Month: January 2022

This is the final(ish) part of our four(ish) part series on the David Cutcliffe era of Duke football. You can find part one here, part two here and part three here.

As I mentioned in the interview with Dave Brown, it has taken me some time to get to this because, well, there are multiple reasons. The first is that I’ve already covered this era extensively on the site. The aftermath of the Jump Pass is why I started this blog (which has now turned into a podcast). I also did a lengthy post last season about why I thought it was time to move on from Cutcliffe and much of what I would say about the end of his time in Durham would be a regurgitation of that. So, with that in mind, I’ll try to brief and hit all the key points.

There are four reasons that I think things ended the way they did. I’ll address each of them in turn. You’ll notice how they all tie into one another. It’s sort of like a circle of sadness.

Reason number 1 – Not changing the offensive or defensive schemes.

I can’t tell you how many people with intimate knowledge of the program told me that the Blue Devil playbook never changed during Cutcliffe’s tenure. And if you compile enough film, and give the opposing coordinators enough time, they will figure out how to defeat the scheme. When that happens, you lose games. A lot of them. Given that Cutcliffe was in Durham for 14 seasons, the way things ended can’t be a surprise. You can’t refuse to adapt for 14 years and continue to win. It just isn’t possible.

Reason number 2 – Not hiring the right staff and no accountability.

As one former player noted, the offense started to fall apart around the time Kurt Roper left for Florida. Now, in fairness, Scottie Montgomery wasn’t a huge step down such that the offense crumbled. But Cutcliffe’s decisions to promote from within ultimately came back to bite him. Zac Roper and Jeff Faris just didn’t cut it as offensive coordinators. But those guys, of course, remained on staff in various roles despite their inability to get the job done.

The same was true on the defensive side of the ball. You can’t replace a guy like Jim Knowles with Matt Guerrieri. No knock on Coach G, but his defense lost games the same way every week. And, despite that, he kept his job. Even worse, a coach as good as Ben Albert when it comes to producing defensive linemen was made co-coordinator and taken away from solely focusing on the defensive line. That was a mistake that proved disastrous in 2021 when the entire defense bottomed out.

But perhaps the greatest staffing failure occurred on the offensive line. Coach Latina was a unique coach. Many former players have gushed about how great he was. After he retired, the offensive line got to a point where it couldn’t protect a generational talent in Daniel Jones. This didn’t occur immediately, but it certainly happened once Jim Bridge took over. Cutcliffe mishandled the situation by bringing Bridge in while Marcus Johnson was on staff. I can’t prove it, but that had to be a big reason why Johnson left and went to Mississippi State. And Bridge’s time as an offensive line coach didn’t end well. Let’s just leave it at that. Coach Frey came in way too late.

The result of Cutcliffe’s staffing mismanagement was a stale offense and a predictable defense. And losses. Lots of losses.

I also think that it hurt recruiting. As the staff developed during Coach Cutcliffe’s time, there were fewer people who had NFL experience. There were also fewer people with experience outside of coaching at Duke. A lot of folks have told me that NFL experience helps, especially when it comes to recruiting. And if you can’t recruit, you can’t win.

Reason number 3 – Quarterback mismanagement.

I am not criticizing any Blue Devil quarterback in this segment. What I am saying is that Coach Cutcliffe, the famed quarterback guru, completely mismanaged the depth chart at one of the most important positions during the end times. The most obvious example of this is Chase Brice. He just wasn’t a good fit for Cutcliffe’s system. The disaster that was the 2020 season wasn’t all his fault as the pandemic restrictions had more than a lot to do with his struggles. But Cutcliffe made matters worse when he refused to bench Brice despite the interceptions and the turnovers. That wasn’t fair to the team and it sure as heck wasn’t fair to Brice. To keep rolling him out there week after week despite the fact that he clearly wasn’t comfortable and needed a break was beyond egregious; it was inexcusable.

