Optimism, always a dangerous thing for Duke football, is creeping back in after three straight wins to finish last season.
And I do think the Blue Devils will probably make a bowl for the second straight year, though 6-6 should be a reasonable goal to be happy with and not a baseline expectation. But any talk that this is the year the Blue Devils return to the glory days of a half-decade ago—competing for an ACC Coastal Division championship and winning as many as nine games in the regular season—is absurd.
What did Duke really accomplish during the last three games of last season, besides sending its seniors out on a winning streak? It beat a slumping Georgia Tech team at home, notched a win at Wake Forest and got matched up against a mediocre Mid-American Conference team that felt so hopeless in the first half of a meaningless bowl game that it elected to try a fake punt on fourth-and-18 from its own end zone.
That victory against the Demon Deacons was certainly the highlight of the season, but when beating Wake Forest in football is a good enough reason for raucous celebration, it’s hard to imagine a leap back to the top 25 anytime soon. At least half the teams on the Blue Devils’ 2018 schedule will probably be better than Wake Forest.
Let’s start with Clemson. I think we all agree that’s an automatic loss in Death Valley. Then, look a couple weeks earlier in the schedule at the road date with a Miami program on the rise. The Hurricanes have blown Duke out two years in a row and haven’t lost to the Blue Devils at home since 1976. They’ll win again without the assistance of any illegal, miraculous kick returns.
That leaves 10 games that, I’ll admit, Duke has a decent chance to win. But, aside from N.C. Central and Army, it also has a decent chance to lose to every other opponent. Northwestern, Baylor, Virginia Tech, Georgia Tech, Pittsburgh, North Carolina, Wake Forest and Virginia are all in the toss-up basket—no, the Cavaliers shouldn’t be chalked up as a win just yet after they’ve beaten the Blue Devils in three straight years. If you flip a random coin eight times, the odds that it will land on a win seven or eight times are about 3.5 percent.
There is no reason to believe the problems that plagued Duke in 2017 have been magically solved. The Blue Devil receiving corps is still unproven at best, we don’t know if Daniel Jones can be consistent enough at quarterback for a whole season to help Duke move up in the ACC, and Shaun Wilson won’t be around this time to save the team on the ground. Redshirt sophomore Brittain Brown will be good, but he’ll have to carry a much heavier burden as the feature back.
The Blue Devils still have question marks on both lines of scrimmage, especially after more than half of their starting offensive line graduated. Their linebackers and defensive backfield will be the team’s hallmark, but Duke will need more of just about everything else.
The Blue Devils’ talent level is nowhere near where it was in 2013 and 2014, when a perfect storm of surprise stars and favorable scheduling fueled Duke’s brief, meteoric rise. All-Americans like Jamison Crowder and Laken Tomlinson aren’t lining up with the offense anymore, and when Duke needs a big play on special teams, it can’t call on DeVon Edwards, Ross Martin or Will Monday, either.
This year’s kicker will either be walk-on Collin Wareham, who hasn’t kicked in a competitive game since high school in 2013, or A.J. Reed, the highly-touted recruit who quickly fell out of favor after converting a paltry 3-of-10 field-goal attempts as a freshman in 2016.
The Blue Devils don’t have the roster befitting a dark-horse contender for another dream season. They will be just another middling ACC program, winning a few games and losing a few as well, once again scratching and clawing their way to bowl eligibility. I’m expecting a 6-6 regular season, but I think finishing with five wins is more likely than seven.
It’s time to accept this as the new normal for Duke under David Cutcliffe and take what it provides, even if it means a trip to Shreveport, La., for a bowl game instead of a more glamorous destination. It would be a better outcome than staying home.
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.