Notre Dame holds off Miami 31-24, knocks top-ranked Hurricanes from the unbeaten ranks

CJ Carr threw for 319 yards and three touchdowns, and No. 11 Notre Dame beat No. 1 Miami 31-24 on Saturday night in South Bend, Indiana. The Irish held on after a late Hurricanes push ended with a disputed fourth-down incompletion in the end zone.

The win settles a score from a year ago, when Miami beat Notre Dame 27-24 in a game that ultimately kept the Irish out of the College Football Playoff. Both teams are now 8-1. Notre Dame never trailed.

Notre Dame came in knowing that a second loss to Miami could sink its national title hopes. Instead, the Irish now hold the most valuable item a one-loss contender can have in November: a head-to-head win over the team that spent the week at No. 1. It's hard to imagine a stronger line on a playoff résumé.

For most of the night, this looked like a rout. Notre Dame led 24-3 early in the third quarter, with Carr spreading the ball around. Micah Gilbert caught two of his touchdown passes and Jordan Faison caught the third. Nolan James Jr. added a touchdown on the ground.

Miami never folded. Darian Mensah threw three touchdown passes, two to Cooper Barkate and one to Elija Lofton, and twice pulled the Hurricanes within one score. Luke Talich gave Notre Dame a needed stop with a third-quarter interception, but the momentum had clearly swung by the fourth.

The game turned on one snap. With 3:36 left and Miami facing fourth down, Lofton appeared to haul in a pass in the end zone and get both feet down. Talich knocked the ball loose, and officials ruled the catch incomplete. A touchdown there would have made it 31-30 pending the extra point, the same final score as the famous 1988 meeting between these programs, a game Notre Dame won on its way to that season's national championship.

Instead, the Irish took over on downs and ran the clock down to roughly a minute before closing it out.

Miami coach Mario Cristobal said he was "beyond upset" that Lofton's grab didn't count as a touchdown. He then pivoted quickly to his own team.

"Obviously, a tough loss to take," Cristobal said, adding that he was proud of how his players fought back. "Don't leave it in the hands of the officials. Play better. Coach better. Find a way to win."

That's the right message, and the film backs it up. A 21-point hole against a top-15 opponent on the road is not something one call creates. The Hurricanes were playing their first game without injured wide receiver Malachi Toney, a Heisman Trophy hopeful, and the offense looked lost early. By the time Mensah found a rhythm, Miami needed nearly everything to go its way down the stretch.

The Toney absence is the bigger concern for Miami going forward. The second-half rally showed Mensah can still make throws to Barkate and Lofton, but the opening two-plus quarters suggested an offense that hasn't yet figured out its identity without its top playmaker.

For Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman, the night was about payoff after a year of frustration. "I'm happy for this university," he said in an on-field television interview, and he gave the opponent its due as well: "They're a dang good football team and they beat a dang good football team."

The Irish defense deserves a large share of the credit. Holding a No. 1 team to a field goal over the first half and change, then making the stop that mattered most with the game on the line, is the kind of performance that wins over a selection committee. The late wobble is worth noting, though. Letting a 21-point lead shrink to a single score twice is a habit that tends to cost teams in December.

Miami's loss leaves just two undefeated teams in the Football Bowl Subdivision: Utah and UCLA, both of which won Saturday to reach 9-0. It's the first time since 2003, when TCU and Oklahoma were the last two standing, that only two teams got through their first nine games without a loss.

The game drew a packed house at Notre Dame Stadium, including 43 NFL scouts, on a raw night that was 40 degrees at kickoff and dipped into the mid-30s before the end.

For Miami, one loss on the road to a highly ranked opponent shouldn't be fatal to its playoff case, but it removes any margin for error the rest of the way. For Notre Dame, the lesson of last season was that one game against the Hurricanes could decide everything. This time it went the Irish's way, by the width of a ball knocked loose in the end zone.