Notre Dame fends off Miami as another No. 1 team falls again

CJ Carr threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, and No.4 Notre Dame avenged its most damaging loss from last season by running out to a 21-point lead and holding on to beat No.

1 Miami 31-24 on Saturday night.Micah Gilbert caught two of those scoring passes, Jordan Faison had the other and Nolan James Jr.had a rushing score for Notre Dame (8-1, No.

11 College Football Playoff), which came into the game knowing another loss to Miami could doom its national championship hopes.Not to worry.The Hurricanes (8-1, No.

1 CFP) started slowly on offense in their first game without injured wide receiver and Heisman Trophy hopeful Malachi Toney — and Notre Dame, which lost to Miami 27-24 last season in a game that ultimately kept the Irish out of the playoff, never trailed.Darian Mensah threw three touchdown passes for Miami, twice getting the Hurricanes within a touchdown after they trailed 24-3 early in the third.Cooper Barkate had a pair of those scoring grabs, and Elija Lofton had the other.Lofton nearly had a touchdown catch that would have made it 31-30 — the score of the Miami-Notre Dame game in 1988 — with 3:36 left, appearing to make a fourth-down grab in the end zone and getting his feet down.But Notre Dame’s Luke Talich — who had an interception in the third quarter — knocked the ball away, with officials ruling that Lofton hadn’t completed the grab.

Notre Dame took over on downs, ran the clock down to about a minute and held on from there.With Miami falling, only two unbeaten teams remain in the Football Bowl Subdivision — Utah and UCLA, which both moved to 9-0 with wins Saturday.This is the first time since 2003 that only two teams made it through the first nine games unbeaten; TCU and Oklahoma did it that year.On a night when 43 NFL scouts were part of a jampacked crowd at Notre Dame Stadium, where it was 40 degrees Fahrenheit at kickoff and fell into the mid-30s as the night went along, the Irish stayed true to their mantra for 2026 — one...