With the conference opener at Wake Forest looming this weekend, Duke’s quest to make its first appearance in a bowl game since 1994 truly begins now.
And as I turn my thoughts to the Demon Deacons, the image that immediately comes to my mind is my view from the press box at last season’s finale: Duke’s seniors walking off the field for the last time, defeated after an overpowering Wake Forest offense dropped 45 points on them.
In that game, which resembled a track meet more than a football contest, the two teams’ offenses combined for just under 1,000 yards, and quarterback Thaddeus Lewis capped off his Duke career with a brilliant 387-yard day. Donovan Varner caught 11 passes for 174 yards, becoming just the third wide receiver in school history to have more than 1,000 receiving yards in a season.
The offense played beautifully. The Blue Devils still lost, however—a victim of the defense’s failure to get stops.
The game actually didn’t matter last year, as Duke had already been eliminated from bowl contention. But this year’s team can still learn from it. They can learn that the roadmap to qualifying for the postseason should not include a reliance on offensive firepower to outscore opponents week after week.
And after the season-opening win against Elon, in which the Phoenix racked up 406 total offensive yards, one thing is clear: New formation or not, the defense needs to perform better.
“From a technique standpoint, we weren’t as good as we needed to be,” head coach David Cutcliffe said yesterday. “We need to tackle a lot better.”
Whether it was secondary players getting turned around and losing their footing or linebackers not wrapping up their tackles, the Blue Devils proved vulnerable to giving up the big play, as Elon picked up over 20 yards on seven different occasisons. Defensive backs like Ross Cockrell and his replacement Johnny Williams struggled to make plays on the ball once it was in the air. Too often playing behind the receiver Saturday, the secondary will need help from the defensive front in the future in order not to be victimized by downfield passes.
But help seems to be on the way. The coaching staff has decided to be less conservative with its blitzing, as well as vowing to incorporate new, unseen packages.
“I want to be the aggressor; I don’t want our team on its heels,” Cutcliffe said. “By design, we’re going to be more aggressive, and we’re going to hit quarterbacks.”
Interestingly, in the past, Duke has always subscribed to a bend-but-don’t-break mentality defensively. In fact, junior nose tackle Charlie Hatcher told me in an interview yesterday that the defense’s objective is to keep their opponent out of the end zone, even if that means letting them rack up yardage. This mentality is one that Cutcliffe and his defensive staff would like to change as the unit relies more on its physicality.
“I don’t like that bend-but-not-break mindset,” Cutcliffe said. “You can barely bend that many times without breaking.”
At least at this point, players and coaches alike understand that the key to Duke’s success will be its defense getting stops and takeaways so its offense isn’t always playing catchup. We’ll see if the view from the press box changes as a result.
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