Notre Dame ran the ball 43 times for 161 yards against Michigan State on Saturday, 3.7 per carry, and won 27-10 anyway. Nolan James Jr. took 26 of those carries for 121 yards and a touchdown, grinding out the middle while Aneyas Williams, the nominal starter, managed 25 yards on nine carries. One outlet argued James had made a case for more work over Williams.
Week 4 arrives with the same split. The volume is real, the efficiency has not moved, and nobody has yet produced the kind of run that ends a drive early.
This week's depth chart made the first half of that official. Notre Dame now lists Williams and James Jr. co-listed at RB1, with Kedren Young, Jonaz Walton and Javian Osborne behind them. James earned the billing with his feet. The second half of the tension is the part Marcus Freeman keeps addressing out loud. Heading into the Michigan State game he said Notre Dame wanted more explosive plays in the run game and that the staff had spent Sunday film review revisiting aiming points, keys and combinations, and he singled out Walton as a player who had been ascending since camp. Then Notre Dame went out and ran for 3.7 a carry again.
The reason this keeps coming up is Jeremiyah Love and Jadarian Price, who combined for 2,046 rushing yards and 29 rushing touchdowns in 2025 and then became the first two running backs taken in the 2026 NFL Draft. Notre Dame did not just lose two good backs; it lost the part of the offense that turned ordinary handoffs into 40-yard plays. Nothing has replaced that yet.
What to watch at Ross-Ade
Notre Dame plays at Purdue on Saturday at 2 p.m. ET on Peacock. The Irish are a 97.6% favorite in our model, and the market agrees. Notre Dame opened around a 27.5-point favorite with a 57.5-point over/under, giving the Irish a 96% implied win probability on Polymarket. A win holds the playoff number at 97.1% and the first-round bye at 66.4%; a loss would be the kind of Saturday that drops those to 88.1% and 38.2%.
So the scoreboard is not the interesting part. The yards-per-carry column is. Purdue is the softest defense Notre Dame will line up against for a while, and it is where James and Walton should be able to break something long if this offense is capable of it. Last September the Irish put up 56-30 on Purdue at Notre Dame Stadium, a game that arrived with Notre Dame 1-2 and ranked No. 21. If James and a Walton the staff keeps calling ascending cannot get a run past 40 yards here, the honest read is that the explosive element is not on the roster and Notre Dame will be a passing team in November.
There is a version of Saturday where that question goes unanswered because the offense simply throws it. Against Michigan State, CJ Carr went 18 of 24 for 234 yards with no interceptions, no passing touchdowns for the first time this season, and a 3-yard rushing score. Micah Gilbert did most of the damage, 8 catches for 170 yards, including a 61-yarder early in the game and a 39-yarder that set up Carr's clinching touchdown. That was Notre Dame's first 100-yard receiving game of the year. The explosives are there; they are just all coming from one receiver on play-action. Michigan State's own defense was graded down specifically for its secondary while holding Notre Dame to 4 of 12 on third downs and 5.9 yards per play. Efficient, not overwhelming.
The self-inflicted stuff is worth watching too, because it is the thing that actually made last week ugly. Freeman called a first-quarter fake punt, Brayden Robinson took an end-around 11 yards and came up short, and Michigan State kicked a field goal off the short field. Freeman said afterward he probably should have said no. Then Williams drew an unsportsmanlike-conduct flag celebrating his touchdown, Michigan State started at its own 32, hit a 53-yard pass and scored on the next snap. Against a four-score underdog on the road, those are the mistakes that turn a formality into a nervous afternoon.
The defense arrives thinner than it was
Brauntae Johnson (left foot) and Jason Onye (left ankle) are out for a third straight game, and neither injury is considered season-ending, with an outside chance Onye is back by the Miami game in November. The Irish have survived that fine, with the line short-handed, Armel Mukam had his best game in a Notre Dame uniform without starting, Loghan Thomas got a sack, and Rodney Dunham was among the young edge rushers who showed up.
The new wrinkle is at safety. Luke Talich is questionable with a left wrist and hand injury after taking Johnson's job and turning in a dominant performance against Michigan State, with three tackles, 1.5 tackles for loss, a sack and an interception. Freeman said Talich will either play or miss about a week, and true freshman Joey O'Brien would take on an expanded role if he sits. That is a room down to its third option in September. Purdue is the right week to find out whether O'Brien can hold up.
One more thing rides on Saturday that has nothing to do with the playoff math. The 27-10 win pushed Notre Dame to 13 straight victories by double digits, breaking the program record of 12 held by Knute Rockne's 1921-22 teams. Game 14 would be nice. It is also the least important item here.
Illinois at Ohio State: root for Illinois
Noon ET on FOX, and it is a long shot, Illinois wins about 5% of the time. It is worth the glance anyway because Ohio State is direct competition for one of the four first-round byes, and Notre Dame has no conference title game to climb through. Ohio State losing a September game to an unranked Big Ten opponent is exactly the kind of result that thins the field above Notre Dame. Bye odds land near 68.8% with an Illinois win versus 65.5% with an Ohio State win, a swing of about 3.3 percentage points.
Northwestern at Indiana: root for Northwestern
A Northwestern win is a long shot, so treat it as a bonus rather than something to count on.
Friday night, 8 p.m. ET on FOX. Northwestern's chance is roughly 4%, so treat this as background noise with a nice payoff. Same mechanism as the Ohio State game. Indiana is another team sitting in the top-four conversation, and a loss now costs it a resume it would otherwise carry into December. Notre Dame's bye number sits at about 68.7% if Northwestern pulls it off and 65.6% if Indiana wins, about 3.1 points.
Neither of those is something to organize your Saturday around. The run game is.
Full week's numbers are in the interactive guide, and the methodology explains how the projections work. The number that will tell you something Saturday is yards per carry.