What made the 2020 quarterback situation worse was the fact that the same thing happened the season before. In 2019, Quentin Harris had a stretch where he just didn’t look right. In fairness to Q, that was probably the result of the defense knowing the plays before the snap, but it was hard to figure out why Cutcliffe didn’t pull Q aside, let him take a series or two to get his head right and then send him back out.

And it isn’t like Cutcliffe didn’t have options. He’s the quarterback whisperer, right? We saw how Gunnar Holmberg came in and played great through the first four games of the season. Why not give him a shot in 2020 when Chase was struggling? Gunnar had been at the school since 2018 and you would have to presume he knew the offense. If you give Gunnar some time in 2020 to get his sea legs under him, we probably don’t have the offense experiencing settling in moments against Charlotte or the offense’s slow start against A&T. (And, if we avoid those, maybe we don’t lose the Charlotte game the way we did. Which takes us back to the hiring the wrong staff issue.)

Years of bad decisions reached a collective peak in 2021. After Gunnar’s breakout game against Kansas, the playbook folded in on itself. The quarterback run part of the RPO offense disappeared. Like I said, bad coaching hires. Predictable offense. Refusal to change. Which, of course, takes us to the ultimate reason Cutcliffe’s era ended …

Reason number 4 – Blowout losses in conference.

This issue has been thoroughly, thoroughly covered here. Given the amount of time I’ve devoted to this, I don’t see a need to re-plow that ground again. It is important, however, to mention, briefly, just how bad it got. And, as I’ve done previously, we’ll define “blowout” as a loss of at least 20 points. Now that we’ve properly defined our terms, let’s look at just how bad it got in the ACC during Cutcliffe’s final two-plus years:

1. Two losses after The Jump Pass in 2019 (Notre Dame and Syracuse. Add in the loss against UVA before The Jump Pass, that’s three, and factor in how bad the offense was in the rain against Wake and you’re really at four);
2. Five in 2020 (Boston College, UNC, Georgia Tech, Miami and Florida State. And you have to be pretty bad to lose like that to a bad Georgia Tech team); and
3. SEVEN, repeat SEVEN, in 2021 (UNC, UVA, Wake Forest, Pittsburgh, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Miami.) And these SEVEN losses weren’t in any way on the low end of the blowout definition. Duke lost by 30 or more to UNC, UVA, Wake, Virginia Tech, Louisville and Miami. Even worse, the Blue Devils lost by 40 or more to UVA (shutout) and Louisville (on the way to giving up 62 points).

The way that the 2021 Duke team lost was painful. And it was the result of a refusal to adapt schematically, hiring the wrong coordinators and mismanaging the quarterback situation. For years.

When David Cutcliffe and the Blue Devils mutually agreed to part ways, he left behind a 77-97 overall record (35-79 in the ACC), a Coastal Division title, three bowl wins, six bowl games and a lot of players who made it to the NFL. While it ended painfully, very painfully, Cutcliffe’s legacy, as time goes on, will be viewed well. Despite the lows, Cutcliffe reinvigorated Duke football. It had been neglected for decades. Despite all that neglect, Cutcliffe made the program important. He made the program relevant. And, for that, we should all be grateful.

While I said this would be a four-part series, I sort of lied. I’ve decided to do another piece on the most important parts of Cutcliffe’s legacy as the head coach of the Blue Devils. That will be a little bit down the road, so don’t be surprised if it takes some time.

Anyway, let me know what you think about what I think in the comments or on Twitter.

Go Duke!

This is the third part of our history of the David Cutcliffe era of Duke football. Part One can be found here and Part Two can be found here.

What If? Halloween 2015 through 2019 (The Jump Pass).

At 6-1 and 3-0 in conference, things were looking good for Duke. Miami had just fired its coach and it seemed as if the Blue Devils could easily get to 7 total wins and 4 ACC wins. Between Carolina, Pitt, Virginia and Wake, our guys had a difficult schedule, but two wins weren’t out of the question. And no one would complain about a 6-2 conference record and 9 wins. Another good bowl game seemed likely. But fate has a strange, if not outright morbid, sense of humor.

