Mistakes doom Duke football to 30-27 loss to Virginia
Crucial turnovers, missed field goals not a winning recipe.
Another ACC road game, another close loss for Duke football. Virginia’s 30-27 win over Duke in Charlottesville Saturday afternoon ends Duke’s 2023 ACC road schedule at 0-4 and runs their ACC road losing streak to five, with a loss at Pitt ending last season.
Except for this season’s loss at Louisville all of these games have been up for grabs in the fourth quarter.
But Duke didn’t grab them.
“From our standpoint, I don’t think it was about emotion, I don’t think it was about the let-down, I don’t think it was about bouncing back. We just didn’t play good football.”
That was Mike Elko attempting to deflect any suggestion that this was a case of Carolina Hangover.
Which, of course, begs the question, why didn’t Duke play good football?
Elko has consistently cited three core principles to winning football games; win the turnover battle, win the special-teams battle and win the situational battle.
Duke did none of these. There were two turnovers and Duke committed both. Each team scored three touchdowns. But Virginia made all three of its field goal attempts, while Duke went two of three, Todd Pelino’s 44-yard miss in the second half the margin of defeat.
Obviously both teams had some scoring opportunities turn into field goal attempts. But Jordan Waters lost a fumble at the Virginia 15, ending a promising first-period drive. Duke tied the game at the end of the first half on a third-down field-goal after some clock management that could have been better. Duke came up empty on too many third-and-shorts. A third-period interception thrown by Grayson Loftis stopped another promising Duke drive, this one at midfield.
“We have to understand the importance of touchdowns aren’t field goals,” wide receiver Jordan Moore (9 catches, 117 yards) said. “That’s a four-point play. It’s huge momentum swingers. We need to go back to practice and work on executing on bringing it into the game.”
But the biggest missed opportunity may have come on defense, after Jaquez Moore’s 58-yard touchdown cut Virginia’s lead to 27-20, with 9:03 left. One stop and plenty of time to get the equalizer. Maybe time for two scores and a win.
But the Cavaliers converted a fourth-and-one sneak at their 48, burned 5:20 valuable minutes and forced Duke to use all three of its timeouts before Will Bettridge’s 30-yard field goal made it 30-20, with 3:43 left.
“I felt like it was kind of what they were able to do all day,” Elko said of that crucial drive. “Mixing in the throw game and the run game. They were able to get their stretch run game when they needed to get yards. They came out and hit a couple of passes to start the drive and then the run game got going as the drive wore on. We had them fourth-and-one and couldn’t stop the Q-sneak. We were just on our heels. We did a really bad job of responding.”
Out of timeouts, Duke marched down field and got it into the end zone. But it was a slow march--14 plays worth-- with Virginia willing to trade distance for time. An on-sides kick wasn’t even close to being successful and a couple of kneel downs ended it.
Duke never led but tied it at 7-7 and 10-10, seemingly carrying the momentum into halftime. But for the second week in a row Duke came out for the third period flat and ineffective.
“I don’t think we got into rhythm on offense until we got down 27-13,” Elko said. “It felt like the whole game was on offense we would make a play that got us so far behind the chains that it became really hard to get back. Or we’d get into second and one and take a sack, get into third-and-one and we don’t convert. It felt like one of those happened on basically every drive. We were never in rhythm until we got down and when we got down, we had our backs against the wall, we responded and we started executing at a higher level and at least give ourselves a chance.”
Why wait until the end of the game to function effectively?
Big question.
“We’ve executed those situations really well the last couple of weeks,” Elko said “But we’ve got to be able to function in the neutral part of the game, when the game’s tied, when it’s going back-and-forth. We’ve got to be able to function much better so that we don’t have to rally from two scores behind in the fourth quarter in back-to-back weeks where we put ourselves in that kind of hole and can’t get out of it.”
Certainly one of the biggest disappointments in Duke’s performance and biggest factors in the loss was the defense’s inability to forced Virginia into even a single turnover, even with true freshman Anthony Colandrea at quarterback and a banged-up running back contingent.
Absent those turnovers Colandrea was able to find Malik Washington (8 catches, 112 yards, two TDs) and Malachi Fields (4 catches, 74 yards, 1 TD) with regularity.
“We had a hard time pressuring him,” Elko said. “He’s a kid who’s able to move around a little bit. He was able to stay mobile and keep himself protected. It’s hard to force turnovers when you can’t stop the run and they can run the ball for five yards a chunk whenever they want to. We couldn’t get them off schedule at all. We’re going to have to examine what we’re doing and how we’re doing it because it was just not very good on defense at all.”
“We had a few opportunities to get the ball,’ defensive back Brandon Johnson noted. “We have to capitalize on those opportunities.”
Duke had 27 first downs, 429 total yards against a Virginia team that was penalized for 117 yards. And still came up short in falling to 6-5.
“We didn’t do any of the critical things that you need to do to win a conference game on the road,” Elko summed up. “And it hurts and it’s tough and these are the lessons we have to learn for us to become the program we want to become and for us to get where we want to go as Duke football.”
Agree with Bob—this was a game we should have won. I think the question to be answered is yours Jim: why do we seem to wait until our backs are to the wall before we focus enough to play effectively? Very frustrating. Hope we can play more focused out of the gate against Pitt. The good news is that we have made very significant progress under Elko. Injuries obviously have set us back, but we’re still tantalizingly close in every game other than Louisville. Just need to get over the hump and nail some of these 50/50 games!!! If Elko stays around, I’m confident we’ll get there!
Yesterday was a game we should have won but we didn’t. You have to win the games you’re supposed to win. Team health is a concern. Safety Terry Moore injured late in the Carolina game was missed yesterday. Hopefully, he is available against Pitt next week.