PROVO — The biggest game in LaVell Edwards Stadium, arguably, takes place Saturday night when No. 8 BYU hosts No. 2 Notre Dame in a primetime showdown.

Both teams enter the game undefeated, with the Cougars coming in at 5-0 and the Fighting Irish sitting at 6-0. The top-10 matchup will have major implications for both teams in the College Football Playoff race, while BYU can take a major step toward national respect with a win.

Notre Dame has rolled through its competition so far this season and is coming off a 58-7 win over Stanford. With national championship expectations entering the year, the Fighting Irish have a lot riding on Saturday’s game — just like the Cougars.

Head coach Kalani Sitake praised Notre Dame ahead of the matchup, saying he’s “impressed” with the team.

“We’re facing a great Notre Dame team, ranked No. 2 for a reason; they could easily be No. 1,” Sitake said. “I’ve been really impressed with their program, really impressed with the way Marcus Freeman’s leading that team. He’s one of the best coaches in college football and football altogether.”

The Fighting Irish are led by junior quarterback CJ Carr, who is firmly in the mix for the Heisman trophy this season. He’s sixth in the country in touchdown passes with 16 and has another three on the ground.

Limiting Carr and Notre Dame’s passing game will be a challenge, but stopping a three-headed monster of running backs may be the key for the Cougars Saturday.

“They don’t have a lot of weak links on their team, and they’re very deep, too,” Sitake said. “You have three running backs that can run the ball at any moment. It’s crazy to have that depth, and that’s just the running back position. You can see that they have depth all over every position.”

Jonaz Walton leads the Fighting Irish with 409 yards, while Nolan James Jr. has added 335 yards and leads the team in rushing touchdowns with five. Aneyas Williams rounds out the trio with 294 yards and three touchdowns.

The trio of backs will look to establish itself against the 10th-best run defense in the nation, which allows just 80.4 yards per game. The matchup between Notre Dame’s rushing offense and the Cougars’ run defense will be one to watch and could be the determining factor in the outcome.

“They’re very fundamentally sound,” defensive tackle Keanu Tanuvasa said. “I think their O-line does a great job working well together, along with them being dynamic. I think they just have great players.”

The two teams feature top-10 defenses, but each will be playing the best opponent on their schedule so far when they meet on the field Saturday. With that, Sitake knows the challenge his team has in front of them.

“We see it on film, we know they’re ranked really high,” he said. “We know that they’re very talented. So the sense of urgency actually ramps up a little bit more. I’m not saying that that doesn’t happen naturally with the other games. Our business-like approach will be the same, but there’s going to be a little bit more attention to detail and there’s a lot more riding on it.”

The anticipation for the matchup goes beyond the gridiron, with an added spotlight on Provo for the game. For the first time since 2009, College GameDay will head to Provo as part of ESPN’s broadcast.

“It’s ecstatic,” Tanuvasa said. “It comes with a lot more energy, a lot more cameras, a lot more noise, more interviews and stuff like that for the boys.”

The Cougars are 0-4 when featured on College GameDay, and the upcoming game may be their most important one yet. With BYU also on a four-game losing streak against Notre Dame, a couple of droughts could be snapped with a victory on Saturday.

The Cougars’ last win over the Fighting Irish came in 2004, when BYU last hosted Notre Dame at LaVell Edwards Stadium.

“I’m just really thankful to Notre Dame,” Sitake said. “They’re the ones that reached out and wanted this game.”

Facing the Fighting Irish for the first time since 2022, the Cougars say they are ready to show the progress they’ve made as a program since that 28-20 loss in Las Vegas.

The Key Takeaways for this article were generated with the assistance of large language models and reviewed by our editorial team. The article, itself, is solely human-written.