Riley Leonard discusses what winning on the road at Texas A&M does for Notre Dame

Notre Dame now has a 69% chance of making the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff, according to ESPN’s Allstate Playoff Predictor. Given the Fighting Irish’s favorable schedule, that’s how significant it was that they beat No. 20 Texas A&M Saturday night — it’s even more impressive that No. 7 Notre Dame pulled off the victory at hostile Ryan Field.

Duke transfer quarterback Riley Leonard was far from perfect, but he guided the Irish on a game-winning touchdown drive late in the fourth quarter, setting the stage for a 23-13 win in College Station against his former head coach, Mike Elko.

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“Shoot, we’re a gritty team, and we embrace that,” Leonard said afterward. “I think that every game we go into we know we’re going to fight our tail off to win. I think we got a lot of talent this year, and that complements our hard work.

“And I feel like we can go into any,” he continued before stopping himself.

Leonard then resumed: “If we can go into this environment and beat a team like that, that’s coached as well as they are, I feel like that gives us all the confidence in the world to go into any environment in the country.”

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Notre Dame outgianed Texas A&M, 356-246, in total yardage. The Irish ran for more yards than they threw for, and sophomore running back Jeremiyah Love was a critical part of that equation. Love recorded 91 rushing yards and a touchdown on 14 carries, most notably putting Notre Dame ahead with a 21-yard sprint to the end zone and only 1:54 to play.

Leonard was 18-of-30 for 158 yards on the night, not to mention his 63 rushing yards, but he completed two must-have passes on the game-winning drive: a nine-yard hookup with Jaden Greathouse on 3rd-and-5 and a 20-yard, contested completion to Clemson transfer Beaux Collins.

“First of all, it says we’ve got a great defense. They played great all night,” Leonard said, when asked about the offense’s ability to break the 13-13 tie late in the fourth quarter. “But to be able to come out … we made it went it counts. So the last drive, everybody had all the confidence in the world that we were going to be able to go down there and score.

“It was just a matter of when. And finally by the fourth quarter, we kind of got things going, and that last drive meant a lot to us.”

Notre Dame actually scored once more. After a pass break-up from cornerback Christian Gray turned the Aggies over on downs, Mitch Jeter drilled a 46-yard field goal with 30 seconds left.

“Man, that was a huge victory for our program over a really, really good football team,” Notre Dame head coach Marcus Freeman said. “That is an impressive football team that’s going to win a lot of games. I’ve got a lot of respect for Coach Elko, that’s a good group we just faced and we were able to beat.

“It wasn’t pretty. Our defense played lights out, [forced] turnovers. And our offense, you know what, we didn’t turn the ball over. Yes, there’s a lot of things we got to work on, but, man, they did a great job of at least trying to move the chains or at least trying to win the battle of field position. We didn’t make a detrimental mistake. Really proud of that group, both sides of the ball.”

And the Irish did it on the road — in College Station, no less.

Notre Dame has only two more “true” road games on its schedule. Defeating the Aggies in Ryan Field was one big, blue-and-gold step toward the CFP.