Saturday was just a gorgeous day, wasn’t it? Spotless blue sky. Optimism in the air. Fannies in Wallace Wade Stadium’s seats. That’s the first football Saturday of the year for you. Everything always seems so picturesque and perfect.
It reminded me, in a way, of interviewing for a job you so desperately desire. You prepare for days, concentrating on the controls and not letting the variables influence you. You do mock interviews, take practice tests and rehearse your answers, all the while fearful of waking up late, or being paired with the blowhard no one wants or hearing your chirping cell phone at the worst time. Blessedly, everything goes right. Alarm clock rings on time. You get the normal dude. Phone quietly obeys.
Then you completely bomb your part of it. That’s sort of like what happened Saturday, except because it’s sports, it feels more important, which is why I wanted to hear David Cutcliffe’s reaction, and I wanted him to be honest. None of this coachtalk, nothing about how Richmond simply wanted it more or how Duke was this close to pulling it out. Give it to me straight, no chaser—the way it’s preferred at Tailgate.
“I’ll be real honest with you: The thing that surprised me the most that I’m most responsible for is our team being absolutely ready to play football,” he said. “And we were not ever, ever at a level that I have seen us practice this entire camp.”
But wait. There’s more!
“Don’t put too much into this ballgame,” he continued. “I can promise you that. I’ve done this a long time. This was not reflective of our football team.”
Then Cutcliffe went on to pinpoint everything the Blue Devils did wrong. The blocked punt. The missed field goals. The running game. The line play. The third downs. It was brutally, searingly accurate, and it was exactly what Duke fans—all 33,011 of them that showed up for the fullest crowd since 2001—needed to hear, even a few minutes after leaving.
It also gives some credence to what Cutcliffe reiterated Sunday to reporters: that his team still should go to a bowl.
“I don’t change that evaluation,” he said, referring to his preseason prediction. “We’re good enough to be one. But you can’t play like we played. You have to play with an edge. We don’t have enough ability to play on ability alone. We can’t try to go out there and look pretty—we have to win the hard way.”
That’s hard to fathom. It’s difficult to think of Duke as a bowl team in any year, let alone 24 hours after losing to an FCS team by laying an egg in its most-anticipated game in too long for anyone’s liking. The team out on the field Saturday night, under the rising moon and smoky sky, wasn’t a team that will play in December or January. Bowl teams don’t lose to FCS challengers.
And yet... part of me still thinks Duke can go to a bowl. Not that the Blue Devils will go to a bowl, but that they can. And really, the chances of them doing so are the same as they were when the sun was still out on Saturday.
The loss was certainly a buzzkill, a momentum zapper, a gutwrencher—all of the above. None of it was good. Its practical effect, though, was akin to an exhibition game, albeit one that will stain the Blue Devils’ final record.
That’s little consolation for a lot of letdown. Still, it’s true: Because the Blue Devils have two FCS teams on their schedule—only one would have counted toward a bowl—they still need to win six games to become bowl-eligible, and they’re still the six games they needed to win before losing to Richmond.
Those six wins are still out there. Nothing’s changed about that. In fact, a loss to an FBS team like Army, Virginia or Maryland would be more damaging than this one, because, you know, it would actually mean something. Plus, if student interest matters at all, it’s not like it’s going to decrease. Duke’s next game in Wallace Wade Stadium is Homecoming against N.C. Central, a contest that figures to be a true sellout. No one will remember last Saturday in three Saturdays.
So Duke will take its knocks this week, and not just from each other on Bloody Tuesday. Until next Saturday, it will be just like the bad ol’ days. The Blue Devils will be the butt of jokes—hey, the ACC can’t even beat an FCS team! Ha! Isn’t that funny?—and even their own fans will begin to question whether Cutcliffe has hyped the team up too much. In short, people will wonder if there’s really any difference between this team that lost to Richmond and the last Duke team that lost to Richmond. Mostly, they will be the cranks who know nothing about football, the ones who rely on the radio to watch Duke. And they will be misguided.
Because no, the sky isn’t falling. The season’s not over, and—pardon my optimism and naïveté and all that cliché—but it’s only now just beginning. The sky may not be as blue as it was on Saturday afternoon. But then, it sure was pretty again on Sunday.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.