What has happened to Duke’s third quarter offense?
It is a question that has plagued the Blue Devils’ coaching staff so far this season. Of Duke’s 102 total points, only three have come in the third quarter. Head coach David Cutcliffe is puzzled that his typically high-powered offense seems to go into sleep mode after halftime.
“We’ve got a lot of work to do and look at it in every area,” head coach David Cutcliffe said at his weekly press conference yesterday. “Why are we disappearing in the third quarter offensively? I’m hunting that [question] with a big ol’ stick.”
The inability to put points on the scoreboard began in the Blue Devils’ first game of the year, a 41-27 win over Elon. After scoring 27 points against the Phoenix in the first half, Duke began the third quarter with a quick three-and-out, then a five-play drive that ended in a turnover on downs, then a long run at the end zone that resulted in a missed 45-yard field goal from Will Snyderwine. The result: Zero points in the third quarter.
It continued in Winston-Salem in Duke’s second game. The Blue Devils had just scored 35 points in the first half, but the offense shut down at the beginning of the second. Alex King was forced to trot out for four straight punts before Duke finally gave Snyderwine the chance to kick a field goal, which the junior responded to by making a 46-yarder.
In Saturday’s Alabama loss, with 29 seconds left in the first half, Duke became the first team all season to score a touchdown on the Crimson Tide. It had offensive momentum for the first time all day, and it was effectively killed by two straight three-and-outs and no points in the third quarter.
After the game, Cutcliffe bemoaned his team’s regression after the first half.
“Probably the most disappointing thing amongst many things is that we didn’t get better in the second half,” he said at the time.
No easy answers exist to explain the issue.
Cutcliffe has made sure that his team’s rhythm has not been thrown off by the break in action, checking to make sure that the Blue Devils’ warm-up routines are similar to those before the game begins. He said he made sure during the Alabama game to watch the receivers catch balls and he checked if the running backs were practicing at game speed. He couldn’t find anything different enough to justify the lack of offense.
“I’ve studied it and looked at it, and I watched us this week and saw us warming up and watched kids moving around,” Cutcliffe said. “I’ve kind of looked at everything and don’t see anything really unusual.”
He also dismissed changes on defense from Duke’s opponents as being the cause of the problem.
“Schematically, it’s been nothing. Nobody’s run something new in the second half that they didn’t run in the first half,” the coach said. “There’s no particular reason other than we’re not getting it done.”
Cutcliffe was hesitant to even bring up the subject Tuesday, saying that he didn’t want the issue to “become a thing.” Despite those remarks, though, he did say he had addressed the scoring problem with his players.
“You have to be tough enough mentally to identify a problem and take it head on and not run from it,” he said. “I don’t mind mentioning it.”
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