Jeremiyah Love Reveals Notre Dame Locker Room Has Fully Adopted Arch Manning’s Mentality

No.6 Notre Dame is throwing freshman CJ Carr into the middle of the No. 10 Miami spotlight on August 31. Carr has yet to throw a college pass, and he will do so behind an offensive line that is still unsure of its right guard, with Sullivan Absher and Guerby Lambert fighting for the position. Marcus Freeman, the head coach, brushes off the stress by stating, “That’s what you go to Notre Dame for… Night game, prime time, everybody’s watching you versus a heck of an opponent.” Coach espouses a winning mentality that will carry them for the 2025 season.

The Irish defeated Miami 41–8 in their last game in 2017. The Hurricanes, on the other hand, are still recovering from missing out on the CFP last year. With two national championships and plenty of big-game expertise, QB Carson Beck has had a lot of the spotlight. Freeman seemed pleased and welcoming the chaos, saying, “What a way to start college football season.” And even though Miami has won 7 of the previous 13 games, the series between the two leans towards the fighting Irish. Heading into the season, the Notre Dame locker rooms portrays the same confidence.

In a recent interview with ESPN College Football, Jeremiyah Love revealed that Notre Dame’s locker room seems to have picked up a strategy that sounds quite similar to what is going on in Texas. ” We’re not going to be the hunted. We’re going to be the hunters. We’re not going to sit back and you know let people come and take shots at us. So, our mentality going into this game is to, you know, to hunt. We’re not trying to play to not lose. We’re playing to win,” said Jeremiyah on what Freeman preaches pointing out that they are done playing safe and they are here to dominate this season.

We have already heard something similar to what Jeremiyah just said here, because Arch Manning said the exact same thing about Texas putting a “red dot” on all of their targets, the first one being Ohio State. “I think that’s always at Texas, and I think we kind of try to shift the narrative that we’re going for everyone else… The target’s not on our back. We’ve got a red dot on everyone else,” said Manning. Two different locker rooms. One shared message.

Both programs are dropping their new starters under center. Arch Manning will start for Texas against the Buckeyes and CJ Carr will go against Miami. “Last season we went to the national championship… We didn’t get the results that we wanted but at the end of the day we were still one of the best teams in the country,” said Jeremiyah. Last year in the championship game Buckeye’s QB Will Howard’s 56-yard pass to WR Jeremiah Smith, crushed  Notre Dame’s dreams of a comeback, and led to a 34–23 victory and the Buckeyes’ first title since 2014.

Freeman is ready for Miami despite rookie QB

Marcus Freeman is taking a chance by starting freshman CJ Carr at QB. Freeman made it clear that everything is a part of a larger QB room development plan, “Everybody has to continue to develop. I think that’s an example of both CJ and Kenny [Minchey], and you’ll see it in Blake [Hebert]. Blake’s role right now is to be the scout team quarterback…  it was with CJ Carr last year… And again, Kenny’s got to be prepared, so Kenny’s going to get a lot of reps in practice, as you do with all your backups.” So basically Freeman’s creating a pipeline here.

The focus on the roster is not just for offense and defense. Special teams are also important. “Noah Burnett will be our field goal kicker at any distance, and Marcello [Diomede] will be our kickoff specialist. Eric is a guy that has a huge leg. Right now, the plan isn’t to play him as of today, but we have a lot of confidence in that entire room,” Freeman said ahead of the Miami matchup. The team looks quite pumped up for the kickoff .The ESPN predictor calls it a almost a tie with 54.9% chance for Notre Dame and 45.1% chance for Miami.

Yet, Joel Klatt sides up with the Irish. “Favored by 2.5, that run game, that offensive line, Notre Dame goes on the road, and they get a win,” Klatt said. He even predicted that Notre Dame will win 24-17. He came up with the reasoning “Let’s face it now, if you’re looking at these two teams and these two coaches, who do you trust more in a large, matchup style game?” His answer? Freeman.