We all know what happened to the Blue Devils on Halloween Night 2015. We’ve covered it extensively on the podcast in interviews with Carlos Wray, Thomas Sirk, A. J. Wolf, Joe Ajeigbe, Coach Latina, Mike Ramsay, David Reeves and others. But for those who don’t remember, or who are wise enough to have blocked it from their memories, Miami had a lead late in the 4th quarter after generally controlling the game from the start. With 5:54 left in the game, Miami increased its lead to 24-12 on a 37 yard field goal.

It looked like this would be a loss, but with the game slipping out of their collective grasp, the 2012 class that helped propel Duke to its greatest heights stepped up. After a Thomas Sirk-to-Johnell Barnes touchdown, the Blue Devils cut the lead to 24-19. 2:40 to go. A quick Miami three-and-out gave Duke the ball with 1:45 left on the clock and 80 yards to go. Like I’ve said before, this was the type of challenge Sirk embraced. But it wasn’t just him – everyone on the team stepped up. A series of big plays by Terrence Alls, Max McCaffrey and Braxton Deaver, along with some penalties by the Hurricanes, moved the team from their own 20 to the Miami 1. And then things got interesting.

With very little time on the clock, what looked like a mismanaged clock situation resulted in Sirk running the ball into the end zone and giving the Blue Devils the lead. After that, Sirk converted the two-point attempt which gave the home team a 27-24 lead. Six seconds to go. Unfortunately, the game didn’t end there. In a bizarre series of events, Miami returned a squib kick for a touchdown after eight laterals, some picked up penalty flags, an official missing a player’s knee down on a lateral and a long review that involved the officials coming out of the booth multiple times before declaring the game over and Miami the winner. The fact that the ACC later admitted the refs got it wrong and suspended them didn’t change the outcome of the game and, instead, almost certainly made matters worse.

To say that Duke fell apart after the Miami game would be an understatement. The next three weeks were ugly. Three straight losses after Halloween Night, two-thirds of which were blowouts. The Blue Devils got slaughtered by UNC 66-31, dominated by Pitt 31-13 and lost by eight to UVA. What had been a beautiful 6-1 start by Duke with two weeks in the Top 25 bottomed out at a disappointing 7-5 after bouncing back for a much-needed victory against Wake. The victory in the Pinstripe Bowl salvaged a painful end to what had been a fantastic start to the 2015 season. It was, after all, the first bowl win since the 1960 season. And while I’d certainly like to talk more about David Reeves, Carlos Wray, Ross Martin, Max McCaffrey, Jeremy Cash, Will Monday and the rest of the guys who helped get the Blue Devils to four straight bowls and a thrilling win against Indiana in overtime, this is called the “What If?” era for a reason.

2016 looked to be a promising season for Duke. While the team lost a lot from its core, it returned a solid group. Players like DeVon Edwards, Shaun Wilson and A.J. Wolf returned to Durham as did Thomas Sirk for what was supposed to be his final season. But, as we mentioned, fate can be morbid at times and this was no exception. Sirk suffered an Achilles injury in February and another just before the season started. Those injuries caused Cutcliffe to turn to Daniel Jones at quarterback. But that wasn’t all. No, the brutal injuries just kept coming. Edwards suffered a season-ending injury against Notre Dame and then the floodgates opened. The Blue Devils lost Gabe Bradner (tackle), Jela Duncan (RB), Anthony Nash (WR), Tinashe Bere (LB) and on it goes and on it goes. Even the kicking teams got in on the injuries when Duke’s punter, Austin Parker, got hurt against Louisville. It was so bad that A. J. Wolf was the only captain who could play at one point. 2016 was a brutal season made tolerable by the promise of Jones and a win over Carolina.

2017 saw Duke return to a bowl game after a 6-6 regular season. The team started hot, racing out to a 4-0 start. But after beating Carolina again, the Blue Devils lost six straight. It later emerged that Jones was hurt. Imagine if he hadn’t been. Could Duke have done better than 6-6 and a win in the Quick Lane Bowl? Seems likely, but we’ll never know. Regardless, a winning season is a winning season. And 7-6 was a good bit better than 4-8. There was optimism heading into 2018. And why not? With a healthy Jones and the emergence of players like Ben Humphreys and Joe Giles-Harris on defense and Deon Jackson and Brittain Brown at running back, the sky was the limit.

