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Notre Dame

Where Notre Dame lands in Brett McMurphy's first bowl projection with On3

IMG_7504by:Jack Soble•07/01/25•

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NCAA Football: Orange Bowl-Notre Dame at Penn State
Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman celebrates defeating Penn State in the Orange bowl at Hard Rock Stadium. (Sam Navarro-Imagn Images)

On Monday, On3 announced the hiring of college football insider Brett McMurphy from Action Network. McMurphy is known for two things: breaking news and bowl projections.

In his first edition of the latter with On3, McMurphy projects Notre Dame to earn the No. 1 overall seed in the 2025 College Football Playoff and advance to the national semifinals for the second-straight year.

For that to happen, the Irish would almost certainly have to finish the regular season 12-0 — something current head coach Marcus Freeman has never done and previous head coach Brian Kelly only did twice in 12 years. Entering his fourth season at the helm in South Bend, Freeman has the players and manageable schedule he needs to pull it off.

Barring an early-season collapse, Notre Dame should be favored in every game it plays this season. The Irish are currently a 3-point favorite in Week 1 at Miami, which projects as their most difficult game.

To go 12-0 would also require Notre Dame doing something it has not done yet under Freeman: avoiding a significant letdown. In 2022, the Irish lost to Marshall and a Stanford team that would finish 3-9. In 2024, they lost to Northern Illinois. In 2023, they did not suffer a calamitous loss to a Group of Five opponent, but they did lose by multiple scores to a Louisville team that was not as talented as they were.

If Notre Dame does earn the No. 1 overall seed, it would bypass the first round of the CFP (losing the opportunity to host a playoff game in South Bend) and move directly to the quarterfinals. There, McMurphy has the Irish heading back to Hard Rock Stadium in Miami Gardens, Fla. for the third time in a calendar year.

McMurphy projects Notre Dame to face No. 9 Oregon in the Orange Bowl, after the Ducks defeated No. 8 LSU (denying Irish fans of a chance for vengeance against Kelly’s Tigers). He has Notre Dame beating Oregon and earning a trip to the CFP semifinals, where the Irish would face No. 4 Ohio State.

Unfortunately for Notre Dame, McMurphy believes its College Football Playoff run will end there. If that happens, Freeman will have lost to his alma mater in each of his first four seasons as head coach in South Bend, seeing his CFP run end at the hands of the Buckeyes in two of them.

McMurphy has Ohio State moving on to the national championship game but losing to No. 3 Georgia.

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