Defensive adjustments key to Duke victory

RALEIGH — For almost an entire half Saturday, Duke’s road matchup against N.C. State looked less like an early ACC game between two mediocre teams and more like a shootout starring run-and-gun spread offenses, intent on lighting up the scoreboard with long passes and quick drives and then doing it again the next time they got the ball. Quarterbacks Thaddeus Lewis and Russell Wilson picked apart the defenses as if they were sniping targets at the nearby fairgrounds, and the defensive units seemed about as helpless as the fuzzy creatures inside a whack-a-mole.

Two hours later—as the Blue Devils paraded off the field, having won their first conference road game since 2003—what had started as an offensive show only sustainable on Xbox ended with the Duke defense stifling Wilson and the rest of the Wolfpack attack, at first quietly and then emphatically.  

Lewis surged ahead with his best game in blue and white, and Wilson stalled. Duke’s offense hummed along, and N.C. State’s ebbed. The Blue Devils converted on third downs, and the Wolfpack was stuffed on fourths.  

A defense with gaps found its teeth, suddenly and maybe even unexpectedly, and it held the N.C. State offense scoreless for the game’s last 38 minutes. It was the defensive resurgence as much as Lewis’ offensive brilliance that gave the Blue Devils their best win of the last two years­­—one that may even change the tenor of the slow-starting season.

“When things blow up initially like that, it’s not always going to be a horribly bad night, and you’ve got to realize that you have to keep playing,” head coach David Cutcliffe said. “You see it time and time again. Well, I kept telling the coaches, ‘Hey, the game’s going to change.’ Y’all have never seen the way that game was going—it doesn’t stay that way. And when it changes, we have to be ready for it. And we were.”

Forget about halting the offense—almost midway through the game, neither defense had forced so much as a punt. It wasn’t a matter of if or when Lewis or Wilson would score, but only how, and how efficiently. Surely, the teams would trade touchdowns all afternoon, and the first that failed would be doomed. That changed when Re’quan Boyette coughed up a fumble in the red zone, and the game shifted on the next possession.

It started with a stop. Just one. Duke’s defense forced a punt— oh, so that’s what a punter looks like—and then a sack right before intermission. By the time the marching band had stomped onto the newly planted sod for the halftime show, neither offense had scored in eight minutes.

The Wolfpack’s wouldn’t register another score again, because Duke’s defense only got stingier from there.

Mike MacIntyre, Duke’s co-defensive coordinator, sprinted about 10 yards onto the field, got down on a knee and pumped his fist in the air to express his excitement, and Cutcliffe said the play “made me about as happy as anything all night long.”

It was Duke’s fourth tackle for a loss on the afternoon, adding to the team’s four sacks—one each for Okpokuwuruk, Vincent Rey, Vince Oghobaase and Jeremy Ringfield. With the Wolfpack offense firmly in desperation mode, it was time to add some interceptions to the box score.

The first belonged to Leon Wright, who picked off a long pass from Wilson after Duke had taken its largest lead of the game. Finally, with 27 ticks left, Lee Butler intercepted a Mike Glennon pass in the end zone, capping a half in which Duke yielded just 89 yards, compared to 249 in the first. Wilson, the most explosive player in the stadium, was on the field for just 9:34 in the second half—giving his defense little time to rest, which Lewis took advantage of—and Wilson converted only 1-of-6 third downs after the break.  

It was fitting, of course, that Lewis took the last snap in the victory formation. He deserved it. And perhaps it was also apt that with a pair of interceptions, the defense put the unlikely exclamation point on the win. For that unit, it was about as satisfying as a fried Snickers next door.