Notre Dame hold off top-ranked Miami 31-24 to shake up the playoff race
Seven Lights
Notre Dame held on to beat top-ranked Miami 31-24 before a capacity crowd at Notre Dame Stadium on Saturday night, avenging the 27-24 defeat of last season that had kept the Irish out of the College Football Playoff and throwing the playoff race into flux.
CJ Carr passed for a season-high 319 yards and three touchdowns, two to Micah Gilbert and one to Jordan Faison, while Nolan James Jr added a rushing score. Notre Dame, 8-1 and 11th in the playoff standings, raced 24-3 ahead early in the third quarter and never trailed.
Miami, also 8-1, played its first game without injured wide receiver Malachi Toney, who coach Mario Cristobal said is expected to miss about a month. Darian Mensah passed for 302 yards, with Cooper Barkate catching two touchdown passes and Elija Lofton another, as the Hurricanes twice closed to within seven points.
With 3min 36sec left, Lofton appeared to complete a fourth-down catch in the end zone that would have made it 31-30, the score of the sides’ famous 1988 meeting. Luke Talich, who had intercepted Mensah in the third quarter, knocked the ball loose and officials ruled the pass incomplete. Notre Dame took over on downs, ran the clock down and ran out the victory. Cristobal said he was “beyond upset” at the call.
The defeat left Utah and UCLA as the only unbeaten teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision, both 9-0. It was the first time since 2003 that just two teams reached their ninth game unbeaten. It was Notre Dame’s first win over a No 1 team since it beat Clemson in 2020.
Marcus Freeman said he had shown his players the storyline of the 1988 “Catholics vs Convicts” game in preparing for the contest, played on a bitterly cold night with temperatures falling from 40F at kickoff into the mid-30s.
Miami lead the ACC by one game at 6-0 and host Duke, Virginia Tech and Boston College over the final three weeks. The Athletic’s projections gave the Hurricanes a 99 per cent chance of making the 12-team playoff, and an ACC title would clinch a berth, a feat Miami has not managed since joining the conference in 2004.
Both teams have three regular-season games left before the next playoff rankings are released Tuesday.