Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM NOV. 8, 2025 21 NOTRE DAME PASSING OFFENSE: A Boston College, being almost equally inept through its first eight games in run defense (99th nationally out of 134 FBS teams) and pass ef- ficiency defense (108th), picked its poison and opted to take its chances with Irish redshirt fresh- man quarterback CJ Carr. It was the right choice to load the box against the run. But that doesn't mean it didn't hurt. In a 25-10 road victory for 12th-ranked Notre Dame, Carr shredded the BC defense for 299 yards passing on 18-of-25 accuracy with 2 touchdowns and 0 interceptions. His 198.9 pass efficiency rating was almost 90 points better than what he concocted against Southern Cal in Notre Dame's previous game, a 34-24 victory over the Trojans. And that will keep him on a trajectory to break the single-season school record in that statistical category, set 76 seasons ago by Bob Williams and matched in 2009 by Jimmy Clausen. Redshirt senior wide receivers Will Pauling and Malachi Fields both caught first-half touchdown passes of 40 yards or more. Pauling, junior wideout Jordan Faison junior and running back Jeremiah Love had 4 catches each, while tight end Eli Rari- don had 3. The only knocks were a couple of overthrows that could have made the score more lopsided. NOTRE DAME RUSHING OFFENSE: B- Only Love saved this from being a C, and a note going home to parents, with his 94-yard scoring run with 11:07 left in the game that nudged the Irish out of the danger zone and gave them a two-score cushion. He also made a little history, as the junior is now the only Irish player in school history to have two career scoring runs of 90 yards or more. He also had a 98-yarder against Indiana in the College Football Playoff opener last December. Love finished the BC game with a respectable 136 yards and 2 touchdowns on 17 carries, but was bottled up for much of the game. Redshirt junior tag-team backfield partner Jadarian Price unchar- acteristically struggled mightily against BC's run- heavy looks, laboring for 12 yards on 9 carries and fumbling inside BC's 10-yard line, with the Eagles recovering. His longest run was 5 yards. NOTRE DAME PASSING DEFENSE: B Three Irish interceptions and a strong finish against replacement quarterback Grayson James offset the headaches James caused the Irish early on after tak- ing over from ineffective starter Dylan Lonergan. James was hot early on and even picked on Irish All-American sophomore cornerback Leonard Moore for a 25-yard touchdown pass to wide receiver Reed Harris. He connected on 16 of his first 18 pass at- tempts and was able to play a possession passing game that ate clock and shortened the game. But the Irish adjusted, and James only completed 9 of his final 19 attempts with 2 interceptions. Redshirt freshman safety Tae Johnson grabbed his second of the day against James and redshirt sophomore safety Adon Shuler had a pivotal one in the red zone in the fourth quarter, one play ahead of Love's 94-yard touchdown run. Notre Dame played without injured junior cor- nerback Christian Gray, who was a late scratch. NOTRE DAME RUSHING DEFENSE: A+ Five Irish sacks contributed greatly, but the na- tion's 125th-best rushing offense didn't even live up to that standard against a surging Irish run defense that gets the nation's best rush offense Nov. 8 when Navy comes to town. Boston College did convert with the run in some short-yardage situations, but overall the numbers were abysmal: 0.4 yards per carry, a long run of 6 yards by Turbo Richard and 12 rushing yards total — the fourth-lowest total against Notre Dame since 2010. Linebackers Drayk Bowen and Kyngstonn Vil- iamu-Asa collected 14 and 9 tackles, respectively, both career highs. SPECIAL TEAMS: F And if it weren't for Will Pauling downing one of James Rendell's two punts at the 1-yard line, this would have been an F-minus with a postgame detention. The Irish went 1 of 3 on extra points and missed their only field goal, a 35-yarder, and got a miss from each of their three kickers — redshirt senior Noah Burnette, freshman Erik Schmidt and junior walk-on Marcello Diomede. Schmidt, Notre Dame's kickoff man, was the only one of the three who got a kick to sail through the uprights, on a point-after try. The Irish also failed on a two-point conversion, took a 4-yard loss on a fake punt and almost botched a punt return, but Faison scooped up his own muff. COACHING: C To Irish head coach Marcus Freeman's credit, his judgment and poise didn't crumble when the execution on the field did. And he came up with the right kind of messaging in the postgame. How effective that messaging was won't show up until the next game. But for a team emerging from a bye, the Irish should have been sharper in that execution and taken better advantage of Boston College's many weaknesses. That's on Freeman. REPORT CARD BY ERIC HANSEN Redshirt senior wide receiver Malachi Fields reeled in a 40-yard touchdown reception from redshirt junior CJ Carr to get the Irish on the board in the second quarter. It was one of two Irish scoring passes of 40 or more yards against Boston College. PHOTO BY NICK GRACE