Notre Dame has done a lot of good things on offense in 2026, but even before Saturday night's loss to BYU it was obvious the unit wasn't playing to its potential. Despite ranking in the Top 10 nationally in scoring offense and in the various efficiency rankings, the offense is mostly out-talenting opponents and we aren't seeing this group play to its potential. The Irish couldn't out-talent BYU, and the end result was Notre Dame's 16-game win streak coming to an end.

Notre Dame still has one of the highest rated offenses and the numbers still look good, but the goal isn't to set records or rank in a certain place statistically. The goal is to have a unit that is capable of fueling a run to a championship, and that's not what we've seen from the offense so far this season. That will need to be addressed during the bye week as the Irish get closer and closer to the Miami game, which now has a playoff berth on the line.

For Notre Dame to reach its full potential on offense it needs to be run through its best player, and that's quarterback CJ Carr. There is no doubt the offense runs through Carr mentally, but that's not what I'm talking about. In fact, I'd argue that running the offense through Carr mentally has taken away from the offense running through his physical talent.

Working through the film tells this story, and a look at Carr's production tells the same exact story. Carr's numbers are down in most areas from where he was through seven games as a redshirt freshman and first year starter.

Look at the comparison of Carr's 2026 numbers and his 2025 numbers through seven games:

Yards Per Game: 234.1 (2026) - 251.1 (2025)
Yards Per Attempt: 8.5 - 9.6
Yards Per Completion: 12.7 - 14.5
Completion %: 66.8% - 65.7%
TD: 16 - 14
INT: 1 - 4
Rating: 164.49 - 166.78

The touchdown to interception ratio is an improvement, but the yards per attempt and yards per completion numbers are way down. Carr being 17 yards per game better last season against a schedule that included Miami, Texas A&M, USC, Boise State and NC State, while sharing the load with two first round picks at running back, is problematic when looking at the mediocre schedule Notre Dame played in its first six games.

Carr is also averaging far less yards per attempt (9.0 to 10.0) and yards per completion (13.3 to 15.0) on first and second down this season. He's also completing third-down passes at a much lower rate (60.5% to 69.1%, and is converting third downs with his arm at a lower rate (36.8% to 42.6%). 

Simply put, the combination of Carr being a more experienced player, Carr having a talented group of pass catchers around him and playing a very manageable schedule that includes just one Top 25 pass defense (Wisconsin) and four teams that rank outside the Top 50 in pass defense should have resulted in more production.

So why hasn't it? 

A big reason is that the offense has been built in a way that doesn't true play to Carr's physical talent. Notre Dame is certainly asking a lot of his mental talent, but in many ways that has taken away from what he can do physically. If Notre Dame's offense is going to become the championship caliber unit it's capable of there need to be some changes that shift the focus more to building around Carr's immense physical talent as well as utilizing his high football IQ.

Fix number one is taking some of the burden off of Carr from a presnap standpoint. Notre Dame asks Carr to do A LOT presnap, beyond what you normally see from a college quarterback. I get why the staff does this, as they want to take advantage of how incredibly smart he is. Carr does very well to get the offense out of bad looks and into better looks, but this comes at a cost.

Focusing so much on his presnap responsibilities has made Carr too mechanical. He's not as smooth as he was last season, he doesn't go as deep into his progressions as he did last season and he also misses more reads post-snap. He's still quite good, make no mistake, but Carr hasn't been nearly as effective as he should be as a second year starter, and his numbers aren't close to what they were last season.

Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock and his staff need to be the ones that have a far greater role in determining what plays are being run after the snap. Can can - and should - still play a role in making checks, but the "perfect play" focus needs to be limited. I'll talk more about what this looks like below, but the impact for Carr is that he can now focus more on post-snap reads, will help him improve his ability to go through reads, to find the right receivers and to better attack defenses. 

It seems as though Denbrock and head coach Marcus Freeman have worked to build an offensive structure that fully utilizes Carr's mental acuity, but it's also one that has completely neutered the gunslinger mentality that made him such an elite prospect.

