Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 4, 2025 5 ANEMIC PASS RUSH I'm 85 years old and I was QB in college in the early '60s, and when I watched the Notre Dame-Texas A&M game I viewed the most anemic pass rush that I have ever seen at ND! I say this because at 85 I could have stood back there and threw the ball at will, simply because there was no pres- sure on the QB! As for the QB for the Irish right now, he is mediocre at best! I think that all the fans were led to believe he was the answer! I've witnessed QBs at Notre Dame do much better than Carr! I'm not blaming him, I'm blaming the coaching staff for making him out to be the savior when in fact he needs more time to de- velop! That is why Angeli should have been kept to pave the way for Carr! The offense looked a little bit better! When are they going to learn to line up in the I formation on a fourth-and-1 and run with a lead blocker? The DC seems to be over his head and swimming in shark-infested waters! He doesn't know how to get a free rusher therefore he gets no QB pressures! I'm not going to criticize the secondary be- cause the QB could have eaten a sand- wich back there he had that much time to throw! The tackling is still suspect a little better but not good enough! In my opin- ion they should have erected a statue to Al Golden just to keep him on the staff! I'm coming out to the Boise State game; maybe we will get a win. Hope- fully! Honestly I'm considering giving my ticket up! It's a long trip for an old man who has loved ND football since 1947! Thank you kindly for reading my sad account of the game. Ray Ciarleglio Ray, there is no doubt that the Irish pass rush has not been up to snuff so far this season. It was better in Week 4 with 3 sacks versus Purdue, but even after that game the Irish still ranked 47th out of 68 Power Four teams in the pass rush grades done by Pro Football Focus. It's clear Notre Dame has missed the inside presence of departed defensive tackles Rylie Mills and Howard Cross III, who ranked first and third on the team last year, respectively, with 34 and 22 total pressures (sacks, hits and hurries) per PFF. That accounted for 20.5 percent of the team's total pressures. Perhaps redshirt junior Donovan Hin- ish, who accounted for 3 total pressures with 1 sack against the Boilermakers, can help fill that void. FAN FORUM BE HEARD! Send your letters to: steve.downey@on3.com or mail to: Blue & Gold Illustrated, P. O. Box 2331, Durham, NC 27702 It's early, but Notre Dame has to be ecstatic with what they've seen from redshirt freshman quarterback CJ Carr. In his first three career starts with the Irish, he notched a 166.7 passer rating. Per The Athletic's Pete Sampson, if he maintains that pace it would be a single-season Notre Dame record, would be a top-10 mark in eight of the past nine seasons, and would be very comparable to the passer ratings posted by Trevor Lawrence during his sophomore season at Clemson, J.J. McCarthy during his junior campaign at Michigan, Caleb Williams during his sophomore season at Southern Cal and Bryce Young during his sophomore campaign at Alabama. Former Penn State offensive lineman and current college football analyst Landon Tengwall took it a step further by proclaiming this about Carr on X: "Really confused why he's not getting any national media love. I've watched all 3 games all-22, and he looks like the best QB in college football." Here's a sampling of what Fighting Irish fans had to say about that on our message board at BlueandGold.com. Clovers: Agree with Landon, he looks like the best QB in college football. coldmarble: He's a stud. So is [offensive coordinator Mike] Denbrock for crafting an offense that works for a pocket passer, after being known (at least recently) for succeeding more so with mobile guys. Barbaro2232: I'm betting if his last name was Manning we'd be hearing and reading quite a bit more about him. Sometimes we would say, "He looks good, but we need to see him play against some high-level competition." You can check the heck out of that box. Carr looks polished. If defenses want to gear up to stop [Jeremiyah] Love and [Jadarian] Price, good luck with that. Carr sees the field, is decisive and puts the ball where his guys can catch it. He's the real deal, and for Notre Dame, it's been a long time coming. Bigteve79: And when a young man is as humble and mentally dialed in as CJ is, he's awfully easy to root for. The great part for ND fans is that I'm pretty sure we haven't seen his best work yet. It's going to be pretty hard to out-do 10 out of 12, but the offensive scheme is likely to shift more toward downfield passing now that Coach Denbrock is seeing him do in games what he did in practice, and that means more deep balls which will force teams to put in more DBs and unload the tackle box. That means fewer guys to stop Love and Price from gashing them with chunk runs, which we saw Saturday. If you're an opposing defense on the ND schedule, that is definitely not good news to look forward to. Coming from the family he did, that young man was quite literally raised to do what the football world is seeing right now, and the best part of it is that he's doing this for "our" Fighting Irish and not the team with those ugly hats who plays their home games in a stadium called the "Out-House." Younger Michigan fans who are city folks might not get that last slur, but others will, and it will be a solid blow below the belt they'd deserve. FROM THE WEB .com .com JOIN THE CONVERSATION AT BLUEANDGOLD.COM! Sign up for just $1 for the first seven days! Redshirt junior defensive tackle Donovan Hinish notched 3 total pressures with 1 sack in the 56-30 win over Purdue Sept. 20. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER