Saturday night about the only thing Duke football fans could be happy about was the weather.
The Blue Devil offense, defense and special teams were all befuddled by the Navy Midshipmen, who handed the Blue Devils a 30-9 defeat. The loss dropped Duke to 2-3, while Navy improved to 2-2.
"They outplayed us completely," Duke head coach Fred Goldsmith said. "They ran their offense better than we ran our defense, and they ran their defense better than our offense."
The Blue Devils had very few positive moments in the game, and almost all of these were immediately counteracted by downturns.
At 7:53 in the second quarter, with the Blue Devils only down 7-6, defensive back Sidney Wells intercepted a Navy pass at the Duke 27-yard line. What appeared to be the perfect kickstart after a quarter and a half of lethargic play turned out to be just one of many disappointing series for Duke.
Quarterback Spence Fischer threw incomplete on first down, and then was sacked for a loss of five yards on second down. On third-and-15, Fischer fumbled a bad snap, and the ball was recovered by Navy on the Duke 20-yard line. A personal foul penalty on Duke moved Navy to the 11.
Unlike Duke, which was unable to put the ball in the end zone all night, Navy immediately capitalized on the Duke mistake. Midshipmen quarterback Chris McCoy ran 11 yards untouched into the end zone to give the Midshipmen in Insurmountable 14-6 lead.
"[The fumble] was definitely a momentum swing, but the game was a long way from over," McCoy said. "We had a lot of playing to do. We came out, we celebrated a little bit and then we went back to work."
It was this workmanlike attitude that allowed McCoy to dominate the game. The sophomore quarterback ran for 144 yards on 22 carries, in addition to passing for 42 yards.
More importantly, McCoy ran the Navy read-option offense to perfection, appearing to almost know how the Duke defensive players would commit before they did. He repeatedly made perfect split-second decisions about whether to pitch the ball to one of his backs or keep it himself. This decision-making allowed the Navy offense to accumulate 377 yards on the ground against the overmatched Duke defense.
"We were coached well this week," McCoy said. "We looked at films and stuff. They basically ran what [Navy head coach Charlie Weatherbie] said they were going to run. We went out and executed.
"We were just basically taking what they gave us, and they gave us a lot of pitches, so I pitched the ball. It's a read-option, so they came down on me, and I pitched the ball."
The tone for the game was set five minutes into the first half. After Navy shut down Duke on its opening drive, McCoy fumbled on the Navy 36, and Duke safety Ray Farmer recovered.
The Navy cheering section immediately had flashbacks to last week, when the Midshipmen turned the ball over six times in their loss to Wake Forest. However, the Navy players did not lose faith.
"We just told them what happened," Weatherbie said. "We just told them what they need to do. That wasn't anything but just taking care of the football and squeezing the football in a crowd. That's all we said was `Hey, do your job."'
The Blue Devils attempted to capitalize on the Navy mistake, and slowly moved down to the Navy two-yard line. Laymarr Marshall was stopped short of the goal line on both second and third down, and Duke was forced to settle for a Tom Cochran field goal.
"The name of the game is touchdowns," wide receiver Corey Thomas said. "You have to get the ball into the end zone to win ballgames. When we can't put it in the end zone, it hurts. I'm not taking anything away from Navy, but a lot of times, we really shot ourselves in the foot."
Navy immediately countered the Duke field goal with an eight-play, 80-yard scoring drive, capped by a 45-yard reverse by Matt Scornavacchi for a touchdown. It put the Midshipmen ahead for good with 3:50 to play in the first quarter.
Duke answered the Navy touchdown with a 13-play drive that stalled at the Navy 26-yard line. Kicker Tom Cochran was able to salvage three points for the Blue Devils, hitting a career-long 44-yard field goal on the first play of the second quarter. The kick creeped over the cross bar to pull the Blue Devils to within 7-6.
The Midshipmen finished out the half with a 78-yard drive on which McCoy continually confused the Blue Devil defense, switching off between pitches and quarterback keeps. The drive was capped by a 22-yard field goal, sending the Midshipmen into the locker room with a 17-6 lead, and the Duke defense shaking their heads at the Navy offense.
"We worked on [the Navy offense]," Goldsmith said. "We should have played better against it. It should not have been disruptive. There were no surprises on either side of the ball."
In the second half, Navy quickly washed away any hope Duke had of a comeback. The Midshipmen drove 68 yards on their opening series, scoring on a two-yard run by Omar Nelson. Farmer blocked the extra point, extending his NCAA career blocked point-after touchdown record to eight, and keeping the Navy lead to 23-6.
The two teams took turns with the ball for most of the rest of the third quarter, until with 4:48 left, Duke recovered a fumble on the Navy 30-yard line. The Blue Devils were unable to mount a successful drive, stalling inside the 10-yard line, and settling for a 25-yard field goal by Cochran to bring them within 23-9.
"I felt like when we got back to 14 points with more than a quarter left, I felt like we had a chance to win," Goldsmith said. "They scored in a hurry, we get right back down there again. We're down there on the goal line, you have a chance to win."
Before the Blue Devils could finish celebrating their three points, Navy had put the game completely out of reach. On the first play following the kickoff, McCoy ran 56 yards to the Duke 18, then on the next play Nelson ran 18 yards up the middle of the Duke defense to put Navy on top 30-9 with 2:22 remaining in the third quarter.
"I think after the field goal, I thought the team was going to pick it up a little more," Farmer said. "They ran a good play, we had some badly missed tackles. We all have to take credit for the things that we did wrong."
The Duke offense continued to be ineffective for the rest of the game, and was unable to take a bite out of the Navy lead. Fischer, who finished the day 24-of-41 for 241 yards, was able to complete a number of short passes, but was unable to make the long connection that Duke needed to jumpstart their offense.
"We knew [Fischer] was going to complete some passes," Weatherbie said. "We just knew we had to come up and make the tackle. We couldn't give up the big play. I think that the defense did a great job of that.
"We knew that they were going to make some first downs. We knew that we didn't want to give them the big one, catching the ball for six yards and then breaking it for 70."
The Duke defense finally succeeded in slowing down the Midshipmen at the end of the game, shutting them out for the fourth quarter. However, it was too little, too late, and when the final gun sounded, the highly-favored Blue Devils had lost 30-9. The team unanimously considered this to be its worst effort of the season.
"When a team plays undisciplined, misses things on defense, and when you just have penalties on offense over and over again, that means the football team is undisciplined, and that starts at the top with me," Goldsmith said. "I feel responsible. When you blow assignments, who's taking who, and they get big plays. Again, that goes back to discipline, which goes back to the head football coach. I'm very, very disappointed."
Despite the disappointment in its effort, the team is still optimistic for the remainder of the season.
"We'll bounce back," Thomas said. "We were wandering around, didn't know what was going on, like headless chickens out there. It's just a lack of execution.
"You know what it's like to be a potter. You have to bang that clay out, then you have to mold it back up. That's what is happening right now--we're getting banged up. We're going to get back to being that pretty vase, the team that we were last year. We have a whole half of the season to get it going."
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