Notre Dame didn’t panic.
The Fighting Irish found themselves up 17-3 at halftime, but as one would expect, Miami came roaring back to start the second half, cutting the lead to 24-17 with 5:29 left in the third quarter.
CJ Carr and the Irish didn’t flinch.
The Notre Dame offense pieced together a crucial eight-play, 51-yard drive to push its lead back to 31-17 with 12:55 remaining in the game.
“It was an unbelievable scheme that the coaches have been cooking up for the last week,” stated Carr. “They've been in early and left late. Coach G (Gino Guidugli), Coach (Mike) Denbrock, and that whole offensive staff have done such an unbelievable job of putting us in positions where we know exactly what we need to do. It's up to us to go execute, which I thought we did a really good job of tonight.”
Carr certainly did his part in the 31-24 victory, finishing the night 29-of-40 for 319 yards and three touchdowns. The junior quarterback found Micah Gilbert nine times for 98 yards and two scores, while Jordan Faison added six catches for 77 yards and a touchdown.
The big night from Carr didn't surprise his head coach.
While the outside world may have questioned whether Carr would deliver in a big game, Marcus Freeman never wavered in his belief in the quarterback.
“That's who CJ Carr is,” said Freeman. “He prepares -- I said this three years ago, the dude prepared like he was a starter. He's not going to do anything different this week because we're playing Miami. We've just got to continue to do what we do and do it better. You lose hope and you lose faith in what you've done previously if you do something better and different this week because it's a different opponent.
“No, you've got to trust that your process produces the results you want, and if it doesn't, we've got to look at how to make it better.”
Perhaps the biggest play came on Notre Dame's first drive of the fourth quarter, when the Irish created some breathing room with a 14-point cushion.
Notre Dame faced a fourth-and-2, and Carr found Nolan James on a wheel route for 36 yards. Four plays later, James punched it into the end zone from a yard out.
“We started off in a zone beater, killed to a man beater,” Carr explained. “They've been passing off our running backs when they free released. We hit them on a couple corner routes, out-breaking routes. Then when we went in with mesh, where we have in-breakers from the boundary too, I think they messed up the push call. The will felt the safety had it. Safety didn't think he was taking it out. Worked on our favor well. Credit to our coaching again. Schemed them up, knew what they were going to be in. It was exciting.”
Carr also believed Notre Dame received a boost from its defense, which held Miami to a field goal after the Hurricanes were stopped inside the five-yard line on six consecutive plays.
“Unbelievable,” Carr said. “You could feel in that first half the rise of our momentum and that was a big hump. It definitely fueled us into those next couple drives as well.”
It will be a memorable night in South Bend, but Carr did have one small complaint.
“I was trying to enjoy it some more,” laughed Carr when asked about the field storm. “They kept trying to usher me over to talk to people. I'm like, ‘Dude, let me go celebrate this sucker. We earned this thing.’ Let's go hang out with the crowd and my teammates. I was trying to enjoy it a little more. I'm definitely going to go home and see my family and see these guys again and enjoy a little bit more.”
