{"id":220964,"date":"2025-09-12T13:30:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:30:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/220964\/"},"modified":"2025-09-12T13:30:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-12T13:30:11","slug":"its-only-week-3-but-notre-dames-game-against-texas-am-sure-feels-like-a-must-win-for-the-irishs-cfp-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/220964\/","title":{"rendered":"It’s only Week 3, but Notre Dame’s game against Texas A&M sure feels like a must-win for the Irish’s CFP hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"

No one likes to slap the “must-win” label on a Week 3 game, but for Notre Dame<\/a>, opportunities to impress the College Football<\/a> Playoff selection committee are slim outside of Saturday’s matchup with Texas A&M<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Slotted No. 16 in this week’s AP poll, the Aggies (2-0) are the only remaining opponent on Notre Dame’s schedule currently ranked in the top 25. USC<\/a> (2-0) is on the fringe, pulling the fifth-most points in the “receiving votes” category, and Navy<\/a> (2-0) could climb, but the rest of the slate looks barren.<\/p>\n

Playoff expansion has created room for multi-loss teams, but a defeat for Notre Dame (0-1) leaves no margin for error — and no guarantee a 10-2 finish would be enough to land one of the seven at-large bids. Of the eight teams with two or more losses that reached last season’s playoff, two earned automatic spots as conference champions while the other six owned at least one win over a ranked opponent.<\/p>\n

If Notre Dame doesn’t run the table, it would be battling at-large candidates from the SEC, Big Ten, ACC and Big 12, along with the possibility of a second Group of Five bid given South Florida’s<\/a> rise. Most top-tier programs in those leagues have multiple chances at ranked wins this fall.<\/p>\n

The CFP announced it will debut an “enhanced” selection tool in 2025, dubbed “record strength,” which emphasizes how teams perform against their schedules with added weight on quality wins.<\/p>\n

Notre Dame has had an extra week to prepare for Texas A&M, a team it beat in last season’s opener. After falling to NIU in Week 2, the Irish rattled off 13 straight victories — including one over SEC powerhouse Georgia<\/a> — en route to the national championship game.<\/p>\n

Getting back to that stage starts with Saturday’s chance against the Aggies following a humbling loss at Miami<\/a> two weeks ago.<\/p>\n

“More than the conference, I think it’s the opponent,” Notre Dame coach Marcus Freeman said this week. “The opportunity to play Texas A&M is all the motive you need, right? A program that I — and our program — respects, but college football respects Texas A&M and the job they’ve done.<\/p>\n

“So, I don’t get caught up in conferences as much as the great opponents that you face Week 1, and now you’re facing again Week 2. \u2026 We get a chance to go out in Notre Dame Stadium and see how much we’ve improved from the start of the season to now, which is Week 3 in college football.”<\/p>\n

The Irish opened at No. 6 in the AP poll, dropped three spots after the loss to Miami and now sit at No. 8 heading into kickoff. Freeman acknowledged his team needs to clean up “takeaways, ball security, tackling, third down on both sides, short yardage and two-minute” situations after cracks showed against the Hurricanes.<\/p>\n

Path to playoff<\/p>\n

The silver lining in Notre Dame’s opening loss to Miami is that the Hurricanes look like the early ACC frontrunner. Under the playoff’s new strength-of-schedule metric, that blemish could be viewed more favorably if Carson Beck<\/a> and Miami continue to perform inside the top 10.<\/p>\n

Last season, Notre Dame posted four ranked wins in the regular season, finishing 11-1 before earning the No. 7 seed. The Fighting Irish were ineligible for a top-four slot under the old conference champion stipulation.<\/p>\n

The auto-bids remain, but teams will now be seeded Nos. 1 through 12 regardless of conference affiliation. That leaves Notre Dame in strong position to claim one of the seven at-large spots if it beats Texas A&M and finishes with 11 wins. A loss, however, would put its fate in the hands of the committee.<\/p>\n

Freeman may not be delivering that message inside the locker room, but the reality in South Bend is clear: the Irish’s playoff shot sits at -120 entering the weekend, down from a preseason win total that opened at 10.5, according to FanDuel Sportsbook<\/a>.<\/p>\n

SportsLine’s proven computer model has simulated every Week 3\u00a0college football<\/a>\u00a0game 10,000 times.\u00a0Visit SportsLine now to see all the picks<\/a>, all from the model that is 31-19 since the beginning of last season on top-rated money-line and over\/under\u00a0picks.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"No one likes to slap the “must-win” label on a Week 3 game, but for Notre Dame, opportunities…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":220965,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[22241,1428,1318,3919,106506,35601,1317,1315,1316,13874,35597,62,13877,67,132,68,9446],"class_list":{"0":"post-220964","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-football","8":"tag-carson-beck","9":"tag-college-football","10":"tag-football","11":"tag-georgia-bulldogs","12":"tag-miami-fla-hurricanes","13":"tag-navy-midshipmen","14":"tag-ncaa","15":"tag-ncaa-football","16":"tag-ncaafootball","17":"tag-notre-dame-fighting-irish","18":"tag-south-florida-bulls","19":"tag-sports","20":"tag-texas-am-aggies","21":"tag-united-states","22":"tag-unitedstates","23":"tag-us","24":"tag-usc-trojans"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115191573693566213","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=220964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/220964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/220965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=220964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=220964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=220964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}