Notre Dame Football Mailbag: The CJ Carr impact on the Fighting Irish offense, and final thoughts heading into the Miami matchup
Recent Notre Dame football mailbag
Head coach Marcus Freeman and the Notre Dame Fighting Irish are set to kick off their 2025 college football season Sunday night against the Miami Hurricanes. Hard Rock Stadium promises to be electric, and this Fighting Irish squad will need to respond in order to reverse some bad luck in that stadium in the past. It should be a tremendous game.
In order to prepare you for that contest, I opened up some questions for this week’s Notre Dame Football Mailbag. As always, shoutout to those who submitted questions. Let’s discuss CJ Carr, the Notre Dame run game, the future of the defensive line, and some last minute Miami thoughts.
Notre Dame’s run game with CJ Carr
With Riley Leonard, the Notre Dame run game was built off of options. You would see Leonard keep off of zone read, and power read as well. He was a legitimate threat, especially in short yardage for the designed run game. With Carr behind center, the action off of the run will probably be more pass centric. This isn’t specific only to counter looks, but I’d expect a heavier use of play action off of it. I’d also expect more RPO game off of zone looks, and others out of the gun. Carr’s pass game is the weapon off of the run action, and defenses trying to overcompensate to stop it.
Most likely outcome for Carr
I think it’ll be somewhere in the middle. I don’t expect Carr to light the world on fire Sunday night, and I also don’t expect him to be horrible. As long as Carr makes a couple of explosive plays to couple with the run game, the Miami game can be looked at as a success. This is about setting a solid foundation.
Defensive line worry?
You should be excited about it without question. In that scenario, each player who got “jumped” is viewed as the safer player in those competitions. When you discuss Rubio, Burnham, and Dawson, nobody gets super excited about the upside or the ceiling. The conversation centers around the floor.
Guys like Bryce Young and Jason Onye taking that type of jump means that the development of the toolsier defensive linemen is happening. You are still going to have Burnham, Rubio, and Dawson in the room as well. That stabilizes the room, but also raises the floor with the talent stepping up.
Drayk Bowen and KVA in a Chris Ash defense
One of the more interesting media moments we had this offseason that not enough people talked about was when Drayk Bowen discussed how he has been working on his pass rush repertoire this offseason. On paper, Bowen is the starting MIKE backer. I’m curious if he is used some off the edge in certain sub package looks this season, or if the offseason was more about just becoming a more efficient interior blitzer.
For Viliamu-Asa, I expect to see a lot of what we saw last season, but at a higher volume. You will see him rotating inside between MIKE and WILL, but on third downs, he should also get his fair share of reps rushing off the edge. When you have a player like Viliamu-Asa, and all the versatility he brings to the table, you steer into it. He is the ultimate chess piece for Chris Ash’s defense.
Feelings on this Notre Dame team
Going into the game against Miami, this is the most confident I’ve been about a Notre Dame team in my lifetime. That’s pretty crazy to say when questions exist at quarterback, but this is the deepest overall roster since Lou Holtz was the coach. I hope that this team goes out and takes care of business against Miami because this feels like a special year in front of us.
Defensive line in 2026
There is a hope that players like Armel Mukam, Cole Mullins, Sean Sevillano, and Davion Dixon will be ready to contribute at a higher clip for sure. I think the odds are that at least one or two of them will be ready to hold a substantially bigger role in 2026. You also have players like Tiki Hola and Elijah Golden coming in, so I imagine the Fighting Irish will look to see what they have in house first before proceeding. That’s the ideology under head coach Marcus Freeman we have seen.
The odds are, as of right now, that the Transfer Portal will have to be in the cards. I’d argue that you will need at least two more defensive tackles, and hopefully one of them is a legitimate difference maker. As Al Washington continues to attract more high caliber defensive linemen, there is a hope that the portal won’t have to be a big part of the formula in the future. That just isn’t where they are quite yet.
College Football
Miami Hurricanes have a huge opportunity at flipping the commitments of some difference-making on Sunday against Notre Dame
An all-star list will be in attendance this weekend.
