Now that the awards have been handed out, the college football playoffs have begun and players are now starting to declare for the NFL Draft or the transfer portal, it's time to close the book on the 2025 season for Notre Dame. This season, we saw some greatness, some good, some bad and some down right ugly football at times. Before we can officially move onto the offseason, it's time to recap this regular season by breaking it down into four separate quarters. Next up, a strong surge by the Irish in the second quarter of the regular season.  

Arkansas Razorbacks - W 56-13

Notre Dame needed to bounce back in a big way and they did that on September 27 when they traveled down to Fayetteville for the first time in program history. After starting their season 1-2, the Irish were on the outside looking in for the playoff discussion. Even their performance against Purdue left a lot to be desired. The potential and upside of this team truly flashed, even in the two losses to begin the season. But the question remained: when will Notre Dame truly put it all together? Arkansas was the first team to see what this team could do when they were firing on all cylinders. 

Quarterback CJ Carr had his best performance of the season going 22 of 30 for 354 passing yards and four touchdowns. Running back Jeremiyah Love followed up Jadarian Price's performance a week prior and had a four-touchdown game of his own against the Razorbacks defense. Notre Dame's defense played their best game of the season up to that point holding an explosive Arkansas offense to 365 total yards and 13 total points; the Irish shut them out in the second half. This game brought them back to .500 on the season, but following up this dominant performance would be key. 

Boise State Broncos - W 28-7

After their dominant 43-point victory over Arkansas, the Irish returned home to take on Boise State, also for the first time in program history. As things stood, at the time, the Notre Dame offense was carrying this team, and the defense's performance was promising against Arkansas, but that was the outlier of their season so far. How would they follow that up? Well, Boise State only found the end zone once, and turnovers played a big factor for Chris Ash's defense. Star cornerback Leonard Moore hauled in two of his own while safeties Tae Johnson and Luke Talich added one each. 

This was also the game that we saw signs of struggle from the Notre Dame offense. After putting up 56-points in back to back weeks, the offense only scored 28 points against Boise State and the short-yardage and red zone struggles began to rear it's ugly head. They turned the ball over on downs on their first drive of the game inside of the five yard line. The diversity in the pass game wasn't as prevalent as it was against Arkansas a week prior, but a 21-point win is still a good win. 

NC State Wolfpack - W 36-9

Knowing what we know now, I think it's safe to say the Notre Dame defense truly began to hit their stride after shutting down a dominant NC State offense. Coming into this matchup, the Wolfpack were averaging 33.8 points per game, 447.7 yards per game and 282.3 passing yards per game. The Fighting Irish defense held them to nine points, 233 total yards of offense and 182 passing yards. They also picked off quarterback CJ Bailey three times in the outing. The aggressive philosophy from Boise State remained in their matchup with the Wolfpack ultimately shutting down their offense. 

Notre Dame's offense had a bounce back-type of game against NC State's defense. The rushing attack wasn't anything to write home about, but Love and Price still finished with a combined 152 total rushing yards and two touchdowns. Carr, however, finished the day with 342 passing yards and two touchdowns. The situational struggles still remained, but a strong 26-point second half really put the game away. Notre Dame was starting to generate some much needed momentum was came out of this matchup 4-2 with a daunting 3rd quarter of their season looming ahead. 

-------

BECOME A MEMBER

Be sure to stay locked into Irish Breakdown all the time!

Join the Irish Breakdown community!
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown YouTube channel
Subscribe to the Irish Breakdown podcast on iTunes
Follow me on Twitter: @TTrow5
Like and follow Irish Breakdown on Facebook