But don’t get too optimistic. Remember the title of this era?

If 2016 was injury-riddled, 2018 was injury-plagued. If 2016 was the appetizer, 2018 was … Well, 2018 would be the main course. And then some. It was bad. Really, really bad.

Mark Gilbert suffered a horrendous hip injury, Michael Carter got hurt, Marvin Hubbard (RB) ruptured an Achilles, Jones was out for two games, Brown injured his knee, Humphreys got hurt, Giles-Harris got hurt, Koby Quansah broke his foot and the Wake Forest game happened. That ugly, 59-7 thrashing that saw Ben Humphreys hobbling, desperate to stay in and make a play before getting taken out – it happened. We can’t forget about it.

I recall listening to a podcast that season in which it was argued that Duke lost something like 1/3 of its players to injury when it was translated to overall minutes for that season. My memory is a little fuzzy on that and I couldn’t find the podcast to confirm it. But whatever the actual numbers may have been, we can all agree they weren’t good.

And what was particularly frustrating was that season was so damned promising. Duke jumped out to a predictable hot start and stood at a perfect 4-0 heading into a matchup with Virginia Tech. Then Jones got rushed back after missing two games, Virginia Tech slaughtered the Blue Devils 31-14 and ruined a night game at Wallace Wade. Jones couldn’t run and the offense continued to run an RPO scheme which left many of us wondering why the staff didn’t play Harris for another week since the bye was coming up and Q had been playing so well. It’s a good question to which there isn’t a good answer, especially given that Harris would show one year later just how well he could play against the Hokies.

While Duke bounced back after the bye and beat Georgia Tech, the midseason doldrums arrived at … well, midseason. Just like they always did towards the end of Coach Cut’s tenure. And that isn’t all on Coach Cut, although it did become a recurring, and frustrating theme during his time in Durham. The Blue Devils lack depth. They always have. It’s been an issue for a long time and it has a lot to do with why the team regularly struggles in the second half of the season. You can blame coaching all you want, and Cut is a fair target for that because of his failure to make changes to his offensive and defensive schemes, but it would probably be easier, and mentally healthier, to just accept the fact that Duke has a real thin margin for error because the team slows down as the season progresses. And when you have injuries pile up, you end up with what happened in 2018. A beautiful 4-0 start that turns into a mediocre 5-3 after 8 games with losses to Virginia Tech, Virginia and Pittsburgh. Two straight wins got the Blue Devils bowl eligible and a guaranteed winning season at 7-3. But after Duke righted the ship with an outstanding 42-35 victory over North Carolina and appeared to be heading in the right direction, the late season doldrums decided to make an appearance. Which, come on, recurring historical trends, could you cut us a break? (No pun intended there.)

Immediately after beating Carolina, the Blue Devils ran into the buzz saw that was the 2018 Clemson Tigers (you know, the team that managed to win a national championship that year). The game ended with a 35-6 loss, but that obscures the fact that Duke was up 6-0 at the end of the first quarter.

So, what happened? How did the Blue Devils give up 35 unanswered? Well, for starters, Duke played a very, very good Clemson team, so be realistic about what you expected. But more important, injuries happened. And, as we’ve mentioned previously, it’s a lot harder for our guys in Durham to recover from those. In fairness, it would be hard for any team to replace that many injured players in one season (with the possible exception of the machine that is Alabama). That loss, and the injuries the team suffered, carried over into that total and complete stomping Wake Forest put on the Blue Devils. A nice 7-3 record after 10 games that included a wins against the Big Ten’s Northwestern, the Big 12’s Baylor and conference wins against Miami and arch-rival UNC went up in flames with two straight conference losses by a combined score of 94-13. We’ll call that margin of defeat horrendous and not get into the thesaurus, thank you.

