“I wouldn’t say that I’m satisfied but I’m excited. I see a lot of potential with this team. The buy-in is great. We all have the realization that what we did last season doesn’t matter now. I think that was the biggest thing to get out of the way. We have a lot of household names coming into Wallace Wade this year and we’ve got a lot of work to do.”
That’s Duke defensive tackle and newly-named co-captain Ja’Mion Franklin talking to the media after Duke’s spring football game.
The White team beat the Blue team 19-14, by the way.
Yea White team.
It’s easy to see a spring game as a glorified scrimmage but with fans. But Duke had a real game, not a situational scrimmage. Two relatively equal teams were drafted and played a real football game, at least for three quarters.
There are some caveats, of course. These games tend to be pretty vanilla. Duke may have something special up its sleeves when Clemson comes to town this September but they sure aren’t going to tell the media about it and they certainly aren’t going to unveil anything in a public game telecast on the conference network.
And there were some roster issues. With Graham Barton and Maurice McIntyre limited by injuries, Duke only had nine healthy offensive linemen, so guys were playing for both teams.
Star quarterback Riley Leonard wore a red jersey, meaning keep away. He was down when he was touched, which limited his effectiveness. Remember he was Duke’s leading rusher last season. Leonard called it “frustrating” but acknowledged it had to be that way. Allowing your star quarterback to risk injury in a spring game would have been coaching malpractice.
We were told prior to the game that the first two quarters would be played with a conventional clock, the fourth would be played with a running clock and a decision would be made about the third at halftime.
The decision was conventional clock for the third. Ah, spring ball.
And it was fun, in a way to see Leonard hitting sideline passes in a final attempt to come back despite the fact that the sideline completions didn’t actually stop the clock.
And what to make of the single turnover? Great ball security? Or a defense incapable of forcing turnovers?
Note that there were only seven combined penalties, for 63 yards.
Mike Elko did reference “some pretty good, clean football, which is what we wanted.”
So, there’s that.
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