Blue & Gold Illustrated: America's Foremost Authority on Notre Dame Football
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BLUEGOLDONLINE.COM OCT. 10, 2026 9 UNDER THE DOME ✦ BY THE NUMBERS 1 FBS team through Week 4 of the college football season was allowing opponents less than 200 yards per game: Notre Dame at 199.3. The Fight- ing Irish were also surrendering only 8.3 points per game, which was second behind only Iowa at 8.0. 2nd Was where ESPN's Bill Connelly ranked Notre Dame junior CJ Carr among Power Four quarterbacks, behind only Miami's Darian Mensah. "Despite getting far less support from his run game (and losing his best deep threat from 2025), Carr has improved his numbers in nearly every important category this season, from Total QBR (83.4 to 89.4), to completion rate (66.6% to 70.5%), to yards per completion (14.1 to 14.4), to success rate (50.9% to 56.3%)," Connelly noted. "He's making quicker decisions and suffering fewer INTs and sacks, and he might have found an even better deep threat in Micah Gilbert (last two games: 10 catches for 253 yards). My top guy in the spring has done nothing to convince me I was wrong about him — even if Mensah's perfect stats got him ranked higher." 5 Times in Notre Dame football history the Fighting Irish have opened the season holding each of their first four opponents to less than 100 rushing yards. The first time the Fighting Irish did it was 1941, and the most recent is 2026. Season Rushing Yards Allowed Per Game 1941 40.0 1964 33.3 1973 63.0 1982 34.5 2026 53.8 6 Notre Dame players — the most for any school in the country — appeared on ESPN analyst Jordan Reid's Oct. 1 list of the top 50 prospects for the 2027 NFL Draft: junior cornerback Leonard Moore at No. 2, junior quarterback CJ Carr at No. 22, junior safety Brauntae Johnson at No. 26, senior defensive end Boubacar Traore at No. 47, junior linebacker Kyngstonn Viliamu-Asa at No. 48 and junior left guard Anthonie Knapp at No. 49. Texas had five players on the list, while Alabama, Miami and Ole Miss had four apiece. +8.8% Explosive play rate differen- tial for Notre Dame through four games, per Tom Fornelli of CBS Sports. That ranked seventh in the country among Power Four teams heading into Week 5. Georgia was No. 1 at +13.7%, followed by Miami at +11.1%, Duke at +10.6%, Indiana at +9.9%, BYU at +9.9%, Pitt at +8.9%, Notre Dame, Mississippi State at +8.7%, North Carolina at +8.6% and LSU at +8.2%. "You can dismiss Notre Dame's schedule as much as you'd like, but even if it hasn't been nearly as good as some others, they've still played three Big Ten teams," Fornelli noted after Week 4. "Those Big Ten teams are spending plenty of money on their ros- ters in comparison to the rest of the country, and the Irish are smacking them around like an eighth-grade bully welcoming the sixth graders to middle school. Like everyone, I'd like to see what this team looks like against elite competition, but we'll have to bide our time for a little longer." 9th Was where CBS Sports slotted Notre Dame in its College Football Playoff résumé rankings after Week 4. "Using the CBS Sports 138 as our baseline, we have replicated the concept for college football by creating 'resume scores,'" David Cobb of CBS Sports explained. "Every outcome is assigned a value between -1 and 1 based on how likely a typical No. 25-ranked team would be to win the game. If you beat the No. 1 team on the road, it's worth 0.98 for your resume score since an average No. 25 team would lose on the road against No. 1 98% of the time." Texas was No. 1 with a résumé score of 1.81, followed by Florida (1.17), Mississippi State (1.07), Alabama (0.95), Ole Miss (0.93), Texas Tech (0.80), UCLA (0.78), Miami (0.76), Notre Dame (0.74), Oregon (0.66) and Iowa (0.66). 14 Consecutive victories by double digits for Notre Dame football, follow- ing its win at Purdue Sept. 26 and dating back to Sept. 20, 2025. The 14-game streak is the longest active double-digit win streak in the FBS and the longest in program history. The streak also is now tied for the seventh longest all time in college football history through Sept. 26, 2026: Rk. Team Streak Years 1. Army 21 1944-46 2. Miami (Fla.) 17 2000-01 3. Georgia 16 1945-46 Texas 16 1968-69 5. Oklahoma 15 1955-56 Florida 15 2008-09 7. Notre Dame 14* 2025-Present Florida State 14 1992-93 Florida State 14 2012-13 Clemson 14 2018-19 * Active 22 nd Player in Notre Dame football history to eclipse 1,500 receiving yards in his career is former walk-on turned No. 1 wide receiver JORDAN FAISON. He surpassed that mile- stone with his 4-catch, 66-yard effort at Purdue Sept. 26. Through four games this season, Faison had 115 career receptions for 1,557 yards and 11 touchdowns. His career receiving yardage total now ranks 20th on the all-time list. 45 Points, 7 rebounds and 4 assists for former Notre Dame and current Dallas Wings guard Arike Ogun- bowale in a 108-100 overtime victory over Golden State in Game 2 of their first-round WNBA playoff series Sept. 30. The 45 points set the record for most points ever in a WNBA playoff game and, at 29 years and 212 days, Ogunbowale became the oldest player in WNBA history with a 40-point playoff game. — Steve Downey PHOTO BY MICHAEL MILLER