Sitting in Wallace Wade Saturday evening, one thing became very clear to me. Ted Roof needs to go.
The start of Roof's career at the helm of the Duke football program was a promising one. Taking over as interim head coach with five games left in the 2003 season, Roof led the Blue Devils to wins over Georgia Tech and North Carolina.
From there, it's been all downhill.
After being named head coach over Bobby Ross-who has an NCAA championship and a Super Bowl appearance on his resume, at the conclusion of the 2003 campaign--Roof has guided his football team to an abysmal 3-20 record. None of the wins came on the road and two of the victories were over The Citadel and Virginia Military Institute, members of Division I-AA. Counting only Division I rivals, Roof's Duke teams have a 1-19 record. That's a .053 winning percentage if you're keeping score at home.
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It's not as if Roof hasn't been given ample opportunity to prove himself as the man to run Duke football. In game situations, the Blue Devils have been in position to win a handful of games over teams not in Division I-AA. I'm not asking for Duke to beat Florida State, Miami or Virginia Tech, but they need to capitalize on the opportunities they have had to beat mid-level Division I teams.
Under Roof, Duke has failed in every attempt to win winnable games, aside from a thrilling upset over Clemson in 2004 when kicker Matt Brooks nailed a 53-yarder for a 16-13 victory.
Even in that game, however, Roof and his staff made a very questionable play call that could have cost Duke the game. With a fourth-and-goal situation at a tight point in the game, Roof and his staff had tailback Cedric Dargan attempt to pass the ball into the end zone. Predictably, the ball was picked-off by a Tiger defender.
There is a long list of games where Roof's coaching has cost Duke wins.
Earlier in the 2004 campaign, Roof's team blew a 20-6 fourth-quarter lead at Connecticut. Despite the collapse, the Blue Devils still had a shot to win the game. With 10 seconds remaining and facing a second-and-eight from the Huskies 19-yard line, Roof elected not to center the ball from the right hash. Brooks missed the ensuing kick wide right and UConn walked away with a 22-20 win.
It gets worse. After erasing an 11-point fourth-quarter deficit against Navy at home last season, Duke had the Midshipmen pinned on their 33-yard line with just over three minutes to play and the score tied. The Blue Devil defense collapsed and allowed Navy to score a touchdown with relative ease.
Needing to return fire, Roof inexplicably removed true-freshman quarterback Zack Asack and replaced him with junior Mike Schneider. Earlier in the fourth quarter, Asack showed poise under pressure by completing a two-point conversion pass to Eron Riley to pull the Blue Devils even. Schneider, though older, had played just one series in the entire game.
Once again, Roof's coaching move did not pay off. Schneider got the ball down the field, and with four seconds left and just 24-yards from tying the game, he tossed an ugly attempt to Deon Adams that, even if caught, would have left Duke short of the game-tying touchdown.
After squandering a fourth-quarter 21-17 lead at North Carolina in the season's final game, Roof again substituted Schneider for Asack when the Blue Devils needed a two-minute drill. The move ended badly for Duke. After an eight-yard completion, Schneider-who hadn't taken a snap the entire game to that point-threw his second pass to UNC's Tommy Richardson to seal the Tar Heel's 24-21 victory.
And to top it all off, with a chance to redeem himself, Roof's team, as all Blue Devils fans know, opened its 2006 season with an embarrassing shutout loss against Division I-AA Richmond.
It isn't really Roof's fault his would-be 2006 starting quarterback Asack was suspended during the summer for plagiarism and true-freshman Thaddeus Lewis and former wide receiver Marcus Jones were the only options at quarterback.
And it's also hard to argue with the recruiting Roof has done so far. Some have argued Roof should be allowed to keep his job at least until his first recruiting class graduates. But enough is enough. The results on the field speak for themselves.
In his time as head coach, the team has been a disaster. It's only a matter of time until top high schoolers see the endless string of demoralizing losses Roof's team accumulates and think twice about suiting up for the Blue and White.
Maybe it's been the players, maybe it's been bad luck, maybe Duke doesn't have the resources to compete with other ACC schools and maybe Roof needs more time to turn this thing around. But plain and simply, Roof was brought in to make Duke competitive and two-plus seasons later, the team is still painful to watch.
It's time for someone new.
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