Winning is hard.
“This is the time when the head coach is supposed to make sense of what we all just witnessed,” head coach Manny Diaz said after the game. “And I'm not quite sure that I can.”
But there’s one thing he knew for certain.
“What we just witnessed is as mentally tough and as resilient of a football team as I've ever been around in my entire career.”
Duke’s walk-off 23-17 win against Wake Forest caps a nine-win season in Diaz’s first year at the helm. The game was emblematic of his team’s season; inconsistent play, mental fortitude, resilience and ultimately, coming out on top.
Let’s take a step back with the work Duke did. Its physical and mental toughness is well-known, certainly a product of elite coaching and offseason preparation. Within the 9-3 record, seven are one-score games; the Blue Devils are 6-1 in those contests.
Some of it is luck, sure. The ball bouncing one way or another or Maalik Murphy’s shin barely touching the ground against Northwestern before he fumbled.
But in every one of those close wins, there was one constant: Diaz and Jonathan Patke’s defense made a stop to save the day. It looked different in various games, but for a defense which is often worn down to come out and perform six times, the late-game execution has been immaculate.
“We're an elite level defense that wants the game in our hands. So when we run out there and we have that opportunity, I think the guys are just pumped,” linebacker Ozzie Nicholas said.
Against the Demon Deacons, that key stop happened twice. The first was in Blue Devil territory with seven minutes remaining, and Chandler Rivers blew up a screen pass on third-and-8 that would have put Wake Forest in go-ahead field-goal range. Then, on third-and-9 with 1:35 on the clock, Wesley Williams and Kendy Charles wrapped up Wake Forest’s Hank Bachmeier for a big loss.
Bachmeier had success throughout the contest, and the slow mesh offense kept the Blue Devils off-balance at times. However, especially in the second half, that front seven lived in the backfield, recording 11 tackles for loss and five sacks. If there is one consistency about this Duke group, it is those stats, which have neared the top in the country for the entire season.
“I guess today was one of those days where we needed to make some adjustments, kind of lock in,” Nicholas said. “But that’s what great defenses do, so it’s not concerning.”
The late-game execution wasn’t solely a defensive characteristic. Murphy and the offense, who again had an inconsistent first half, scored three second-half touchdowns, including the walkoff 39-yard bomb from Murphy to Jordan Moore. But that play was actually improvisation.
“Jordan Moore was on one of those five-yard routes. The corner jumped it. Jordan Moore just instinctively went deep,” Diaz said. “And I think when they made eye contact and when Jordan went deep, I think Maalik just said ‘There might be something worth hanging on to here.’”
That illustrates an elite level of chemistry between the two, and Moore’s four-year leadership has completely transformed the Blue Devil program. It was a fitting end to a game and a season that had many unexplainable moments, which align with the trajectory of this college football season.
For most of the season, Duke has shown its ability to win in tough situations while battling adversity. Diaz’s team has consistently performed in the final quarter of the contest; he knew that would be a key before the season started.
“The one thing I can promise you, there will be a lot of close fourth-quarter games,” Diaz said at ACC Kickoff in July. “That's just what the sport is. And sometimes the success in the short term can mask what is excellence in the long term.”
Diaz uses an iteration of this phrase a lot — don’t confuse success and excellence, because with how football goes, a team might win or lose, but its play might not reflect the score at the end.
He warned against overreacting to short-term results in his journey to program building. However, this season, Duke has both achieved success in the short term — nine wins and counting — and showed signs of long-term excellence — resilience, culture and recruiting achievements.
By no means were most of these wins perfect; Diaz will be the first to say that his team didn’t play to his standard, including in last week’s win against Virginia Tech. The Wake Forest game featured a lot of mistakes from the Blue Devils. Only 122 yards of offense at halftime, missed tackles and more. Duke’s less-than-perfect halves would come back to bite it at some point this season, right? One would think.
But even though he knew they weren’t excellent, they “found a way to win the game,” Diaz said.
Amidst so much parity and chaos in college football, that’s ultimately what matters in the end. And with wins come program building and sustained excellence. Duke will compete in its third-straight bowl game, looking to achieve a 10-win season for the first time since 2013.
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Ranjan Jindal is a Trinity junior and sports editor of The Chronicle's 120th volume.