Self-scout.
It’s a term I’m not sure I’ve ever heard before this season but Manny Diaz is a fan of the term and the self-explanatory concept.
Diaz says Duke self-scouts all the time but a bye week is an especially fruitful time to go self-scouting.
“On Monday, we had our offensive staff watch all of our defensive plays and our defensive staff watch all of our offensive plays and give feedback as if we were getting ready to play one another,” Diaz told the media Monday. “You'll always see yourself through different eyes, right? But you have to be intimate with your reality, that's one of my favorite statements, and know what you do well and what you're not doing well. Why are you not doing it well? What can we do to improve those things? What can we do to accentuate the things that we are doing well and try to get more of that?
“It gave us a great opportunity to see everything. I thought the staff did a great job because sometimes you can get egos involved, if somebody starts speaking about my area of expertise and I don't like that, but our staff was phenomenal. Everybody just wants what's best for Duke football and that information absolutely helped us in terms of our preparation for this week and beyond.”
Of course, we aren’t going to see the results of this activity until Friday night against Florida State. It’s not like Diaz and his staff are going to announce any changes or anything like that.
Diaz did say, however, that changes would be schematic changes not personnel changes.
Duke is not just coming off a bye-week but also coming off its first loss of the season, a 24-14 loss at Georgia Tech that was more winnable for Duke then that final margin suggests.
So, what might be some areas in need of improvement?
Duke certainly didn’t run the ball very well against Tech, not by the standards of the Connecticut, Middle Tennessee State and UNC games at least. Duke rushed for 74 yards on 20 rushes, an average of 3.7 yards per carry.
Right tackle Brian Parker cited the eternal verities.
“We’re really confident and we continue to grow. Obviously, the numbers last week weren’t what we wanted them to be. But we feel like we can run the ball against anybody. Coach has emphasized all week that this is going to be a big running game so we’ve been putting a lot of emphasis on that, getting our double-teams right, getting back on track. A little more execution, some guys missing off the edge, just better execution.”
Offensive coordinator Jonathan Brewer addressed the slow starts that have recently plagued the offense.
“We’ve got to get into the rhythm of the things we do well to get us going, whether it’s completions, easy runs, things that are a little bit easier for us and once we settle in, once we get a first down, we’re hard to stop.”
Without putting too fine a point on it, Brewer is the man tasked with calling some of those easy plays. I would assume the self-scout evaluated that.
“We all know we haven’t been coming out fast enough in ACC games,” Parker added, “playing from behind, which we can’t continue to do if we want to win games in this conference. We’ve been talking as a team, really getting together, coming up with some key mind-set changes, ways to come out faster and get rolling a lot quicker.”
Starting quarterback Maalik Murphy has shown no ability to run the ball. None, nada, zilch. No one asked the coaches about that directly because, well, there’s no point.
But Brewer supplied one hint that nothing is going to change in that area.
“We’ve identified things that we’re excelling at and we’ve started watering those seeds and hopefully you’ll see more of some certain things show up and maybe decrease some things that weren’t so good for us. Sometimes as a coordinator you get caught into the world of ‘hey, this is what we’ve done in the past and it’s looking good’ but you have to start adjusting to who your guys are and what the quarterback can do and I think you’re probably going to see that, things that we’ve identified that the quarterback is doing good and trying to amplify that even more.”
Reinforce success, sounds like.
I’m delighted that Brewer seems willing to make some play-calling adjustments. He’s new to this and there is a learning curve. But a running quarterback doesn’t seem to be on the horizon.
I’ve focused on the offense, because that seems to be the low-hanging fruit. Duke scored 13 points in regulation against Northwestern, 21 points against North Carolina, 14 against Georgia Tech. There are no more Middle Tennessee States on the schedule. The offense simply has to get better.
But the defense continues to play at a high level. Duke ranks first in the NCAA in tackles for loss per game, fifth in yards allowed per play and 23rd in points per game.
Safety Terry Moore said Duke’s defense is “just focusing on the small details. Looking at the [Georgia Tech] tape, we realized the things we gave up could all have been avoided. Through the bye-week that’s what we’ve been focusing on because that’s what helps you do the things we need to do.”
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