The desire to get into the "perfect play" limits what the offense can do presnap from a formational and movement standpoint. The lack of presnap movement and diversity from a formational/alignment standpoint forces Notre Dame to get into the proper call. It also means Carr has to go through a lot mentally to not only get a read on the defense, but also process whether or not he should check the play, either a pure audible to another play or simply check a run to the opposite side based on the look. Notre Dame goes at a slow pace offensively, which allows Carr to go through all his presnap looks and to check plays. Often the ball is snapped late, and in many of those instances the checks are made late in the play clock, which not only gives Carr less time to process what he'll do post-snap, it does the same for his teammates.

That limits how much volume the staff can put it, it obviously limits who can play on the outside and I'd argue it has had a negative impact on how effective Carr is post-snap. When breaking down Carr's film I've seen more misses from a read standpoint compared to what we saw last season. It can be quite difficult for a still young quarterback to do as much as he does presnap, and then be able to make deeper reads after the snap.

Notre Dame needs to focus more on putting Carr in position to thrive after the snap, something that is far more important than putting so much into the "right play" or the "perfect play." This should allow Carr to be less rigid, attack the entire field and be more comfortable getting to secondary reads more frequently. 

Taking something off Carr's plate presnap and focusing more on what he does post-snap should allow the offense to open things up from a formational, movement and play-calling standpoint. Notre Dame has a very static offense, which puts a lot on its players to win their snaps. That's fine, and as we've seen they win a lot, but mixing in more to put the offensive players in positions to be successful schematically would make this a more dynamic, dangerous and effective offense. It would also allow Carr to be more dynamic but allowing him to attack more of the field, spread the ball around more effectively and to be more aggressive with his throws. Spreading the ball around more effectively isn't about volume of receivers, which we already see, but more so about getting the ball to different players within different reads by allowing him to be better presnap.

Notre Dame has some really quality plays in the offense, but it's quite limited from a volume standpoint. A lot of what we see each week is the same. Double posts, Post-Dig concepts, four verticals (and it's route adjustments), Slot Fade, Snag concepts and quick game are basically what we see week after week. Those are fine concepts, but they need more counters, both from the standpoint of counters within that concept and different schemes that work well against what defenses do to slow down those concepts.

An example is the BYU game, when Notre Dame ran a lot of Slot Fade concepts. I love that concept and it worked at times in the game, but they ran it basically out of the same looks and with the same responsibilities each time. So Slot Fade out of a 3x1 with a backside Dig, or Slot Fade out of 3x2 with double slants backside. The one wrinkle was late in the second quarter when they ran a seam by No. 2 (usually runs the Slot Fade route) and the fade came from No. 3, and that wrinkle got Jack Larsen open in the end zone for what should have been a touchdown. When Notre Dame does some of this it's very successful, but we need to see a lot more of it.

By and large, Notre Dame has a very "we do what we do" mindset on offense. That's fine, you need a strong foundation, but they need to do more with that foundation. More wrinkles, more adjustments, more complementary concepts and even more important they need to do more to specifically go after the defense, both its scheme and doing more to get more favorable matchups rolling. Changes include using more Vertical stretch to complement the heavy use of Horizontal stretch schemes in the pass game. They need to do more to get receivers on the move, more levels concepts and more isolations that come off clears from other routes, instead of the isos that come off the horizontal stretch concepts.

This isn't really a lot, it just requires the offensive staff to be a bit more creative with their install and calls, and that requires them to take some of the presnap burden off Carr. It allows him to be more multiple in how they line up, it allows them to get more players involved in the offense, it allows the scheme to be more aggressive, that allows Carr to be more aggressive, it puts defenses in more binds than we see now and it puts the playmakers in better positions to make plays, especially plays in space.

All of this can be fixed during the bye week and as the season continues. It's actually not that complicated, it just requires the coaches to recognize that this is an issue, to adjust on the fly and then to start to install a bit more into the offense. If they do it they'll truly unleash Carr and allow him to start finally playing like an elite talent from a physical standpoint, not just a mental standpoint.

Do this and I don't know how this offense gets stopped, especially if the offensive line can continue to hold up its end of the deal.

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