Notre Dame football finds itself in a similar spot to last year leading into Purdue week: Coming off a disappointing loss and needing to bounce back for its College Football Playoff hopes.

The circumstances, and perhaps stakes, are higher Saturday. The Fighting Irish are 0-2 and have one ranked opponent on their remaining schedule: USC. And they now get a Boilermakers team that proved they are no pushover when they challenged that USC team late into the fourth quarter.

But there may be no team with two tougher games to open the season than Notre Dame. And it did so with freshman quarterback CJ Carr , who has shown his potential, maturity and had the Irish in two games . Those losses, by four combined points at Miami and to Texas A&M, are reason for optimism for how close t

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