Notre Dame is currently on their national media tour this week with a lot of high-octane stops along the way. Yesterday, returning starting quarterback CJ Carr spoke with Rich Eisen on his show and talked about the expectations around the program heading into this season, his Heisman hype and the motivation the Irish are bringing to this season.
Carr is one of the preseason favorites to win the heralded Heisman Trophy; the Michigan native would be the first Heisman winner in South Bend since Tim Brown in 1987. The 6-2, 215-pound signal caller has his eyes set on bigger goals for the 2026 season and all of his attention is focused on team glory rather than individual achievements.
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“No, not really,” Carr answered when asked if he’s hearing the Heisman hype. “You hear the things from the outside but to me what matters is the people in side of that Notre Dame football building and that they believe in me and count on me. The individual awards are just noise.”
That mindset has been passed down to Carr, as well as the rest of their team, by head coach Marcus Freeman who is back in South Bend for his 5th year in 2026. Freeman has been very intentional around working towards team glory and this season, there’s the added component of leaving no doubt. Carr has built a strong relationship with his head coach that will play a key role this season.
“He’s just as competitive, if not more competitive, than anyone in that locker room,” Carr shared. “You feel it on game day as a fan, but we feel it in the building every day he comes in. He’s in the weight room early, he’s in the office all day grinding tape. He’s just a competitive dude that makes you want to play for him.”
All signs are pointing to us seeing that competitive spirit, one of Freeman’s pillars to the ‘Gold Standard’ on the field this season especially after they were left out of the 2025 College Football Playoffs back in December. Carr, and the rest of the Fighting Irish, have adopted that motto and have applied it to all areas of their preparation, even in the weight room. Strength and conditioning coach Loren Landow has also adopted this mindset and it comes from his past experience working with fighters.
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“Our head strength coach, Coach Landow, was big into the fighting game early in his career,” Carr explained. “Sometimes he’ll bring us in and say ‘the best fighters never left it up to the judges’ and in a way that’s what we did last year. We left it up for chance and so ‘Leave No Doubt’ encapsulates all of that.”
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