is celebrating tonight.

This team is very good, but if they can’t beat another very good team in a tough game, how much does that actually matter? That question will need to be answered Nov. 7, because if Notre Dame loses to Miami, they are going to be the first team out of the playoff again regardless of the fashion that loss would take, just like last year, and this time I don’t think any Irish fan could or would have an argument against it. (As long as the committee doesn’t spend 6 weeks lying that they’re in before dumping them out this time.)

Good things

I don’t want to be entirely negative, so a few good things from tonight: Nolan James is a bad MFer at times; Spencer Porath was relied upon too much in this game, but he delivered every time; Jayden Sanders gets a hat tip for predictably being targeted as soon as DJ McKinney limped to the medical tent and delivering with a clutch interception that will be a footnote; the left side of Notre Dame’s offensive line was excellent.

But none of those good things will help us sleep tonight. The bye week comes at a good time. I need a breather.