Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM SEPT. 20, 2025 5 R emember the first time riding a bike without training wheels? The exhilaration. The sense of free- dom. The feeling of unstoppability. It's euphoric. And you only get to experi- ence it — only to feel it — once. There is no such thing as a second, third, fourth, etc., first time. That euphoria must've been what Notre Dame quarterback CJ Carr went through when he scrambled backward some 20-plus yards, magically retraced his steps and found redshirt freshman wideout Micah Gilbert wide open in the corner of the Hard Rock Stadium end zone for one of the most tantalizingly dazzling first-career touchdown passes you'll ever see. It was a spectacle for spectators see- ing Carr in action for the first time. For Notre Dame teammates? They see stuff like that all the time. "He's done that plenty of times," red- shirt junior running back Jadarian Price said. "With CJ, the play's not over. It's not a five-second play. It can turn into seven, eight, nine seconds. You just have to keep your head on a swivel and learn how to finish." It was only the earnest start of a stel- lar debut and possibly a mere precursor for what's to come in a limitless career. Carr accounted for 237 total yards and 3 total touchdowns in a performance to be positively and nostalgically harped on years from now, albeit in a 27-24 defeat versus top-10 Miami. "He showed he's ready, he's capable," head coach Marcus Freeman said. "As you saw as the game went on, we were able to take some more shots." In the beginning, though, the shots were few and far between. Nonexistent, really. Notre Dame purposely installed a game plan heavy on screens and quick run-pass-option (RPO) throws. Carr executed them accordingly, with vary- ing degrees of success. "I think we were very intentional about trying to protect the first-time starter early in the game," Freeman said. "I was vocal about giving him easy reads, easy throws. Let's not just tell him to bomb the ball down the field every play, because he'll do that if we allow him to. CJ will throw the ball down the field every single play." Notre Dame now knows he's capable of completing such long balls, but the design still isn't going to be to just have him chuck them up willy-nilly. Carr's downfield heaves need to be intention- ally calculated. And, most importantly, set up by way of balance. That's an offensive quality Freeman believes in as much as his starting quar- terback himself. "I still am a firm believer shots are a response to being able to have positive run plays," Freeman said. "We have to be able to run the football." That's where junior Jeremiyah Love comes in. Carr said in his postgame press conference in Miami there were reads in which he should have just handed the ball off to his tailback, including the play on which he threw his only interception of the game. A degree of the decision mak- ing is on the Notre Dame coaching staff, though, for giving Carr so many options on singular plays in the first place. Freeman owned up to that Monday. "Some of those included RPOs where we've talked as a coaching staff, is there are times that we've got to take out the read and be able to say, 'Hey, this is what we want to do, hand the ball off here.'" Freeman said. "Or, 'Hey, let's continue to throw it out if they're going to bring the extra guy in the box. "We know we want to focalize our of- fense around J. Love. He's a special player. But at the same point, we've got to make sure that we're taking advantage of what each defense is trying to do to us." The beauty for the Fighting Irish is, Carr is only going to get better at mak- ing the right reads in the RPO sphere. And the coaching staff is going to help him along by making some of the offen- sive calls more concrete from the start. Just give it to Love. Period. That's a good call more often than not. No offense is at its best in Week 1. Not the ones that progressively improve as the season goes along, anyway, which is always the goal. Like last year, Notre Dame is positioning itself for its best of- fense to be played in November and be- yond. September and October is about navigating speed bumps while still win- ning football games. As for Carr, individually as a player? He's got every aim of progressively im- proving as the weeks go by, too. And he's absolutely adept at doing so. "CJ can execute the entire game plan, the entire playbook," Freeman said. "He's a special player." ✦ Carr began his career in an exhilarating manner, accounting for 237 yards of offense and 3 touchdowns at Miami. PHOTO BY LARRY BLANKENSHIP No Training Wheels Necessary For CJ Carr Tyler Horka has been a writer for Blue & Gold Illustrated since July 2021. He can be reached at thorka@blueandgold.com GOLDEN GAMUT TYLER HORKA