SOUTH BEND, Indiana -- CJ Carr's father was in town this week, and before Notre Dame kicked off against No. 1 Miami, he called his son to share a poignant observation.
It was about his son's first start in 2025, in the season opener against the Hurricanes, and how much of a difference one year can make for a player.
"A huge difference," Carr said. "... And his words were, there was a boy playing out at Miami for my first start."
Fourteen months later, the boy is gone. In his place is the new Heisman Trophy frontrunner.
Carr played the best game of his career against top-tier competition, slicing up Miami's secondary and delivering the Irish a signature 31-24 win over the top-ranked and unbeaten Hurricanes, solidifying the No. 11 Irish's playoff push. He finished the night completing 29 of 40 passes for 319 yards and three touchdowns, with no interceptions and no sacks -- and then sang Notre Dame's alma mater with his teammates as students poured over the Notre Dame Stadium barriers and spilled onto the turf to celebrate.
Miami quarterback Darian Mensah entered the night as the Heisman favorite. He stayed there until Carr's final drive of the first half, when the Michigan native masterfully led the Irish into the end zone, completing 6 of 7 passes for 79 yards, including the 18-yard touchdown pass to Micah Gilbert. Within minutes, the betting odds flipped, with oddsmakers in Las Vegas lifting Carr to No. 1 and dropping Mensah to second.
Then, less than 90 seconds into the second half, Carr threw a 20-yard touchdown pass to build a 24-3 lead.
It wasn't going to be easy. The Irish had to fight off two furious Miami rallies.
"It's crazy because I talked about this before the game started," Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said. "At some point, it's going to be a struggle. I don't know how it's going to go. It always happens that way."
Whenever Notre Dame needed their signal caller, Carr delivered. No play was bigger, perhaps, than on fourth-and-2 early in the fourth quarter, when he found Nolan James Jr. on a wheel route for a 36-yard gain to Miami's 7-yard line. A few plays later, James scored on a 1-yard dive into the end zone to extend the lead to 31-17 with 12:55 remaining.
No, this was not the Carr of last season. Heck, it wasn't the Carr from three weeks ago at BYU, where he threw for 261 yards but failed to score through the air. He was pressured a career-high 13 times that night. No one was thinking Heisman on Oct. 17. Many wondered whether Carr would ever get a signature win. He entered Saturday 2-3 against ranked opponents, and Notre Dame hadn't beaten a top-16 team since its run to the national championship game in 2024.
It was a night of bests for Carr. His 29 completions were a career high. The 319 yards and three touchdowns were his most against a ranked team. His efficiency against ranked opponents climbed from 122.6 to 130.5 in one night. He's also only the fifth quarterback in the last 30 years to surpass 300 yards passing with three touchdowns and zero interceptions in a win against the No. 1 team.
What changed Saturday is a credit to Carr, and also the Notre Dame offensive line. In Carr's three losses to ranked teams, he was pressured at least nine times, according to Pro Football Focus. On Saturday, Miami was credited with only one hurry.
"Carr's a really good quarterback," Miami coach Mario Cristobal said. "And if he sees what's coming, he gets into an advantageous play, right? Leverage numbers and whatnot. And he got us early. And also they protected well."
The drive that changed the Heisman race started at the Notre Dame 19 with 2:08 left in the half and the Irish up 10-3. Carr hit Aneyas Williams twice, then Jordan Faison for 10 yards, Micah Gilbert for 18 and Jaden Greathouse for 19. Then he found Gilbert up the middle again for an 18-yard touchdown with 29 seconds left.
"I thought, as a collective offense, we were clicking for a lot of the night," Carr said. "And that was just one example of everybody doing their job at a really high level."
Then Miami came back in the third quarter. Mensah threw touchdown passes to Elija Lofton and Cooper Barkate less than three minutes apart, and the Notre Dame offense stalled, amassing only nine combined yards on three straight possessions. By late in the third quarter, the lead was 24-17.
"We prepared for it," Carr said. "I mean, that's a really good football team we just beat. And we knew they weren't going to go down without a fight. And so coming into halftime, that was the message. It's like, we're going to hit a storm at some point. Don't flinch. Keep going. We got this."
After safety Luke Talich intercepted Mensah at the Notre Dame 49 with 1:44 left in the third, Notre Dame's offense stalled again, but the offense stayed on the field on fourth-and-2 early in the fourth quarter.
Notre Dame came out in a play built to beat zone coverage. Carr saw man and checked out of the play, hitting James for the 36-yard gain on a wheel route.
"They'd been passing off our running backs when they free released in five-man protection a lot," Carr said. "So we'd hit them on a couple corner routes, out-breaking routes. And then when we went in with mesh, where we have in-breakers from the boundary too, I think they messed up the push call. And the Will (linebacker) thought the safety had it. Safety didn't think he was taking it out. So, it worked in our favor well."
To hear Carr describe it, it sounds complicated, right? Well, it should. His ability to process on the fly has helped him reach an elite level as Notre Dame's latest superstar.
"That's who CJ Carr is, man," Freeman said. "He prepares. I said this three years ago: the dude prepared like he was a starter. So 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."
As good as Carr was, the heavyweight fight still required a knockout punch -- or, at the very least, a judge's decision.
Miami drove to the Notre Dame 18 with under four minutes remaining. Talich broke up Mensah's fourth-down throw to Lofton in the end zone, the ball coming loose after he tip-toed in-bounds. ACC officials upheld the call after review. Miami coach Mario Cristobal disagreed, later calling the officiating "bullshit."
"Really, really disappointed that they negated Elija Lofton's touchdown with two hands on the ball and two feet inbounds," Cristobal said.
The win was Notre Dame's first against the No. 1 team since it did so on a night exactly six years ago, in a double-overtime win over Clemson. The students rushed the field then, too.
"They kept trying to usher me over to talk to [media]," Carr said. "I'm like, dude, let me go celebrate this sucker. We earned this thing. Let's go hang out with the crowd and our teammates. I was trying to enjoy it a little more."
Miami hadn't lost since the 2025 national championship game, but it also hadn't gone on the road and defeated an AP top-five team since 2005.
None of that held up against a quarterback who, for one night at least, looked nothing like the one his father, Jason, remembered.
In a world where coaches preach one game at a time and not making any one game bigger than the rest, Freeman called it as good a win as he's been part of since taking over Notre Dame.
"As we continue to move forward in life, I'm sure we'll remember this moment, but I just want to -- I want time to stop right now because I know tomorrow's coming," Freeman said. "I know I'm going to wake up tomorrow, and unfortunately, you've got to let this one go. You've got to get ready for the next one.
"But I'm going to try to extend tonight as long as I can, and then we'll move forward tomorrow."
The Irish now have a 92.7% chance of making the CFP, according to CBS Sports Forecasting and Projections. Boston College, SMU and Syracuse remain on the schedule. The Mustangs might be ranked when they face off in South Bend.
The season has been chaotic across the sport. The AP's No. 1 team has lost four times in the regular season for the first time since 1990. In the Heisman race, Mensah has stumbled, Canes wideout Malachi Toney has been lost for the regular season and Ohio State receiver Jeremiah Smith has suffered back-to-back losses.
Now, Carr is on top of the world. Can he hang on? A Notre Dame player hasn't won the Heisman Trophy since Tim Brown in 1987.
"CJ is constantly getting better as we all are," said Gilbert, who caught two touchdowns. "He's pushing all of us to get better. Each game you just see the confidence come out of him more and more and more, and the ability to just play the game that he knows to play -- trust his ability and be one of the best quarterbacks in the nation."
