Some additional thoughts on Duke-Carolina football

Past, present and future

There’s a narrative going around the Duke fan base that James Madison did Duke football no favors by thrashing UNC last Saturday. An amped-up UNC team is going to come out firing on all cylinders and Duke is going to have a hard time matching their intensity, focus and sense of purpose.

Perhaps.

Perhaps not. Let’s flip the script and say North Carolina is coming into Wade off a 50-30 win. Terrible time to be meeting the Heels. Right? They’re on a roll, full of confidence and swagger. Can Duke match that?

And, we’ve all seen teams whose seasons have unraveled and that unraveling started with something like getting blown out at home by a huge underdog.

The truth is, we just don’t know. And certainly how Carolina responds to that JMU game is beyond Duke’s control, which was a sub-theme of pretty much everything Manny Diaz and his staff have told the media this week. Be the best you, control what you can control and go from there.

Some thoughts on Duke’s defense. Duke has allowed 15.3 points per game this season. Which is good. But even that stat may be underselling how good Duke’s D has been in the non-conference portion of the schedule.

Keep in mind that those 61 points allowed includes UConn’s pick six, in which not a single Duke defender was on the field. Elon kicked a field goal in the final minute of a game whose outcome had long been decided, while Middle Tennessee State scored a late touchdown coming out of the lengthy weather delay, again in a game whose outcome had also been long decided. One of Northwestern’s two touchdowns came in the first overtime of their double-overtime loss to Duke.

That means Duke’s defense has allowed four touchdowns and three field goals in regulation in games whose outcome was still in reasonable doubt.  Northwestern’s only regulation TD came on an 11-yard drive after a muffed punt, while MTSU’s first TD came on a three-play drive, the third play a 66-yard TD run.

With the proviso that explosive TDs still count, Connecticut is the only team that has been able to sustain a long TD drive against Duke this season; they did it twice.

The website 247sports ranked Duke’s transfer class as the 42^nd best this season. Maybe this class was under-valued. We all knew about Maalik Murphy. But there were big question marks about the offensive line, questions that lingered through the Northwestern game. But suddenly a line that included transfers Bruno Fina (UCLA), Caleb Krings (Elon) and Eric Schon (Holy Cross) started opening holes for a resurgent running game. The word “gel” is being used a lot.

And the running back benefiting from that gelling isn’t incumbent Jaquez Moore. He’s been sidelined much of the season with a foot injury; I’m sorry, lower-body injury.

Instead it’s been New Mexico State transfer Star Thomas, who has rushed for 122 and 111 yards in Duke’s last two games. After a slow start he leads Duke with 314 rushing yards, 4.6 per carry. That projects to just under a 1,000-yard season in regulation.

One would expect his usage rate to drop once Moore is 100%. But he’s certainly earned the right to be running back 1 to Moore’s 1A. Or vice-versa.

And don’t get me started on Youngstown State transfer linebacker Alex Howard.  He leads Duke with 36 tackles, 3.0 sacks and 8.5 tackles for loss.

To give some perspective, Aeneas Peebles led Duke last season with 9.5 tackles for loss over the entire 13-game season.

That’s not all. Kendy Charles (Liberty) has solidified the defensive tackle position, while Ozzie Nicholas (Princeton) has 17 tackles from his linebacker spot. Wide receiver Javon Harvey (Old Dominion) is in the receiver rotation, 3 receptions, 26 yards.

Keep in mind that Diaz and his staff got a late start on the portal and had to retain current players, lock down the incoming prep class, identify transfer needs and fits in a narrow time frame and they seem to have done a pretty good job.

Maybe they know what they’re doing.

One final thought. For people of my generation watching Duke play North Carolina in September can be a jarring experience. For generations it was the regular-season finale for both teams, bragging rights, conference titles, bowl bids all on the line, with no one worrying about the rest of the season.

But those games were played at the end of an 11-game regular season, before then a 10-game season, before then a nine-game season.

In other words, before the Thanksgiving break.

But the schedule now goes 12 games, with a week off, sometimes two, which means Thanksgiving football.

Anyone who’s ever been at Wallace Wade for a Thanksgiving weekend game knows what I’m talking about. Demographics 101. Combining the busiest travel weekend of the year with a student body and alumni base about as geographically dispersed as it gets, means acres and acres of empty seats.

So, trust me, neither Duke nor Carolina is unhappy to see this rivalry game moved to another weekend.

But September? TV, blah-blah, TV, blah-blah, TV.

It might have helped if Duke didn’t lose 21 of 22. It’s not a rivalry if one team wins all the time.

With five Duke losses in a row, we aren’t near that level of one-sidedness. But as Barney [Fife, not Rubble) was wont to say, nip it in the bud.