Slap The Sign

The Notre Dame football team has talked quite a bit about how everyone on the squad knows that there are big expectations, but they are focusing on just doing things right. The team also knows that after losing their first two games of 2025 and eventually missing the playoffs, the Irish have a much smaller margin for error than other teams. Earlier this week, quarterback CJ Carr spoke with Rich Eisen and summed up their approach for this fall in a concise motto.

The Notre Dame football team has earned quite a bit of hype heading into the 2026 season as a favorite for the national title. They are one of the favorites despite the roster going against one of the oldest unwritten rules in college sports. Most people believe a veteran roster is important for any team to win. However, the Fighting Irish carry one of the youngest rosters in the country into the fall.

The Notre Dame football team is lined up for the No. 2 recruiting class in the country, but even the Fighting Irish can’t win them all. Their latest loss might have been the most painful, if only because Monshun Sales is the top player in the state of Indiana. Rather than spending his college days in South Bend, the 5-star wide receiver is headed to Bloomington. Sales announced he’d committed to Indiana on Friday, marking the highest-ranked prospect in the history of the Hoosiers.

It’s no secret that Notre Dame is having an incredible recruiting run over the last two classes. The Irish have had more success in 2024 and 2025 than Brian Kelly could ever have dreamed of. However, it’s one thing to hold Marcus Freeman’s recruiting job up against previous iterations of the school’s classes. It’s another to compare them to a team known as one of the kings of recruiting for well over a decade.

Former Notre Dame quarterback Steve Angeli is back for another try with the Syracuse Orange. After his 2025 season was cut short due to a gruesome knee injury, he returned to the ACC squad and is the odds-on favorite to be the team’s starting QB this fall. During his media day session, he told reporters what he learned during his time in South Bend and how it made him tougher and more focused. “I think I've learned a lot from my time in Notre Dame.

There was a time not all that long ago when Notre Dame was involved in some of the most historic rivalries in college football. However, with the Irish vs USC annual rivalry over and the only remaining annual games being ones that are decidedly one-sided, it feels like those kinds of rivalries won’t be a part of the sport anymore, anywhere.

Sometimes it can feel to Notre Dame fans like USC goes out of its way to embarrass itself. It's hard to fight that reputation off when the school’s social media team tried to jump on the Odyssey movie bandwagon and did so in the most hilariously historically illiterate way possible. In celebration of The Odyssey's release in theaters earlier this week, USC sent out a post on social media that has them getting roasted by everyone, including Fighting Irish fans.

With Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price gone, one of the big questions about Notre Dame in 2026 is who will take over as the starting running back, and will he have the success Love and/or Price had? Head coach Marcus Freeman believes they’ve already arrived at the answers: Aneyas Williams and yes. Obviously, Freeman doesn’t believe that Williams will automatically have the exact same kind of season that Love or Price will have.

Notre Dame running back commit Isaiah Rogers is one of the best prospects in the 2027 class. He proved that earlier this month when he was one of 120 high schoolers who attended Nike's The Opening Finals. In the process, he spent time with some of the other best players in his class, as well as NFL stars, which has put the talented back in a position to take the next step in his career. "It meant a lot being invited out of just 120 kids," Rogers told Irish Sports Daily.

Xavier Watts might someday be the best safety in the NFL, but he’s not there yet. That prestigious title instead rests with another former Notre Dame football star. Kyle Hamilton has been impressing folks since he got to the league; now ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler is demonstrating just how much he’s impressed onlookers, naming him the top player at his position in the league. In reality, it’s not Fowler or ESPN making the proclamation about Hamilton.