(Miami) — The talking has ended prior to Thursday night’s Orange Bowl between Notre Dame and Penn State. The questions have not.

And the biggest question is “which one of these college football blue bloods will move on to college football’s national championship game”?

That answer doesn’t come until Thursday night at Hard Rock Stadium in a game that kicks off shortly after 7:30 on ESPN. Wednesday, whatever answers could be provided came from the two head coaches, who both have prominent stars returning from injury…running back Jeremiyah Love (knee) for Notre Dame and defensive end Abdul Carter (shoulder) for Penn State

“Jeremiyah’s had a good week of practice,” noted Irish head coach Marcus Freeman. “We have to be smart in terms of how much we’re asking him to do. We have to get him ready for the game, but he’s confident. Nobody feels 100% right now in week 15, but J-Love will be ready to go.”

“We anticipate Abdul playing,” says Penn State coach James Franklin. “He’s doing everything he possibly can to play. … .But it’ll be a game-time decision. And we’ll see. Abdul has approached this the right way. He wants to play. He’s put a ton of cryptic messages on social media, which you guys have probably seen those. I learn as much from those as I do from our trainers. We are hopeful and expecting Abdul to play. We’ll see how that plays out.”

Both teams are built on running the ball and playing sound defense, and neither coach expects that to change much Thursday. Franklin told reporters “stopping the run is priority number-one for us”, while Freeman commented “this game is about adjustments.”

Both teams feature former college head coaches as defensive coordinators. Penn State features former Indiana head coach Tom Allen, while the Irish have Al Golden, a Penn State alum, who gained valuable head coaching experience at Miami and Temple.  Golden has been rumored about possibly returning to the NFL’s Cincinnati Bengals, where he was the linebackers coach on their Super Bowl team, but he quickly disspelled those thoughts.

“I’ve talked to nobody,” remarked Golden Tuesday. “I can’t even get out of the facility right now. We just had the shortest week of the year.”

Golden is currently consumed with stopping a Penn State offense that features two 1000-yard rushers in Nick Singleton and Kaytron Allen, a veteran quarterback in Drew Allar and one of the most unique and productive players in college football, All-America tight end Tyler Warren. Warren has 98 receptions on the season and provides a huge challenge to the Irish defense.

“For a player that big, he moves pretty well,” states Notre Dame safety Xavier Watts. “He has pretty good feet, and he’s a physical guy. But no, we haven’t played a tight end like him at all.”

On the other side, the Irish have to solve a Penn State defense that has held opponents to 15 points and just 100 yards rushing per game.

“I think we’re very confident with what we can do offensively,” says Notre Dame offensive coordinator Mike Denbrock. “It doesn’t always
appear as a well-oiled machine, but I think the players have a lot of confidence in each other. They have a lot of confidence in what we do. We’ve got to quit shooting ourselves in the foot and execute a little bit better, but we’re fully capable of doing that. And then some of it’s on me. I think I gotta cut loose and let these guys play football a little bit too.”

Notre Dame is a 2.5-point favorite. The winner meets the winner of Friday night’s Cotton Bowl between Ohio State and Texas in the national championship game January 20 at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta.