Month: December 2021

This is part two of the planned four-part series detailing the David Cutcliffe era of Duke football. Part One of that era of Blue Devils’ history can be found here.

Redemption and Vindication, 2012-2015: Worth the Wait.

If you had to boil down Duke’s 2012 season to its essence, it’d be “beautiful.” And that’s because that is exactly what 2012 was – beautiful. The Blue Devils hadn’t been to a bowl since 1994. They hadn’t beaten Carolina since 2003. More than that, they hadn’t been good since 1994. And when I say “good”, what I’m getting at is that this program hadn’t had two good seasons in a row since 1988-1989 and hadn’t been consistently good since … Well, let’s just forget about that and not backtrack through years of mediocrity. Let’s instead focus on what is about to happen and how 2012 would start to change things. It was this year that this laughingstock of a football program had enough and turned a corner. Duke was about to become relevant for an extended period of time and 2012 was the first step in that process.

The Blue Devils started strong and raced out to a 5-1 record with wins over FIU, North Carolina Central, Memphis, Wake and Virginia. (Wow, 2 conference wins? In half of a season? That doesn’t sound right, but I’ll take it.) But for a game against Stanford, Duke could have been undefeated heading into Blacksburg to take on Virginia Tech. Unfortunately, that didn’t occur and the Hokies got the win. More problematic than falling to 5-2 for the Blue Devils was the fact that the schedule took a turn for the worse. This team would have to close out the season against Carolina, Florida State, Clemson, Georgia Tech and Miami. While only FSU and Clemson were ranked when Duke played them, they were 10 and 9 in the country respectively, the margin for error was thin. The chances for wins, even thinner. But they only needed one win and they would get 5 chances to do it and punch a ticket to a bowl game. And the 2012 team didn’t waste the opportunity.

Fourth and Bowl.

October 20, 2012, was a Saturday. The Blue Devils had a 7:00 p.m. home game against their arch-rival in what had become, in all honesty, a one-sided one. Carolina had consistently beaten Duke since Steve Spurrier left for Florida at the end of the ’80s. After three straight victories, including a 41-0 whooping to clinch a share of the ACC Championship in 1989, only Ted Roof managed to get a win against Carolina. And that was in 2003. At Carolina. The Blue Devils hadn’t won at home since 1988. Let that sink in for a minute – Duke hadn’t beaten its rival at home in over 20 years (and I know that they alternate where they play every season, so it isn’t like they lost 20 straight games at home. But still, that’s a pretty awful stat, right?). But just like the 5-1 start to the season was different from the seasons before it, this game would be different.

The Blue Devils came out firing and took a 20-6 lead at the half and, at the end of the third, were up 23-3. But games don’t end after three quarters and the fourth quarter would almost see this team snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. It all started on a fourth-and-two. Up two scores, another conversion and another score would almost certainly seal the victory. While fortune favors the bold, it sometimes takes a bit for fortune to show its favor. And that’s what happened here.

Up 23-9 and in control at the start of the fourth quarter, Cutcliffe weighed the odds and called for a fake punt to try and seal the game. Duke didn’t convert and the floodgates opened. Carolina went on a roll after the failed conversion attempt and took a 30-26 lead late in the game. With just over three minutes to go, Sean Renfree took the reins for one last drive at his own 13, 87 yards away from victory. By the time the drive ended, he had methodically marched his team to the end zone on a miraculous catch from Jamison Crowder that became known simply as “Fourth and Bowl”. On 4th-and-2 from the 5 with 19 seconds to go and no timeouts, Renfree took the snap from shotgun. He scanned the field, moved to the right just a bit and fired the ball into double coverage in the middle of the end zone. To Jamison Crowder. For a touchdown. Duke 32. Carolina 30.

With the extra point, the Blue Devils rang the Victory Bell, beat Carolina and were headed to a bowl game. It was beautiful.

The Rest of 2012.

While the first seven games of the 2012 season were largely beautiful, the remainder of the season was anything but. It concluded on a 5 game losing streak, which may have been the result of a decision to celebrate too much after beating Carolina, and a heartbreaking loss to Cincinnati in the Belk Bowl which was made worse by a terrible shoulder injury Renfree suffered at the end of the game. But for most Duke fans, the losing streak at the end of the year didn’t really matter. This team had gone to a bowl. And they beat Carolina. And, damn it all, they won some games. Finally. If they could just play a little better next season, maybe we’d get that first bowl win since 1960. It was possible, right?

2013: Magic.

If the 2012 season was beautiful, the 2013 season was magic. The Blue Devils not only improved upon last season, they set a standard that hasn’t been met since. Duke finished 10-2, won the Coastal Division and played Florida State for the ACC Championship. Sure that game didn’t end well, but the fact that this historically bad team made it to the ACC Championship game was all that mattered. And this team was going to two straight bowl games which hadn’t happened since … Ever? Really? Wow – that’s a terrible, but true, fact. Until David Cutcliffe, this program had never been to back-to-back bowl games. And while the Peach Bowl ended in another heartbreaking loss, this time to Texas A&M, nothing could change the fact that the Blue Devils were relevant. Finally.

While 2013 ended on two straight losses, it was the closest thing to a perfect season this program had seen in a long time. We all remember DeVon Edwards’ miraculous series of plays against NC State, the second straight win against UNC, the comeback against Virginia and the “offense is optional” slugfest that was Duke beating Virginia Tech at Lane Stadium (discussed by Carlos Wray here). 8 straight wins. A Coastal Division crown. Sure, losing two straight to end the season hurt, but the season as whole was perfect, it was magic. The Blue Devils ended the season ranked in the top 25 for the first time in, you know what? I’m tired of repeating those stats. It had been a while, okay? Let’s just enjoy the moment. Like I said, it was perfect. It was everything. It was magic.

Nothing Lasts Forever.

2014 looked to be more of the same. Anthony Boone, Jamison Crowder and Isaac Blakeney looked to finish their Duke careers on a high note. The team started an incredible 8-1 and spent four weeks ranked in the top 25. Unfortunately, two of those weeks involved a loss to Virginia Tech thanks to some rare missed field goals from Ross Martin and an absolute thrashing at the hands of Carolina. The Blue Devils bounced back with a win against Wake, but lost another nail-biter to Arizona State in the Sun Bowl. Watching such a talented group of players finish their career on an interception hurt. It hurt me then and it hurt me when I watched the game again in 2021 for an interview with Carlos Wray.

But just as 2012 was different from the seasons that preceded it, 2015 appeared to be different from the end of 2014. With Boone gone, Cutcliffe turned to a relatively inexperienced quarterback to run the offense. And Thomas Sirk took the opportunity and ran with it, literally. Sirk was a 3-star recruit who converted to quarterback going into his senior season in high school. His inexperience showed at times (and let’s be fair, it isn’t easy to be the starting quarterback at an ACC school running an offense as complicated as Cutcliffe’s), but with the game on the line, few were better. Sirk showcased his ability to rise to the occasion in a 4 overtime win against Virginia Tech in Blacksburg that propelled Duke to a 6-1 record and a fourth straight year of bowl eligibility. The Blue Devils were also undefeated in conference and moved up in the Top 25 after the win, going from 23 to 22 as they returned to Wallace Wade for their next game. Everything seemed to be coming together for this team. And then, in just about the same amount of time it took for Sirk to run in the game-winning touchdown against the Hokies, it slipped away.

And that’s the end of Part Two of this era of Blue Devils football history. Part Three will start on Halloween Night 2015. You all know what that means.

Let me know what you think about what I think in the comments or on Twitter.

Go Duke!

During our interview with A.J. Wolf, I mentioned the different and discrete time periods of the Coach Cutcliffe era. Those eras break down, more or less, to the following distinct periods of time:

1. The rebuilding and renovation era (2008-2011);
2. The redemption and vindication era (2012-2015);
3. The “What if?” era (Halloween Night 2015-The Jump Pass); and
4. The end (After the Jump Pass-2021).

I want to go over those eras in the following four posts. It’s an important thing to do as we start a new era under Coach Elko. When we think about what the program can be, we should remember the heights it reached and how the end of Coach Cut’s tenure reminded us all of the era that preceded it. With that in mind, let’s dig in. And, of course, go Duke!

Rebuilding and Renovation: The Mess we Made.

On November 26, 2007, the Blue Devils cut ties with Ted Roof after 4 full seasons plus 5 games (you’ll remember that he took over as interim head coach partway through the 2003 season). While Roof inherited a mess from his predecessor, Carl Franks, going 6-45 overall and 3-33 in the ACC doesn’t make the administration want to keep you around. While Roof gets a lot of criticism for his teams’ collective performance, this was the year that Duke finally realized how far behind it had fallen and recognized that it wasn’t all on the head coach. After all, the Blue Devils weren’t exactly world beaters prior to Roof. From 1990 until Franks’ dismissal, Duke lost a total of 114 games. During that same time, the Blue Devils managed to lose 23 straight games. Let me repeat that. 23 straight games.

When they did win, it wasn’t a frequent occurrence. In that same period of time, 1990 until Franks’ dismissal, Duke only won a total of 37 games. Making up less than half of those 37 victories, the Blue Devils assembled a beyond anemic 15 conference wins. Let that sink in a minute before you beat up on Roof too much – over 13 plus seasons, Duke managed just over 1 conference win a year. The dictionary defines that as terrible, just terrible. Consistent with their inability to win in conference, Duke went winless three times in six years. I’m not sure what the dictionary would define that as, but it sure isn’t good. In fact, it’s so bad that I’m not going to look for a synonym. You can keep your thesaurus to yourself, thank you.

Finally realizing that changes needed to be made, the athletic department recommitted itself to football. We all heard about the summit that resulted in Cutcliffe’s hiring and while we may not know who pushed former athletic director Joe Alleva to hire Coach Cut (my money is on Cut not being Alleva’s guy given Alleva’s track record), we know that Duke landed a big one. Cutcliffe was a hot name in 2007. He had coached Mannings at Tennessee and Ole Miss, took Ole Miss to a Cotton Bowl and, after coming back to Tennessee, turned the Vols around offensively. Beyond landing a big name as head coach, the school made a monetary commitment to improving the program such that it could be competitive. Big name? Check. Big money, or at least more money? Check. Things looked promising.

It wasn’t a perfect start, but there was noticeable improvement. In 2008, the Blue Devils went 4-8 (1-7). The four wins were the most since 2003. The 1 conference win? The first since 2004. Sure, it was a little bit of aim low and overachieve, but it was a start. 2009 almost brought a bowl to our boys in Durham. The team finished 5-7 (3-5) that year. Those were the most wins since 1994. And when I say that team almost went to a bowl, I mean it. A mere 17 points spread over two games would have flipped Duke’s record to 7-5. Duke lost by eight to Richmond to start the season and by the same amount to 6th-ranked Virginia Tech. If the ball bounces a little differently in those games, the Blue Devils go bowling. But teaching teams to win takes time and, unfortunately for Cut, he graduated a lot of key players that season. Players like Thad Lewis, Leon Wright, Vince Oghobasse, Re’quan Boyette and Vincent Rey. You know, good players. Developmental programs like Duke can’t reload the way that other teams can. And when a program like ours turns over a lot of experienced leadership, the renovations continue. In fact, it may well be argued that the next two seasons were more of a total reconstruction and rebuild than a renovation. Semantics aside, the fact that the program was in the midst of an overhaul was reflected in the win-loss record for the 2010-2011 seasons.

Those seasons were brutal – there’s no way around it. While 2010 looked promising at the start, it quickly soured. The Blue Devils beat Elon and lost by just 6 points to Wake Forest. 1-1, not a bad start, right? Well, in week 3, Alabama came to Wallace Wade and, yeah. It went about as you’d expect. Duke followed up a 62-13 loss to the Crimson Tide with losses to Army, Maryland, Miami and Virginia Tech and dropped to 1-6. The only decent game during that stretch was 21-16 loss to Maryland. Hope returned momentarily when the Blue Devils beat Navy and Virginia, but the good times didn’t continue as Duke lost three straight to Boston College, Georgia Tech and Carolina. The end result was 3-9 (1-7).

2011 wasn’t that different from 2010. The Blue Devils finished with the same record, 3-9 (1-7), and a lot of questions. Duke was now 4 years into a commitment to football and had a total of 15 wins and no bowl games to show for it. While the first two years had been promising, the next two were more of the “Same old Duke football” we’d come to expect. Heading into 2012, one columnist for the Chronicle raised doubts about what the Blue Devils could accomplish. While other university columnists were more optimistic, it isn’t like we really expected much. Let’s be honest – Duke hadn’t had a winning season since 1994. 5 wins was the high water mark of the Cutcliffe era. Why should we expect something different. Again, it looked like “Same old Duke football” heading into 2012.

But appearances can be deceiving and the difference between 3-9 and a winning season is often little more than a few plays and a handful of points. 2010 is a perfect example. the Blue Devils lost four games by six points or less. Had the offense managed an additional touchdown and PAT in each of their games against Wake Forest, Maryland, Boston College and Carolina, Duke finishes with a 7-5 record and goes bowling. And 2011 wasn’t that different. A field goal against Richmond and the Blue Devils win by a point. A field goal against Wake turns a one point loss into a two point win. A touchdown, without the extra point, against Virginia Tech and Duke ekes out another two point win instead of losing by four. That’s three more wins, a 6-6 season and another bowl. Again, the difference between 3-9 and a bowl game is often miniscule – those two seasons proved it. And while you are what your record says you are, 3-9 and a lot of close losses means a lot more hope for a team like the Blue Devils than it does at most places. 2012 would prove it.