Season openers in college football are never straightforward, and in 2025, they’ve become nearly impossible to fully prepare for.
The Transfer Portal has created parity across the sport, but it’s also made game-planning a tedious puzzle.
No. 10 Miami will have a significantly easier time preparing for No. 6 Notre Dame. The Hurricanes brought in 19 transfers while the Fighting Irish brought in eight.
Quarterback Carson Beck headlines Miami’s portal haul, and Notre Dame defensive coordinator Chris Ash is well aware of his ability to change a game.
”He's a veteran guy,” Ash stated. “He's played a lot of football. Again, been in a great program and coached well at Georgia and gonna be the same at Miami. He's gonna be a handful and I would assume that there won't be a lot of drop-off between what they were doing with Cam (Ward) with Carson taking over.”
Miami’s new pieces will also require Notre Dame to dig into film from other schools to learn tendencies from coaches and players, but at the end of the day, Ash’s top priority isn’t on the Hurricanes.
It will be on making the right adjustments so his defense can respond in real time.
“In game one, it's about you more than it is about them,” Ash explained. “It'll be a game of adjustments for us. That's what a game one always is. Our play style and the way we wanna play has to show up and we'll adjust as we go through a game. We'll study Miami from last year. We'll study Carson's film from Georgia. But at the end of the day, for me, it's more important about how we show up, how we play, how we execute the fundamentals we use and how we bring those calls to life on defense.”
On the other side of the ball, offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock faces the tougher task. Miami will unveil an overhauled secondary and new defensive coordinator in Corey Hetherman.
Notre Dame can study Hetherman’s Minnesota tape, but there’s no guarantee it mirrors what Miami will run Sunday night.
“Everybody works tirelessly to make sure there’s no stone unturned. As you get to Miami, it’s gonna be a game of adjustments. It’s game one, right? We’ve got different personnel, we’ve got a different coordinator. They’ve got different personnel, got a different coordinator. It’s a game of adjustments.”
Denbrock knows freshman quarterback CJ Carr will face adversity in his first career start. His job will be putting Carr and the Irish offense in favorable situations despite the uncertainty.
”It’s no easy task going down to Miami and playing them in the season opener,” Denbrock explained. ”There will be a learning curve involved in all of this.”
A year ago, Denbrock was in a similar spot preparing for Texas A&M in the opener. The approach then, and now, is simple. Merge what’s known about a coordinator’s tendencies with what film says about Miami’s personnel, then adjust on the fly.
“We're gonna have to study a lot of Minnesota tape and see kind of how he goes about calling the game and how he used the personnel that he had at Minnesota. We'll have to get a feel for the personnel from the Miami tape and kind of who they've got coming back and how that kind of fits.
“You merge those kinds of things together as much as you possibly can and then be ready to adjust everything that you do if you have to and hopefully play some solid football.”
In 2017, Notre Dame wasn’t ready for the atmosphere at Miami. It was a circus. It was loud. Notre Dame melted under the pressure.
Marcus Freeman’s team will enter Hard Rock Stadium with a first-time starter at quarterback, but it will be one of the more experienced teams in the country.
The lessons learned from last year should carry over to 2025. They’ve been there (literally) and done that. The atmosphere will take time to get used to, but it shouldn’t overwhelm this group.
“Let's utilize the lessons,” stated Freeman. “Let's utilize some of those good and bad things that we learned from last year, but you do that no matter what the previous experience was. They understand it. We try to stop talking about that ‘24 year. This is about the 2025 team and this journey to accomplish, reach our full potential.”
The Irish might not have started fully preparing for Miami until last week from a schematic standpoint, but Freeman has been focused on making sure his team accomplished the small details well before schemes went in.
We can't control the weather, but we can control hydration. We can control supplements and all those things. We have to continue to do that. There were a couple hot days when our guys were out there running in the heat and working out. Hopefully, Mother Nature gives us some hot days where we can go practice in the heat.
“More than anything, it's just gonna be about the hydration over time,” said Freeman. “It's not game week, we gotta start hydrating. This is something that has to be a habit and a routine for every player in our program.”
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