2021 Season Recap – The Fall of Duke Football

Now that it’s been about a full week since Cutcliffe’s tenure it ended, it’s an appropriate time for the review of the 2021 season.

In last season’s recap, I compared Duke to the rise and fall of The Roman Empire. While I hoped that 2021 would bring us a Diocletian who would restore Duke football and put an end to The Crisis of the Jump Pass, we didn’t get that. And it’s particularly frustrating because of how it started. Despite a crushing loss to Charlotte, thanks to a late blown lead, the Blue Devils got to 3-1 and started ACC play with a game against UNC. For a brief moment there, it seemed like while we didn’t quite get a Diocletian, we had, at the least, found a Majorian, a leader who undertook an effort to take it all back and restore the program to its past glory. But, just like Majorian met his fate at the hands of Ricimer, David Cutcliffe met his fate at the hands of the rest of the ACC. After winning three of the first four, Duke managed to end the season on seven straight losses and a final record of 3-9 (0-8).

Why did this happen? As I detailed previously, Coach Cutcliffe’s stubbornness had a lot to do with it. But let’s detail it more in the season recap version of Five Things which will be Five Reasons Duke Fell to Pieces:

1. Shuffling the deck chairs. When it comes to staff, a lot of people have complained about the unwillingness to get new blood from outside the system. Instead of getting outsiders, Cut continued to promote people who were already on the staff to new positions, regardless of whether they were qualified for it. I’m sure that Jeff Faris is a nice guy, but his background as a former walk-on safety doesn’t scream “OC/QB coach.” Same thing with Zac Roper when it was “his turn” to be the OC. He didn’t have the qualifications or the background, and that became apparent when we barely won games with a generational talent like Daniel Jones. Then it all fell apart in 2019 with The Jump Pass. And, despite the disaster that slowly, and painfully, unfolded from that moment forward, Roper stayed on staff and Cut gave the OC job to another guy who wasn’t qualified for the position. Why a coach keeps staff members who aren’t doing their jobs is hard for a lot of us to understand. Which brings us to our next point.
2. No accountability when it comes to coaches. The defense this year was terrible, just terrible. The pinnacle was giving up more than 500 yards to Louisville’s quarterback while getting throttled by 4o points. This came after terrible performances against Virginia, Wake Forest and Virginia Tech. The Virginia Tech performance was particularly awful because the defense gave up more than 500 yards to a team that hadn’t managed that feat in more 40 games. Despite that, Matt Guerrieri remained the DC. Just like with the offensive staff, we saw no accountability. Firing staff midseason won’t always fix problems, but it will say that certain behaviors aren’t tolerated. Not taking action allows bad habits to take hold and creates a bad culture. That’s what Cut allowed to happen, and he paid the price for it.
3. Lack of creativity on offense. I’ve talked about using our backup QBs as WRs before. It didn’t happen. Total mistake. Just like using the Moore package in the same fashion every single time he took the field. If you aren’t creative on offense, if you don’t disguise things and mix it up, the defense will figure out what is coming and tee off on your quarterback. And that’s what we saw all season long during conference play. The defenses figured out what the Blue Devils were going to do and we didn’t make any adjustments. How about stop running the same tempo we’ve run since 2008? How about we go Power I, run a huddle and use a fullback? I mean, no one would have been prepared for it. But we didn’t see that happen. One way to describe the situation over these last few years is if it makes sense, Duke isn’t doing it.
4. Inconsistent player treatment. This isn’t a knock on Chase Brice, but he needed to come out in 2020 and get his head right. But, despite all the interceptions and ball security issues, Brice kept playing. He also didn’t have a goal line package that took him out of the game. Despite the fact that Gunnar Holmberg played significantly better than Brice, especially early in the season, Gunnar got stuck with a Moore package that may have cost us a game against Charlotte (I believe the Duke Football Talk guys pointed that out at the time and I can’t disagree with that assessment). Then, when Gunnar starts lighting it up against Kansas, he suddenly stops running the ball. And they let Calhoun throw a pass against Miami when Gunnar has the offense humming. It’s hard to think that all of this wasn’t the result of a plan instituted by the coaching staff, particularly when you factor in that he got benched at Louisville. When one QB gets treated like he can do no wrong, but a captain gets treated the way Gunnar got treated, coaches tend to lose locker rooms. And that’s what it looked like from the outside. When we do a historical analysis of the Cutcliffe era, it will be hard for me to overlook the fact that he seemed to go out of his way to sabotage Gunnar and, in doing so, gave us a horrendous 2020 season and clipped the wings on a 2021 season that could have given us hope for the future. And, to make things worse, we may lose a quarterback with two years of eligibility left. Think about that for a minute – if we had played Gunnar in 2020, he could have been the starter for three plus years. And Cut ruined that possibility. Inexcusable.
5. The four things listed above can easily be distilled into failing to adapt. If you go back and watch the bowl games from 2012-2015, you’ll see how many times the Blue Devils ran the same plays in the same situations. One thing I’ve heard a lot from doing these interviews is that Duke became too predictable, particularly on offense. And that predictability can kill a team. A lot of coaches see the end of their tenure because, over time, the opposing team will eventually figure things. People get used to doing things certain ways and develop habits. Once an opponent figures those habits out, changes have to be made. But, Cut didn’t do that and his time as head coach came to an end. It was a sad way for a transformative Duke coach to end his career. David Cutcliffe made the Blue Devils relevant for an extended period of time. No one had done that since Coach Murray did it in the 50s and 60s. While Spurrier’s time was magic, his two years of excellence didn’t quite reach Cut taking Duke to 6 bowl games in 7 seasons. And that isn’t a knock on Spurrier, it’s just a comment that Cutcliffe did something that no one had done in more than 50 years.

And that’s why the Cutcliffe Era ended the way it did. While we will all thank him for everything that he did for the Blue Devils, we should remember how his era ended and why it ended the way it did. The next head coach will need to do things differently to avoid the same outcome.

In particular, one thing that the next coach must do different is have more former Blue Devils, particularly those who were significant contributors, on staff. Get guys like Randy Cuthbert, Carlos Wray, Takoby Cofield, Braxton Deaver, David Reeves, Max McCaffrey, etc. in Durham. Have guys around who were big time players wearing their various rings. Set the standard for excellence by having coaches on staff who were big time players when they were at Duke. Imagine a host of former Blue Devils on staff. It’d be beautiful. The message to recruits would be “You can win here. Look at us, we did.”

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

Go Duke!