66 days until Notre Dame football: An all-time Irish record worth noting

BlueandGold.com will release a countdown article highlighting a significant Notre Dame football statistic every day until the 2024 season opener at Texas A&M at 7:30 p.m. ET on Aug. 31 in College Station, Texas. Today, there are 66 days until the Irish and Aggies kick off at Kyle Field.

Notre Dame scored 66 touchdowns in 2023, the most the Fighting Irish have ever tallied in one season. They broke the previous record of 61 set in 2019.

The 66 touchdowns sat just outside the top 10 nationally in the FBS at No. 11. Six schools reached at least 70, which is something Notre Dame has obviously never done.

Interestingly, national champion Michigan ranked 69th in yards per game at 384.7. The name of the game is scoring touchdowns, though, and the Wolverines did that with the best of them. They got into the end zone 69 times, tied with national runner-up Washington for No. 7 in the country.

College Football Playoff participants Texas and Alabama scored 59 and 58 touchdowns, respectively. If these numbers present a harrowing picture of what could of been for Notre Dame last season, well, they should. But the 10-3 record makes more sense when you look at the Irish’s touchdown game log.

OpponentND touchdownsResultNavy6W, 42-3Tennessee State8W, 56-3NC State6W, 45-24Central Michigan5W, 41-17Ohio State2L, 17-14Duke2W, 21-14Louisville2L, 33-20USC6W, 48-20Pittsburgh8W, 58-7Clemson2L, 31-23Wake Forest6W, 45-7Stanford8W, 56-23Oregon State5W, 40-8

Four 2s aren’t going to get the job done. Notre Dame went 1-3 in those games, and the Irish were seconds away from losing all four of them if not for the 4th and 16 heroics from quarterbacks Sam Hartman and an unlikely 30-yard touchdown spring from running back Audric Estimé with 30 seconds remaining in Durham, N.C.

There are many ways to present the fact that the Notre Dame offense simply was not good enough against the better defenses on its 2023 schedule. This is one of them.

Eight touchdowns apiece against Tennessee State, Pittsburgh and Stanford is nice and all, and it even helped set a program record for touchdowns in a season, but the Irish certainly would have settled for something in the 50s and a CFP appearance like the Longhorns and Crimson Tide.

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