Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 18, 2025 19 North Carolina State head coach Dave Doeren, threw at them. That included season lows in yards per play (3.9), points (7), total yards (233) and rushing yards (51). The exception was a 45-yard touch- down pass early in the second quarter in which wide receiver Terrell Ander- son got behind freshman nickel Dallas Golden and tied the game at 7-7. Oth- erwise, it was a quantum leap forward for a unit that spent its first two and a half games toggling between neutral and reverse. "It's just continuously hard work, evaluation, practice, corrections. That's the formula," Freeman said of the turn- around. "There's never a moment you say, 'That's it. You look back over the season and you say, 'OK, maybe we changed and we got some things cor- rected, blah, blah, blah.' But they have to understand it's the work that you put in that gives you a chance. "If they think it's a moment, then all of a sudden they think, 'All right, we're good now.' No, it's the work you put in and the way you prepare that gives you an opportunity to play like that on Sat- urday. And then you've got to go and execute on Saturdays." And execute they did. For the second straight week, the Irish recorded 4 sacks and multiple intercep- tions. Sophomore linebacker Kyngstonn Vi l i a m u -A sa , re d s h i r t so p h o m o re safety Adon Shuler and backup sopho- more cornerback Karson Hobbs had the picks for Notre Dame. The Irish run defense also held the nation's sixth-leading rusher, Holly- wood Smothers, to a season-low 46 yards on 12 carries and recorded a safety. The Irish also got a special teams lift, with kicker Noah Burnette returning from a hip injury and booting field goals of 34 and 48 yards, the latter a season long. He's now 5 of 5 when healthy, working around two missed games. The offense ended up with some big numbers. Among them, Carr threw for 342 yards and 2 touchdowns. Junior Jer- emiyah Love rushed for 86 yards with 2 scores on 16 carries. In doing so, he became the fourth-fastest player to hit 2,000 career rushing yards (329 car- ries), behind only George Gipp, Josh Ad- ams and Emil Sitko. The Irish had two receivers crack the 100-yard mark in the same game since the 2022 Gator Bowl — tight end Eli Raridon and wide receiver Will Pauling. But they continue to struggle on fourth-down conversions, coming into the game 117th nationally and going 0 of 2 in the two that didn't involve a fake punt. "I told the offense, it's not the fourth- down plays," Freeman said. "It's the plays leading up to that. It's the penalties. "On every drive but one, I think, in the first half that we didn't score [on], there's a penalty. I said the same thing after. There's penalties. You can't put yourself behind the sticks. So, we have to eliminate that with urgency." Meanwhile, the defense has found its urgency and then some. Shuler was one of the players who helped drive that home after a 56-30 win at Purdue Sept. 20. "Yeah, we just got to play together," he said of his message. "It was just a lot of not-togetherness, and it wasn't the Notre Dame standard that we were used to. "And that's what we had to get back to. That was kind of the message. 'We've got to get back to playing our style of football and take it to where we're playing and make sure they know they're playing the Notre Dame way that we know.'" FIRST QUARTER NOTRE DAME 7, NC STATE 0 Top Moment: With Notre Dame's offensive line shoving NC State's defen- sive front into the end zone, all junior running back Jeremiyah Love had to do was speed toward paydirt. He scored for the 10th time this season on a 2-yard touchdown run. Feature Performer: NC State was down to its fifth nickel back, and Notre Dame knew it. Redshirt freshman quar- terback CJ Carr peppered redshirt se- nior wide receiver Will Pauling, start- ing in the slot for injured junior Jaden Greathouse (hamstring), for 93 yards on 3 receptions. Stats: Notre Dame outgained NC State, 115-32. The Irish threw for 104 yards and rushed for just 11 (including a sack). Items: Redshirt sophomore defen- sive end Boubacar Traore sacked NC State quarterback CJ Bailey for a loss of 9 … The Wolfpack stopped the Irish on fourth-and-1 from the 7-yard line … NOTRE DAME 36, NC STATE 7 Oct. 11, 2025 ✦ Attendance:77,622 Notre Dame Stadium ✦ South Bend 1st 2nd 3rd 4th Final NC State 0 7 0 0 7 Notre Dame 7 3 14 12 36 NCS ND FIRST QUARTER ND Love 2-yard run (Burnette kick) 9:49 0 7 Drive: 6 plays, 58 yards, 3:04 SECOND QUARTER NCS Anderson 45-yard pass from Bailey (Vinesett kick) 13:48 7 7 Drive: 11 plays, 83 yards, 4:27 ND Burnette 48-yard field goal 0:00 7 10 Drive: 5 plays, 40 yards, 0:23 THIRD QUARTER ND Smith 18-yard pass from Carr (Burnette kick) 6:58 7 17 Drive: 11 plays, 90 yards, 5:56 ND Pauling 12-yard pass from Carr (Burnette kick) 2:46 7 24 Drive: 5 plays, 80 yards, 1:28 FOURTH QUARTER ND Burnette 34-yard field goal 12:48 7 27 Drive: 4 plays, 1 yard, 1:16 ND Bailey tackled in end zone for a safety 9:17 7 29 ND Love 1-yard run (Schmidt kick) 5:13 7 36 Drive: 10 plays, 82 yards, 3:41 NCS ND Total First Downs 12 24 Rushing 3 6 Passing 8 15 Penalty 1 3 Rushing Attempts 28 39 Yards Gained Rushing 85 162 Yards Lost Rushing 34 19 Net Yards Rushing 51 143 Net Yards Passing 182 342 Passes Attempted 31 32 Passes Completed 18 19 Had Intercepted 3 1 Percent Completion 58.1% 59.4% Yards Per Attempt 5.9 10.7 Yards Per Completion 10.1 18.0 Total Offensive Plays 59 71 Total Net Yards 233 485 Average Gain Per Play 3.9 6.8 Fumbles: No.-Lost 1-0 1-1 Penalties: No.-Yards 5-60 6-55 Punts: No.-Yards 7-318 3-132 Average Per Punt 45.4 44.0 Average Net Punt 39.3 43.3 Punt Returns: No.-Yards 1-2 1-23 Kickoff Returns: No.-Yards 1-17 2-39 Interception Returns: No.-Yards 1-0 3-69 Fumble Returns: No.-Yards 0-0 0-0 Miscellaneous Yards 0 0 Possession Time 28:47 31:13 Third-Down Conversions 5-16 6-14 Percentage 31.2% 42.9% Fourth-Down Conversions 1-3 1-3 Percentage 33.3% 33.3% Sacks By: No.-Yards 2-15 4-32