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What they’re saying about Notre Dame’s 36-7 win against NC State

Singer headshotby: Mike Singer10/12/25MikeTSinger

Notre Dame increased its winning streak to four on Saturday, as the Irish defense impressed yet again, holding NC State to just seven points. Next up for the Fighting Irish is a top-20 showdown against the USC Trojans on Saturday in primetime.

In this article, we’ll take a look around at what the media is saying about the Fighting Irish’s win against the Wolfpack, including Blue & Gold’s Mike Singer and Robby Toma giving their instant reaction to the game in a YouTube live show. You can watch the replay of the show in the video player above.

Tyler Horka, Blue & Gold: Eli Raridon, Will Pauling provide passing game punches for Notre Dame vs. NC State

Eli Raridon said he’s never been around a quarterback who sees the field as well as Notre Dame redshirt freshman CJ Carr. The senior tight end may very well be accurate in that assessment.

Carr is a savant in terms of diagnosing defensive looks before the snap and going through his progressions after it. What is he seeing exactly, though? That’s out of his control. And well within the control of his comrades.

Raridon very much included.

Raridon had 7 catches for 109 yards, both career highs, from Carr in Notre Dame’s 36-7 win over NC State. Wisconsin transfer Will Pauling reeled in 4 of Carr’s pass attempts for 105 yards and a touchdown.

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Jack Soble, Blue & Gold: Notre Dame’s short-yardage issues persist, with no consistent solution in sight

With no recourse on fourth-and-3 inside the NC State 10-yard line, CJ Carr fired up a prayer with predictable results.

Carr, Notre Dame’s star redshirt freshman quarterback, had two defenders on his heels as he desperately sprinted to his right. His intended (and indeed, only) target, redshirt senior wide receiver Malachi Fields, was locked up by NC State’s bracket coverage. Which, to be fair to the players, the Wolfpack didn’t hide before the snap. The Irish drew up a play for Fields, saw he would be double-covered and ran it anyway.

Carr’s throw was intercepted, leaving Notre Dame searching for answers in short yardage yet again.

“That’s a situation [where] you want CJ to just throw it up,” Irish head coach Marcus Freeman said. “It’s a 50/50 ball. We believe Malachi will make that play.”

Earlier, Notre Dame faced — you guessed it — fourth down inside 10. This time, it was fourth-and-inches. The Wolfpack had seen the Irish run a sprint-out to its slot receiver several times on film in that situation, and in response, they dropped their outside linebacker to the flat. 

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Noah Fleischman, The Wolfpacker — NC State’s lack of ‘complementary football’ dooms Wolfpack in lopsided loss at Notre Dame

In his two minutes, 39 seconds meeting with the less than half dozen Raleigh-based media members that made the trip to South Bend, Fordham mentioned the lack of “complementary football” six times. It was the message from Wolfpack coach Dave Doeren in the postgame locker room, one that seemed to resonate with Fordham.

“We just didn’t get it done. It’s simple,” said Fordham, who tied for the team lead with 10 total tackles to go with 0.5 sacks. “We’ve got to play complementary football. We haven’t done that yet all year, in my opinion. I think we’re a great team, but we’ve got to play complementary, and we haven’t done that yet this year.”

Unlike in the Pack’s previous two losses where penalties and special teams mistakes doomed the team, this time around it was the offense’s inability to move the football. That hadn’t been an issue through the first six games as NC State scored at least 23 points in each one (with 30 or more in three of them), but it was evident at Notre Dame. 

The Wolfpack set up shop in Notre Dame territory on just two drives in the second quarter. The first ended on a 45-yard touchdown pass from sophomore quarterback CJ Bailey to sophomore wideout Terrell Anderson, while the other was on the next drive series that ended with a punt from the Irish 47-yard line. NC State made it to the Notre Dame 29 on its final drive of the game, but turned the ball over on downs to effectively seal the 29-point defeat.  

In all, NC State had seven punts — five consecutive from the midway point of the second quarter to late in the third — with two turnovers on downs and three interceptions.

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Nick Shepkowski, Notre Dame on SI: Second-Half Surge Powers Notre Dame Past NC State

The first handful of minutes couldn’t have gone better for Notre Dame on Saturday, forcing a North Carolina State three-and-out before skipping right down field and scoring a touchdown of its own. It appeared Notre Dame would roll the Wolfpack but the rest of the first half was at best a draw, as NC State found the end zone itself before a Noah Brunette field goal gave the Irish a 10-7 lead on the last play before halftime.

The win moves Notre Dame to 4-2 on the year and one step closer to a potential College Football Playoff bid. The Irish had flashes but were far from perfect in the victory.

Here’s a handful of instant takeaways from the 36-7 victory over NC State.

Props to Notre Dame Defensive Coordinator Chris Ash

It wasn’t even a month ago that a large number of Notre Dame fans wanted new defensive coordinator Chris Ash fired. After a somewhat shaky first half that saw NC State move the ball and essentially try and shorten the game, Notre Dame’s defense came up huge.

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Fighting Irish head coach Marcus Freeman

Opening statement from postgame press conference:

“It’s obviously good to get up here in front of you after a victory. The way they prepared, proud of the way they prepared. It wasn’t perfect; I’ll probably say that to you every time I’m up here.

“But in order to be able to enjoy that victory and know we didn’t play our best game, there’s plays and there’s situations we have to clean up if we want to truly reach our full potential. We have to clean it up. But we’ll look at it. We’ll get it cleaned up. We’ll address it in practice, and we get another opportunity in seven days from now to get back out there and compete.

“Really proud of — listen, it was good in all three phases. It was great to see (fifth-year kicker) Noah [Burnette] get back. The defense had two or three turnovers — I think three turnovers and a safety. Played lights out the second half — really played lights out for the majority of the game.

“Offensively, there’s some bad, but there’s some really good. Like, there’s some really good. We’ve got to clean up the bad and what the cause of the bad was, and then we’ll continue to get back to work and be better.”

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NC State State head coach Dave Doeren

Opening statement from postgame press conference:

“To start off, give Notre Dame credit. They bottled us up defensively, played man free, packed the box. We weren’t able to take advantage of one on one coverage. I thought we had four or five down the field throws that we’ve been making and at least having a chance to make plays on and it just didn’t happen today. Unfortunately, when you get man free as much as we did today, you’re going to have to be able to win some one on ones down the field. [Terrell Anderson] made a couple plays for us, but we had Noah [Rogers] deep. We had [Justin] Joly deep. So just and not one of those today we connect.

“I thought defensively, we were put in some tough field position. I was proud of the defense in the red zone, forced two turnovers, a goal line stop. We did some good things. It’s just hard playing on a short field repetitively when it comes to the score, but played a really tough first half. The third quarter changed the whole football game.”

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Highlights

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