The Fighting Irish announced Tuesday that CJ Carr would be the team’s starter against Miami. Carr had been competing with Kenny Minchey to succeed Riley Leonard after Notre Dame went to the national championship game in 2024.
There hadn’t been much public separation between the two quarterbacks over the course of fall camp. On Sunday, Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said “we’re still in competition” though he admitted that a decision on a QB needed to come fairly quickly.
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“We’ll go back and evaluate today’s practice today,” Freeman said via The Athletic. “Make a decision. We’ve got to make a decision here soon. I don’t know when we’ll make it. I don’t want to put a timeline on it.”
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Carr was a four-star recruit and the No. 6 QB in the high school class of 2024. He’s the grandson of longtime Michigan coach Lloyd Carr and is a native of Saline, Michigan. Lloyd Carr was 5-4 against Notre Dame in his 13 years as the Wolverines’ coach. However, Michigan and Notre Dame haven’t played each other since the 2019 season and there’s no game scheduled between the two in the near future.
The Irish’s QB competition went from three to two in the spring when Steve Angeli transferred to Syracuse. Angeli had been seen as the frontrunner immediately after the 2024 season as he served as Leonard’s backup throughout the season and even appeared in the Irish’s CFP semifinal win over Penn State.
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Minchey was a four-star recruit in the class of 2023.
Carr is now in line to lead a Notre Dame team that has legitimate aspirations of getting back to the national title game. And he’s got a tough opening schedule to contend with. Notre Dame visits Miami, hosts Texas A&M and visits Arkansas over its first four games of the season before Boise State comes to South Bend in the first week of October.
Notre Dame is 12-1 at BetMGM to win the national championship and has the lowest odds of any team to go undefeated at +400.
