Before the Notre Dame football team's season started, quite a bit of smart money in Las Vegas was on running back Jeremiyah Love winning the Heisman. That's why his usage on Sunday night against the Miami Hurricanes was so headscratchingly odd.
Three players finished Sunday's game with more carries than Love. Miami running backs Mark Fletcher Jr. and CharMar Brown recorded 15 rushing attempts each in the Hurricanes' 27-24 victory. Irish quarterback CJ Carr had 11 carries for 16 yards and a touchdown. Love finished with 10 carries for 33 yards.
Jeremiyah Love’s limited carries stand out in Notre Dame’s loss to Miami
Fellow Notre Dame running back Jadarian Price finished the game as Notre Dame's leading rusher with 45 yards on 6 carries. 30 of those 45 yards came on one run. In general, Miami bottled up Mike Denbrock's rushing attack in a way that happened just once in 2024, in the National Championship game, against Ohio State.
“Love out of the witness protection program”
— Trey Wallace (@TreyWallace_) September 1, 2025
Sean McDonough with the line of the weekend, discussing Notre Dame RB Jeremiyah Love pic.twitter.com/WLifLBqy99
Love's usage was odd enough to onlookers that when he got a carry in late in the 3rd quarter, ESPN's Sean McDonough proclaimed the running back "out of the witness protection program."
Part of that had to do not with the calls being made by the coaching staff, but with the quarterback, CJ Carr. Denbock offered Carr quite a few RPOs (run-pass options) that the young QB decided to turn into throws.
"We started to say later in the game that, ‘Stop reading it, hand the ball to J-Love, and we need to establish this run game,’" said Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman after the game. "(Carr) was doing what he was coached to do on a lot of those pulls and throwing."
Irish fans and onlookers may also need to realize that Love won't be and has never been a 20-carry-a-game kind of guy. He had 5 games in the first 13 where he totaled 10 or fewer carries. His season high in rushes last year was 16. He did that once. 14 was the next highest.
Love also got 4 catches for 26 yards on Sunday night, bringing his total touches up to 14. Ideally, the Notre Dame football team's coaches will find a way to get him the ball more often. But the reality is that the running back hasn't been relied on as a workhorse, and that doesn't appear to's going to change in 2025.