In Duke’s first five games, it seemed to just simply find a different gear when the going got tough, dominating the fourth quarter en route to a 5-0 record.
However, that gear appeared to get jammed Saturday night in Atlanta, as the Blue Devils fell 24-14 to Georgia Tech for their first loss of the season.
Some of this is probably just simple math. With the amount of fourth-quarter comebacks Duke engineered up to this point, it was due to falter once. After overcoming a 20-point deficit to rival North Carolina, maybe it just averaged out to a disappointing fourth quarter at Bobby Dodd Stadium.
“We've always felt very confident about the way we play in the fourth quarter, and today, our guys didn't have it,” head coach Manny Diaz said.
Another explanation may have been just the tank running out of gas. After six straight games, players began to feel the wear and tear on their bodies. Multiple starters were banged up and exited the game, and others were forced to play at less than full strength because of a lack of depth. Terry Moore and Cameron Bergeron were not on the field after halftime, robbing defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke of two of his best options in the secondary.
Instead, this game seemed like one that Duke could have won regardless of these circumstances, as the Blue Devils held an improbable 14-10 lead heading into the final period. In a quarter that it usually dominates, it looked completely helpless, self-inflicting multiple wounds to ruin the program’s best start since 1994.
For the majority of the first half, Duke looked like it would not stand a chance against a dynamic Yellow Jacket team, with quarterback Haynes King engineering an efficient opening-drive touchdown march. The Blue Devil defense then began to hold and look like its usual self, but its counterpart could not hold up its end of the bargain.
Against inferior competition and in a rivalry game where the laws of football seem to escape, Duke was able to find just enough to scrape by and pull out late victories. But against most of the ACC, including the Yellow Jackets, there is little margin for error. Unfortunately for the Blue Devils, they beat themselves just one too many times down in Atlanta.
Out of the half, Duke was set up with prime field position after a big kick return from Peyton Jones. But instead of converting on a scoring drive with a short field, Diaz’s crew left empty-handed, after a gutsy call to pass up on a game-tying field goal resulted in a pass interference on Jordan Moore that ended the drive.
“It's a shame. It feels like on a critical play, it was one of the league's top players making a play,” Diaz said about the pass interference call. “But like I said, I can't say anymore about it without having seen the film, but I just felt like that was just us competing. I just don't know,”
This combination of poor execution and maybe just overall bad luck reared its ugly head on Duke’s next trip to the red zone, where Thomas tripped on his own teammates to fall short on fourth down and force the visitors to miss out on more easy points.
Miraculously though, Duke still found a way to take the lead in the third quarter, albeit before reaching the red zone again. After forcing a punt, Murphy and company struck gold on a one-play drive. The Georgia Tech secondary had a miscommunication combined with a poorly-timed blitz, and Sahmir Hagans came streaking free down the middle of the field, going untouched for a 65-yard score and putting the Blue Devils up 14-10 going into the quarter they have dominated all year.
Strength and conditioning coach David Feeley remarked last week that “the road to easy street goes through the sewer,” with the fourth quarter representing this sewer. Instead, it was a gassed Duke team that got mucked up, as it was all Yellow Jackets over the last 15 minutes. Both Haynes’ — Jamal and King — had their way down the stretch, and Murphy could not produce from the pocket, resulting in the Blue Devils showing their first signs of fourth-quarter struggles and taking their first loss of the season.
In an ACC that is now sporting multiple top-25 teams and has wire-to-wire games across the league weekly, a Duke team that plainly is not at the top in terms of talent can not squander away easy chances for big plays. Against the Yellow Jackets, it got its first sign that things will not always come up aces down the stretch of close games.
Now, the coaching staff will have to find a way to remedy these missed opportunities and get Murphy into more rhythm early on, while also finding a way to give a banged-up defensive unit some rest over the upcoming bye week.
“It's a bye week coming at a good time for us. We'll need it,” Diaz said. “We'll need to regroup, to rest, to get our bodies back and as importantly, get our minds back for the second half of the season.”
If these lingering issues don’t get fixed soon, the loss may begin to snowball into a losing streak throughout ACC play.
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