Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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18 FEBRUARY 2026 BLUE & GOLD ILLUSTRATED with 49 catches, the next closest player on the list being Fields with 36. Faison was one of three Notre Dame players who caught at least 4 touchdown passes. Pauling and Fields were the others. By and large, in Notre Dame's best re- ceiving corps in quite some time, Faison asserted himself as redshirt freshman quarterback CJ Carr's No. 1 target dur- ing his first season as the starter. That's no small feat. 2. Junior DE Elijah Hughes If a team's depth along the interior of the defensive line is worth a darn, it'll be able to put four different defensive tackles on the field for 20-plus snaps per game. Notre Dame had some obvi- ous candidates to hit that threshold in 2025 — team captain Donovan Hinish, Louisville transfer Jared Dawson and the Irish's personal comeback player of the year, Jason Onye. Onye led Notre Dame defensive tackles in playing time with 354 defensive snaps. Dawson had 323 and Hinish had 310. The Irish defensive tackle who played the fourth most by the end of the year? Hughes. He was on the field for 264 defensive snaps, which is 22 per game. Hughes only played 126 defensive snaps at Southern Cal in 2024, and 42 of those were against Rutgers. That was the only game he went over 20 snaps. All of that to say, Hughes' dependability and quality play was a pleasant surprise. 3. Redshirt freshman S Tae Johnson When Jalen Stroman earned the starting nod for Notre Dame's season opener at Miami, many minds might've written Johnson off as nothing more than a backup in his second season in South Bend. If that was the case, many minds would've been wrong. Johnson ended up out-snapping Stroman 573 to 335, and he did so miss- ing the final two games of the season with a hand injury. Per Pro Football Fo- cus, Johnson was Notre Dame's third- best defensive player. He had a PFF defensive grade of 82.8, bested by only cornerback Leonard Moore's 92.0 and linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa's 88.6. He was the team's best tackler, per PFF, with his tackling grade of 91.0. It's the vast expanse of Johnson's game that was so surprising for such a young player. There aren't any holes in it. MOST UNDERRATED 1. Redshirt junior DE Joshua Burnham It might be a stretch to call Burnham a preseason afterthought, but the buzz around him certainly took a backseat to that of Boubacar Traore and Bryce Young. And after suffering an adduc- tor injury in September, Burnham really was the forgotten man in the defensive end room. But in November, finally healthy, Burnham was a consistent force for the Irish. He finished the season with 3 sacks and 6 tackles for loss, all in Notre Dame's final five games. Burnham to- taled 15 quarterback pressures in games against Boston College, Navy and Pitts- burgh alone. It's easy to forget how valuable Burn- ham was late in Notre Dame's run to the national championship in 2024, espe- cially on early downs as a run defender. He reminded Irish fans down the stretch in 2025. T2. Junior S Luke Talich Talich's impact plays to snaps on the field ratio might only be lower than that of Jadarian Price. The ball seems to find the former walk-on out of Cody, Wyo., when he's out there and he typically makes a play on it. Talich found his niche as Notre Dame's third safety, playing in dime and big nickel packages. He was targeted 19 times and only gave up 9 receptions for 80 yards (4.2 yards per attempt), while intercepting 3 passes along the way. Whether it was a game-ending inter- ception or a key stop on fourth down, Ta- lich was often involved in key moments for Notre Dame's defense. He's also been a stud on special teams for three seasons, returning a blocked punt for a touch- down and running 88 yards for a score on a fake-punt-pass from Burnham. T 2 . S o p h o m o re LT A n t h o n i e Knapp A couple bad early-season reps (and a three-star recruiting ranking) drew some In his first year as a starter, redshirt freshman CJ Carr broke Notre Dame's single-season pass efficiency rating (168.1) and ranked third among Power Four players with an impressive 9.4 yards per passing attempt. PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER