2021 Game Recap – Duke Loses (Yet Again)

I’ll be honest with you, I feel like this blog is turning into a form of therapy. I come here and vent my frustrations about a long-term relationship that is causing me a lot of pain, stress and worry. I’m not talking about my soon to be 18 year marriage, I’m talking about my relationship with Duke football. (The line about the marriage is a joke Been married for 18 years and we’re all good.) This loss may have been the worst since … Take your pick of one from last season. I don’t know how to begin to recap the fact that the Blue Devils put up a goose egg against UVA. But I’ll try.

Let’s get to Five Things.

Here are the Five Things I liked:

1. Um … Well … Let me just try and see if I can …
2. The game ended (h/t to Duke Rivals for that one).
3. The reasons not to make significant changes to the staff are all gone. I’ve been talking about trends a lot all season, and I’ll keep doing it, because the trends tell the story. And that story is that the rest of the ACC has moved in front of Duke. Since conference play started, the Blue Devils are 0-3 which continues a trend of mediocre conference play dating back to 2017 (I’ll give the 2016 team a pass because of all the injuries that season). If the administration cares about football, it can’t allow this to continue. Cutcliffe has shown that he can win in Durham, but his reluctance to make significant changes on the staff is holding the team back. The repeated losses, the margin of defeat and the ugly nature of a lot those losses means that Cut and his staff have allowed the program to crash and burn to the bottom of the Coastal. The staff isn’t capable of winning games. Changes have to be made.
4. The OL didn’t give up a sack until the second half (if memory serves).
5. That’s it — I’m all tapped out.

Here are the Five Things I Didn’t Like:

1. This game was so painful that I stopped watching at the end of the 3rd quarter which is something that I almost never do. I’ve been a loyal fan since I was a kid, but this was too much for me. The Blue Devils’ offense was so inept, the defense was completely unable to get a stop and the game was generally so painful that I couldn’t take it. I don’t how you come out and lay an egg like that after a close loss against Georgia Tech. My sense is that the staff lost control of the team. I’ll stand to be corrected on that, but the outcome speaks for itself. Pulling Charlie Ham will cause things like that to happen. Just saying …
2. Jeff Faris doesn’t understand situational football. I mean, what the heck were you doing? Duke is down 27-0 at the end of the first half (about two minutes to go) and has all of its timeouts. Gunnar throws underneath for 5 yards and a timeout is immediately called. Okay, but why? Why not just call a play and burn clock in the event that you aren’t able to get a first down? Then another 4 yard pass and it’s 3rd & 1 with 1:42 and you call … Another timeout? Are you trying to give UVA the ball with a lot of time to score? Well, if you were, great, because that’s what happened. And can we talk about the only good series you had in the 3rd quarter that you wasted by going huddle for a direct snap to Mataeo on 2nd down followed by a designed run on 3rd that everyone and their blind mother saw coming? Gunnar had been throwing great on that drive. How about keep calling Jontavis Robertson’s number?
3. Continued lack of discipline. Drops and penalties killed this team. Add in bad situational football and you end up getting a whooping. And that’s what that was. The Blue Devils got whooped and the sloppy play that has been a problem all season didn’t help.
4. The same old message. I’m sure Cut will take the blame for this and talk about how he needs to prepare the team better. He’ll say he knows what good football is. But is that message resulting in wins? Is it making the team better? Is anything changing? If we keep hearing the same thing week after week followed by the same result week after week, what reason do we have to believe that Cut is going to turn this around? Look, I love everything that Cut did for the program. I respect everything he did for the program. But we are knee-deep in Franks and Roof territory. Look at all the conference losses and the margin of defeat in those losses from the last conference game of 2018 to this season and you can see that we’re just as bad now as we were 20 years ago. I’d argue that the way Duke is losing now is worse than a lot of what we saw from Franks and Roof. And it isn’t acceptable if we care about football.
5. The Blue Devils are getting embarrassed. 38-7 against Carolina coming off of three straight wins. A tough loss to Georgia Tech followed up by a loss of almost 50. This is embarrassing. And it hurts.

Well, that’s it for a while because we have a bye next week.

Go Duke!