Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
Issue link: https://comanpub.uberflip.com/i/1542428
BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM FEBRUARY 2026 17 man would point to a fourth-and-2 play Nov. 15 at Pittsburgh. The Panthers had every gap closed off, and Love just ran around them. "That fourth-down play, there's no defensive call that can stop what hap- pened there," Freeman said. "He got out- side the defender that was supposed to be outside, and it gets him a first down." Over and over again, Love did things that transcended what the defense could run to stop him. Most opponents (especially in November) tried to stack the box to keep him bottled in, but he just kept breaking free anyway. 2. Sophomore CB Leonard Moore Southern Cal superstar Makai Lemon won the Biletnikoff Award as college football's best wide receiver. When Moore guarded him Oct. 18 — which he did the majority of that game — Lemon caught 2 passes on 3 targets for 28 yards, per Pro Football Focus. Oh, yeah, and Moore was playing out of position. Lemon is primarily a slot receiver, and Moore had played only 75 snaps in the slot his entire career to that point. But it didn't matter. The Irish knew they couldn't let Lemon beat them, and there was only one way to fully prevent that. "We said, 'OK, there will be times we have to put our best defender on him," Freeman said. "We did that." Notre Dame prefers not to put Moore in the slot, because it believes his ability to shut down half the field is extremely valuable for its defense. And that's ab- solutely true. Throwing on Moore was a straight-up bad idea in 2025, with 5 in- terceptions and just 4.2 opponent yards per attempt when targeted. 3. Redshirt freshman QB CJ Carr Carr took Notre Dame's downfield passing game to heights it hasn't seen in quite some time. His 9.4 yards per attempt ranked third among all Power Four quarterbacks behind two Heisman Trophy finalists: Vanderbilt's Diego Pavia and Indiana's Fernando Mendoza. With teams loading the box to stop Love and Jadarian Price, Carr needed to hit his deep shots for Notre Dame's offense to work and he did. Carr was lethal throwing over the top to a variety of targets, most notably wide receiver Malachi Fields. His abil- ity to make checks at the line of scrim- mage was also invaluable, getting Notre Dame out of bad plays and into good ones. Carr also generally avoided nega- tive plays, with just 6 picks and 12 sacks. There is no more valuable asset in sports than a quality player at the quar- terback position, and Carr was one of the nation's best in his first year as a starter. MOST IMPROVED 1. Redshirt freshman S Tae Johnson It's not that Johnson was bad by any means during his true freshman sea- son in 2024. It's that he was injured, so nobody outside of the Notre Dame program really knew how good he could truly be. In his first season on campus, after getting over the foot injury that re- quired surgery and held him out for the first couple months of the year, Johnson appeared in three games and made 3 tackles. It was a very modest beginning for a player who broke out as a ballhawk and staple of the secondary in Year 2. Sometimes an injury as a freshman sets back the developmental timeline for a young player to whom nothing is guaranteed. Not for Johnson. He over- came his ailment and then some, going from a young option with untapped po- tential to one of Notre Dame's best and biggest-impact defensive players. 2. Redshirt freshman QB CJ Carr It's likely Carr was who he was all along. Meaning, he didn't become somebody who broke Notre Dame's sin- gle-season pass efficiency rating (168.1) in his first year as a starter overnight. He always had a 4 touchdowns to 1 inter- ception ratio in him. But he still had to be able to translate being Notre Dame's No. 4 option at quarterback in 2024 to being the team's QB1 in 2025, and he did so as admirably as possible. There is so much that goes into being a team's starting quarterback. It's a role that involves just as many off-field du- ties as what's required of an individual on it. Carr comfortably navigated the landmines and inflicted destruction of his own on Irish opponents. 3. Senior TE Eli Raridon Raridon had 16 catches in his first three seasons at Notre Dame. In his final one, he doubled that for 32 catches and 482 yards in 12 games as Notre Dame's No. 1 tight end. He didn't have any touch- downs, but he was No. 3 in yards per catch among all Irish players who caught at least 5 passes. He took his 32 receptions for an average gain of 15.1 yards. Due to injury and a stacked depth chart ahead of him, Raridon never as- sumed TE1 responsibilities at Notre Dame until his senior season. He had to make his biggest leap in production at the tail end of his career, and he did it. TOP SURPRISES 1. Junior WR Jordan Faison On a team with two transfer wide re- ceivers who led the former teams in sea- son-long receiving yards, Will Pauling at Wisconsin in 2023 and Malachi Fields at Virginia in 2024, it was Faison who led Notre Dame in that statistical category in 2025. He had 640. He also led the Irish Love, who became Notre Dame's first Heisman Trophy finalist since 2012, fin- ished with 199 carries for 1,372 yards and 18 rushing touchdowns, plus 27 catches for 280 yards and 3 scores. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER