This year the Blue Zone will be running a series looking back on important moments in the Duke football team’s history. Today, we take you back to Sept. 18, 2010.
As Duke prepares for a Georgia Tech team that is the only thing standing in its’ way of the school’s first 3-0 start since the 1994 season, it is worthwhile reflecting on how far the football program has come in just a few years. Three seasons ago this week, Duke was licking its wounds after suffering a demoralizing loss in a shootout at Wake Forest. But the Blue Devils hardly had any time to regroup, as the top-ranked, defending-champion Alabama Crimson Tide were coming to Wallace Wade stadium for one of Duke’s highest-profile games in recent history.
Not surprisingly, Duke got shellacked 62-13 to fall to 1-2, as a squad of future NFL players ran all over a Blue Devils team that would finish the season a lowly 3-9.
“And I will say, that’s the best Alabama team I’ve ever coached against—the 26 times I’ve coached against them,” head coach David Cutcliffe said. “If you get on your heels against a team like that, they’re going to make you look really bad.”
The Crimson Tide scored on their very first drive of the game and never looked back, putting up 28 points before the end of the first quarter. In his first game of the season—after missed the first two weeks of the season recovering from arthroscopic surgery on his left knee—Mark Ingram racked up 151 rushing yards and two touchdowns, both of which came in the first quarter. The Heisman Trophy winner from the year before sprinted for a 48-yard run on his first handoff of the year.
“I wasn’t going to come back out here if I wasn’t confident in what I could do,” said Ingram, who said he had never before missed games due to an injury. “If I didn’t feel I could do me out there, I wouldn’t have come back. I had complete confidence, no hesitation out there.”
Ingram was not the only Alabama running back to star, as three tailbacks that are now in the NFL—Trent Richardson and Eddie Lacy as well—scored touchdowns for the Crimson Tide. Current Atlanta Falcons’ receiver Julio Jones also scored a touchdown in the game.
On the other hand, the Blue Devils found it hard to move the ball on Alabama’s vaunted defense, as quarterback Sean Renfree managed only a meager 144 yards on 37 attempts. For comparison, his counterpart, Greg McElroy, threw for 258 yards on just 20 attempts.
“I think we let the idea we were playing Alabama get to us, and we tried to do too much too early there," Renfree said after the game.
This game was also noteworthy because Duke and Alabama share a history in football. The coach for whom the Blue Devils’ stadium is named, Wallace Wade, led Alabama to three championships before moving to Durham. Cutcliffe is also an Alabama graduate—he served as an undergraduate assistant coach for legendary head coach Paul "Bear" Bryant.
Not known as a football powerhouse, Duke achieved record-setting attendance mostly with the help of an Alabama contingency that made up half the crowd. This speaks to the weakness of the football team in recent history, but it is a program that is steadily improving, with Duke qualifying for its first bowl game since 1994 last season.
This Saturday, Duke goes for another accomplish that it has not attained in almost two decades: an undefeated start through three games. The Blue Devil’s path to success in football is not nearly over yet, but the team is a long way from the humiliation exemplified by the loss to Alabama three years ago.
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