What did we learn about Duke football Friday night?

Mostly positive stuff.

What did we learn from Duke’s 30-0 thrashing of Temple Friday night?

Well, perhaps “confirmed” is a more accurate term. But it is abundantly clear that Mike Elko knows how to coach and it’s equally clear that he has a staff of assistants who know how to coach.

Before I go any further, let’s get the qualifiers out of the way.

Temple plays in the American Athletic Conference. It’s not a Power-Five Conference but at least at the top its pretty darn close.  Seven AAC teams received bowl bids last season, although COVID canceled three of them, including a pair of ACC-AAC matchups. Cincinnati made the CFP, Houston was ranked 20th in the final CFP rankings, Houston beat Auburn in the Birmingham Bowl and Central Florida beat Florida in the Gasparilla Bowl.

In other words Duke didn’t beat a team from some second or third-tier conference.

These guys can play.

At least, at the top.

Which Temple is nowhere near.

So, no I cannot discount the possibility that Temple is simply a bad football team. Temple was one of the teams Duke was favored to beat going into the season; NC A&T is the other.

So, maybe Temple was low-hanging fruit.

Or maybe Duke made Temple look that bad.

Last Monday Mike Elko said he wanted a clean game, a minimum of turnovers, penalties and missed assignments.

Duke came pretty darn close. There were a few penalties. The false starts and such can be excused as a consequence of new schemes and opening day.

But Jacob Monk’s third-quarter personal foul, the one that stopped a drive that appeared heading for the end zone? Not what we would expect from a senior co-captain.

And yes, it was retaliatory. But the officials tend to miss the first blow and catch the second.   

I do not think we will see a repeat.

And Charlie Ham did miss three field goals. The 50-yarder? College kickers miss those all the time. Excusable. But the other two were very makeable.

Yes, he did make three. But 50 percent isn’t going to cut it. Just ask East Carolina what happens when your kicker gets the yips in close games.

What went right for Duke?

A whole lot.

Missed tackles, dropped passes, blown assignments were remarkably rare, especially for an opener.

And zero turnovers. Nada, zilch, not a single one. For a Duke team that has drowned under a tsunami of turnovers the last few years, this was something to behold.

“For us to be a successful program, we have to win the turnover battle,” Elko said.

And Duke did force two turnovers, both fumbles. Duke hasn’t been plus two for the season in turnover differential in a long time.

Note that Virginia Tech, also playing under a new coach, had five turnovers and 15 penalties in a road loss to Old Dominion.

None of this just happened. Duke worked really, really hard in the off-season and it was important for the team to see the benefits of that hard work.

“I was just so happy for them, that they got the reward they deserved for the work they put it in in the last eight-and-a-half months,” Elko said. “We asked them to believe. A first-time head coach and a brand new staff. They didn’t have to. But they’ve bought into everything we’ve asked them to do.”

“It means everything to us,” quarterback Riley Leonard added. “The unknown was a little bit there before the game. But all the hard work that we did these last eight months really paid off tonight. It’s a huge relief to know that if you work that hard, it actually does pay off.”

Much of the preseason talk centered on Duke becoming more physical and that goal was attained on the practice field and in the weight room. If you follow Duke football on social media you’ve seen the videos of Duke players pumping iron surrounded by teammates who looked a lot like really big 10-year olds getting everything they asked for on their birthday lists.

And it paid off on the field. Duke simply dominated both lines of scrimmage.

“We challenged our guys to be physical,” Elko said, “and they were. I thought our D-line really controlled the line of scrimmage and set the tone.”

Duke’s offensive line protected Riley Leonard and opened holes for the running backs.

I tried to compliment Leonard on getting rid of the ball early and on target--another big emphasis--but he deflected the praise.

“I think I got the ball out of my hands quickly tonight. I made a few mistakes getting out of the pocket but I really think I could have held the ball for a couple more seconds. I had all the time in the world tonight.”

Leonard’s protestations notwithstanding, he was stunningly good, consistently making the right read and consistently making strong and accurate throws.

“What an amazing start for a first-time starter,” Elko said. “A lot of guys got open and made plays. The offensive line did a great job keeping him open. I thought the way we started, taking that first drive down the field, obviously gave us a lot of momentum.”

Leonard completed his first 15 passes. The school for consecutive completions is 16, held by D Bryant and Sean Renfree.

And the runner-up in that heated quarterback battle? Wide receiver Jordan Moore had six receptions for 77 yards barely three weeks after moving over to that spot.

“That’s three weeks of him playing wide-out,” Elko said. “I think he’s got a tremendous amount of upside. I think you’re just going to see him get better and better.”

On the other side of the ball Duke’s defensive line stuffed every Temple attempt to run between the tackles and Duke’s linebackers and defensive backs controlled the edge.

Temple had two first downs in the first half. TWO. Their deepest penetration of the entire game was to the Duke 37 on the game’s final possession and by then Duke was playing its backups.

That emphasis on tackling paid off. When Duke got good in the middle of the last decade, good tackling was a key. Players like Jeremy Cash, DeVon Edwards and Kelby Brown just did not miss tackles.

When started missing tackles in the last few seasons Duke started getting not-so-good.

Duke not only tackled at a high level Friday night, they swarmed to the ball on defense, something we also haven’t seen much of.

“When they tried to go wide and everything,” linebacker Dorian Mausi said,” you run hard and you feel the safeties coming down hard, it’s not just you by yourself. You get off your block and it feels good because we’re rallying to the ball.”

We also learned that Elko’s wooing of the Duke student body is paying benefits. The student section--strategically located behind the visitor’s bench-was full and rowdy, about as Cameron Craziesque as it can be in a 40,000 seat football stadium.

The players said they noticed.

Mausi’s take?

“You walk out of the tunnel and you look around and you feel the energy and you feel good. It just shows how the students care about us.”

But Elko hasn’t cracked the code of filling up Wade. Not so far. It was the beginning of Labor Day weekend and as far as I know Duke wasn’t giving away lots of tickets; I believe that will be the A&T game later this month.

Even when Cutcliffe had his program in high gear Duke couldn’t fill up Wade unless the visiting team brought lots of fans.

Keep winning and hopefully the problem solves itself.

Elko struck the right tone in his post-game remarks. He was happy for his team, a team that endured eight straight losses to end last season, seven of them blow-outs.

But he added that the goal isn’t to win one game. It’s to win lots of games.

Tougher tests await, to be sure. Wide receiver Sahmir Hagans told Dave Shumate in Go Duke: the Magazine that during last season “the locker rooms after the games were pretty silent and pretty dead.”

Friday night?

“We had the music turning,” Mausi said. “It feels good for sure.”