CFB: Notre Dame Fighting Irish Week 15 Preview
By Stiofán Mac Fhilib
Notre Dame finished their regular season with their tenth consecutive win for the second season in a row. However, despite a 49-20 dismantling of the Stanford Cardinal, Irish playoff hopes still hang in the balance, ahead of Conference Championship weekend.
Looking Back at Last Week
It was always going to be impossible for Notre Dame to match the fast start they had against Syracuse the previous week. 42 points by the end of the first play in the second quarter was literally once-in-a-lifetime stuff. But against the Cardinal, the Irish still managed to score on each of their first four possessions, en route to a 35-3 halftime lead.
Each of the top three ND running backs ran for a first-half TD, with Price also catching one at the end of the half. But while CJ Carr’s 12-yard pass for that score was straightforward, the fake punt from their own 16-yard line at the start of the second quarter was a thing of beauty.
A direct snap to up-man, DL (and high school QB) Josh Burnham, saw him step forward and throw a simple pass to Safety, Luke Talich, who had peeled off the end of the Notre Dame line. With just the punt returner to beat around midfield, one side step later, and Talich was off to the end zone. Technically a Special Teams TD, but when a Defensive Lineman throws an 84-yard TD pass to a Safety, the Irish Defense might want to stake their claim!
Notre Dame fans expected to see a heavy dose of Jeremiyah Love in the first half in particular, to help boost his chances in the Heisman Trophy race. However, midway through the first quarter, he took a Stanford DL’s knee to his ribcage after a tackle and played only sparingly after being cleared to return.
After the injury he incurred in the final regular season game at USC a year earlier, Irish fans were understandably concerned at his exit. Thankfully, however, everything points to him being back and fully healthy for the postseason. Whether or not he will feature in December for Notre Dame will surely depend on the playoff committee’s final rankings. Should ND fail to make the playoff party, then the likely first round draft pick next April would be much better advised to sit out the Irish bowl game. So, fingers crossed, last week was not his final hurrah in an Irish uniform.
Within two and a half minutes of the restart, Notre Dame led 42-3, and with the backups in, RB3, Aneyas Williams, showed why he would be a more than capable RB1 in 2026 with a 51-yard TD run that left him as ND’s leading rusher on the night and put the Irish up 42-13. With the Notre Dame defense playing at 2 am South Bend time, the hosts added two fourth-quarter TDs, mostly against Irish backups, to leave a final margin of 49-20.
That put the bow on a season that started disappointingly but finished in a high-scoring crescendo. Notre Dame averaged over 40 points per game for the first time this century, winning its final ten games by an average score of 44-14. Whether that is enough to take the Irish into the 12-team playoff for a second consecutive season remains to be seen.
The Week Ahead
There is no Notre Dame opponent this week on conference championship weekend, one of the joys of independence. But there’s certainly no lack of Irish interest in several of the championship games out there. Which leads me neatly on to…
Playoff Picture
For the last few weeks, Notre Dame fans have been avidly scoreboard-watching in anticipation of a result or two that would have all but guaranteed the Irish a playoff spot. Many of these required some sort of upset, but after a season in which plenty of favourites lost in the early and middle sections, the final few weeks went much more to chalk to the dismay of ND followers everywhere.
As things currently stand, Notre Dame desperately needs Texas Tech to beat BYU again to clinch the Big 12 title. A BYU win would surely see them jump the Irish and take their spot in the playoff. But even then, things are not quite clear-cut.
It all revolves around Notre Dame’s final positioning relative to Miami, the team that beat them at the end of August in Hard Rock Stadium. The Irish sit at #10, right behind Alabama and ahead of #11 BYU and the #12 Hurricanes. To date, the committee has ranked ND ahead of Miami every single week, citing various metrics and reasons that basically boil down to ‘Notre Dame is just better right now’.
Playoff selection committee chair Hunter Yurachek last week noted that ND and Bama were neck and neck and that the Irish were being compared to the Crimson Tide for the 9/10 spots, rather than to BYU and Miami. He did, however, note that if Miami did get close enough to Notre Dame, then the head-to-head in favour of the Canes would come into play.
So just what has to happen for Miami to get that much closer, especially without either team actually playing this weekend? Would a heavy BYU loss move them below the Hurricanes? And what of the SEC Championship Game? Irish fans would prefer a Georgia win, to keep Bama as close to ND as possible in the comparison stakes and prevent a pure two-way comparison with Miami. And even a Boise State win in the Mountain West CCG would be a small help in strengthening ND’s Strength of Schedule and Strength of Record.
The people in the desert who make their fortunes predicting these things feel the Irish ARE likely to make it, which presumably is predicated on a BYU defeat and the committee not changing their minds on the relative merits of Notre Dame and Miami and all the assorted metrics at the last moment. But in all honesty, who knows?
Irish Head Coach Marcus Freeman made his views clear after the Stanford game. “You want to get the best twelve teams in this playoff, and it’s hard for me to believe that there are twelve better teams than Notre Dame. This team has won ten in a row by double digits. We’re playing our best ball right now.”
After a week of lobbying by the ACC and assorted media figures, Notre Dame AD Pete Bevacqua came out on the eve of the key Saturday games to state his case firmly. “Nobody wins the race at the starting line. And I really think right now there’s not a team in the country playing better football than Notre Dame.
He is firmly of the belief that the only comparison to be made is between ND and Alabama, and that the committee themselves have effectively ended the Miami debate. “We think we should be ranked ninth, and we’ve let the committee know that…I don’t see any way where we can drop two spots, and Miami can go up two spots. Neither of us has played a game in the course of these two weeks.”
Ultimately, it may well be a fascinating philosophical decision facing the playoff selection committee should BYU lose. Their remit is to choose ‘the twelve best teams’ (subject to the provision that five conference champions are guaranteed entry). Is it the twelve teams that ‘look the best’ and are ‘playing the best’ right now? Or the twelve ‘most deserving’?
Vegas is clear on the former. Notre Dame are third favourites to win the National Championship, which in part might explain why so many fans of so many other rival teams appear so desperate for them to be excluded, and frankly, I don’t blame them! They are easily one of the top six ‘best’ teams right now, never mind top twelve. And they’re not sixth.
But if you believe that résumés and head-to-head wins should take priority for teams with similar losses and SOS, then you could certainly argue that the Hurricanes are more deserving. And, of course, the ultimate irony is that if the roles were reversed, both fan bases would be using the arguments that the other one is currently employing!
Perhaps there is no ‘right’ answer, just opinions, and the opinion of the 12-person committee in Grapevine, Texas, is the only one that matters. Well, by late Sunday afternoon UK and Ireland time, we should all know.
STIOFÁN MAC FHILIB
COLLEGE FOOTBALL ANALYST
A VERY LONG-DISTANCE SUBWAY ALUMNUS OF NOTRE DAME, COUNTY ANTRIM-BASED STIOFÁN HAS BEEN A FAN OF THE FIGHTING IRISH SINCE 2000. FOLLOW HIM ON TWITTER @SMACFHILIB.