If you haven’t looked ahead to what Notre Dame football’s first few weeks of the 2025 season look like, it’s a very front-loaded schedule.
The Irish open the season on the road against Miami, then hosting Texas A&M in the home opener. Starting the season against two ranked teams will be a big test for Notre Dame, and ESPN believes that the first game of the year will be its swing game.
Mark Schlabach went into details on why this is such an important game for the Irish as he said “Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman won’t have to wait long to learn if his team is a CFP (College Football Playoff) national title contender.” He isn’t wrong, and due to the fact that this “will be a tremendous test for Notre Dame’s new starting quarterback, presumably redshirt freshman CJ Carr,” as Schlabach said, it won’t be an easy contest.
Unfortunately for Freeman, he hasn’t done all that well early in the season, in his first the Irish lost the initial two games, then his second was much better, but the competition wasn’t nearly at the same level. Last year Northern Illinois knocked off the Irish in the second game, but Notre Dame did win the opener on the road against A&M.
There will be a much different focus for the Irish this coming fall, as the expectations for the program have risen significantly due to its impressive 2024 run in the CFP. Don’t expect Freeman to ask Carr or even Kenny Minchey to do all that much in the opener, as they’ll both still be getting their feet wet at this level. He’ll lean on the elite defense, and hopefully the Irish return to South Bend with an early swing game victory.
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This article originally appeared on Fighting Irish Wire: ESPN believes that Notre Dame will have a very early swing game for the 2025 season
Reporting by Michael Chen , Fighting Irish Wire / Fighting Irish Wire
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
