This time last year Duke football was about to enter ACC football with a 3-1 record.
Duke lost all eight conference games to finish 3-9.
Duke is once again getting ready to enter ACC play at 3-1.
Is a repeat on the horizon?
I think not. Strongly think not to be honest.
Some data points.
First, 2021’s 3-1 was not as impressive as this season’s 3-1. That 2021 loss was at Charlotte, their first and still only win against a Power-Five opponent. We all tried to pretend that maybe Charlotte was pretty good. But they ended the season 5-7, losses including 38-9 to Florida Atlantic, 45-13 to Western Kentucky and 56-34 to Old Dominion.
No, this was a bad loss. No sugar-coating it.
By contrast this season’s sole non-conference loss was a close setback to an undefeated Kansas team knocking on the top-25 door.
Secondly, Duke’s 2022 ACC schedule doesn’t exactly look like murderer’s row. I could be sitting here with egg on my face--probably very wet egg--in a few days--but Virginia looks very beatable. Duke will have to play Georgia Tech and Boston College on the road but right now these are two of the worst Power-Five teams around, with the proviso that we don’t yet know what impact Tech’s ditching of Geoff Collins will have. Miami lost at home to Middle Tennessee State, decisively at that. Virginia Tech lost at home to Old Dominion and got blown out by West Virginia. North Carolina is going to score points against Duke but Duke may be able to match that against a porous Tar Heel defense.
Remember Duke only has to win three of Virginia, Georgia Tech, North Carolina, Miami, Virginia Tech and Boston College to reach bowl eligibility.
Pitt and Wake Forest might be a bridge too far. Or maybe not. Get to 5-1 or so and a lot of good things can happen.
No guarantees of course. Duke squandered a record-setting season by running back Mataeo Durant last season and remember how good Gunnar Holmberg looked early in the season? The wheels could come off again this season. Can’t rule it out.
But I would be surprised. I was and remain a big David Cutcliffe fan, both as a coach and person. But it was time to go and Duke simply has a better coaching staff in place than they had last season.
Yes, there was some slippage last week, especially in the areas of tackling and coverage. By the same token, Duke allowed 33 points against Kansas last season and won easily, 52-33. They allowed 35 this season and lost by eight.
So, maybe the offense bears some blame here. Duke had almost 500 yards total offense, didn’t turn it over, didn’t miss a kick and only scored 27 points.
Converting yards into points was a problem in Cutcliffe’s last few years and it appears Duke may not have completely solved it yet.
I’m loathe to criticize any group of young men who went through the cauldron of 2020 and came back for more. I can scarcely imagine what it’s like to be 20 years old and be isolated from your classmates and professors and the surrounding community, to play your home games in an empty stadium and your road games in reduced-capacity circumstances.
And I’m certainly not criticizing Duke’s response to COVID. Far from it.
But that said, it was clear that Cutcliffe’s last few teams did not do a good job of responding to adversity. Maybe 2020 just wore them down. But this was something that was openly discussed with the media, acknowledged as a problem.
And it didn’t get fixed.
Not to belabor the point, but Duke lost its ACC games last season by margins of 31, 4, 48, 38, 25, 31, 40 and 37 points.
One competitive loss.
The ACC wasn’t that good last season.
Everybody has a plan until they get hit in the face and all that.
Which brings us to 2022. Kansas hit Duke in the face. Duke trailed 7-0, then 21-10, then 28-13, then 35-20.
On the road, in front of a sell-out crowd, making lots and lots of noise, a rowdy fan base rejoicing in their best team in more than a decade.
In other words, Kansas gave Duke every chance to fall apart and get blown out.
Did not happen. Duke simply showed more resiliency than recent Duke teams. Maybe they’ve rebounded from 2020, maybe G.R.I.N.D. is a real thing.
Mike Elko certainly noticed.
“For 10 months I have watched the competitive spirit of this team grow. I have watched them compete and have watched how they have come together as a group. I have watched how they have learned to care about each other and I know how they want to represent Duke. A lot of people were very complimentary of the fact that we fought until the end. But that didn’t surprise me. I didn’t anticipate it turning out any other way.”
Elko added that Duke wasn’t looking for moral victories and didn’t get the job done.
Fighting through adversity isn’t the only part of a winning recipe. But it’s a big part and it’s one that this team seems ready to incorporate. Duke may not win every game left, maybe not any games. But I’ll be stunned if there are any 48-0 losses on the horizon and that’s a step in the right direction.
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Duke basketball began practice this week and I spent most of Tuesday getting interviews with coaches and players. I’ll be sharing much of that in the next few weeks.
I’m looking forward to being in Wallace Wade Stadium tomorrow night for the ACC opener. It is time to win a conference game.
While I'm less generous in my view of Cutcliffe post-2015 than Jim, Duke failed the 2021 team at an institutional / University level.
The cumulative effect of decisions to maximize the end of the Coach K era, plus admin aversion to the optics of paying buyouts while curtailing employee pension contributions, left an incredibly high-character roster relying mostly on themselves for leadership on-field and off.
It was clear to everyone in college football three years prior that Duke did not have an answer for life after Jim Knowles, yet the adults responsible for providing the players with the tools to succeed just shrugged their shoulders for 3 more seasons. It's surprising the roster held together as well as it did.
Just look at where last year's coaching staff has landed: with the exception of Ben Albert, none were able to land comparable P5 roles. Several couldn't land on-field roles at all.
[Only Calvin McGee, who sadly passed away, took a well-deserved step up.]
The answer to why Mike Elko wanted the job, and why the team has shown signs of life many of us may not have expected, is in the character of the players. Both the roster from last year and the recruiting class hung together to a far greater degree than you'd expect, and however the rest of the season plays out it's clear they are totally bought into the vision and plan this staff is selling.