While 2018 ultimately ended on a positive note with an Independence Bowl victory over Temple, a lot of us have spent a lot of time wondering “What if?” What if so many critical players didn’t get hurt? What if we didn’t lose about one-third of our team during the season? What if we had been at full strength against Clemson? What. If.

Side note – the 2018 injuries weren’t just limited to the team. The Bull City Coordinators got taken down over Christmas by a very, very unpleasant stomach flu. It was so bad that Mr. Bull City Coordinators, that’s me, lost what felt like 8-10 pounds overnight after the bug hit him on Christmas Eve. It. Was. Bad. I remember recovering in time to watch the bowl game and feeling really, really low on energy. But back to the main story …

Just like it’s predecessor, 2019 began on another “What if?” vibe. Daniel Jones declared for the NFL draft, we started off against Alabama which went, yeah, it went as you’d expect it would go (started well, but ended in defeat). But, despite those challenges, Duke got off to a 4-3 start which isn’t bad for a team that lost a first round pick and generational talent at quarterback and played one of the best programs in the country to start the season. And a lot of us were thinking “What if we hadn’t played Alabama and were 5-2?” heading into our match up with Carolina (that question returned at the end of the season as a 5-7 season could easily have been 6-6 with a different opening opponent). That mindset would become all the more prevalent when that game ended painfully in one of the all-time What If moments in Duke history.

The Jump Pass.

Coming into the game, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Carolina had been playing well under Mack Brown, but the Blue Devils had won three straight against the Heels. Given that, Duke had a shot. And the game started out tight with both teams trading points. Despite Carolina having a real promising quarterback in Sam Howell, the Blue Devils defense managed to keep him check. Howell’s final stat line was 10/26 for 227 yards, 2 TDs and 2 INTs. And while Duke’s offense wasn’t great that night, it did just enough to keep the game close. While Carolina marched out to a 14-3 lead in the third, Quentin Harris and company came roaring back, took a 17-14 lead and, overall, were in a pretty good position tied at 17 at the end of that quarter. While the Heels kicked a field goal to go up 20-17, that didn’t put the game out of reach. The Blue Devils had plenty of time to get the win. Unfortunately, fate decided to go all in and display its truly morbid sense of humor.

With 6:38 to go in the game, Carolina got the ball at its own 21. It began a methodical, 73 yard march down the field that involved a conversion on 4th and 4 at Duke’s 13. At that point, we all probably felt that the game was over. I know I did. And I was okay with it – this just wasn’t one of those games that our guys would win. Given the fact that we’d lost Daniel Jones, I could accept that. The team played overall, so there’s no reason to be down about it. Right? But then, man, things took a strange turn.

On 1st and goal from the 3, the defense knocked the ball out of Javonte Williams’ hands and Shaka Heyward recovered it. With 2:55 to go, the Blue Devils needed to go 94 yards for a win. And Quentin Harris looked poised to do just that. Two fourth down conversions later, Duke had the ball at the Carolina two yard line with 18 seconds to go. And then, well, then The Jump Pass happened. Argh. Blerg. Ugh. Son of a …

Here’s how it went down. The Blue Devils came out in what looked like a run formation with Harris in shotgun between a wishbone. Carolina took a timeout. After the timeout, Duke came out … In the same formation. The. Exact. Same. Formation. A formation that it had previously run against Carolina’s DC when he was at Army. A formation that the team only ran one play out of. A formation that confused the Blue Devils’ players. And then, well, just look at the tape, starting before the timeout.

And that’s how the game ended. Painfully. Very, very painfully.

We’ll cover the aftermath of this game in the next installment and how it paved the way for the end of Coach Cutcliffe’s time in Durham. But, before we conclude, we will discuss how idiotic this play was. To begin with, the defense knew what was coming and were clearly prepared for it. Why stay with it after the timeout? But why call a play that took the pass attempt out of Harris’ hands? Why have your running back throw the ball? Why not let Deon Jackson run it? Why not throw it to Scott Bracey or Noah Gray? All of those guys had played well. Why not let Q try and run it? He could do that, so why not give him a chance? There was so much wrong with this play that it’s hard to analyze it fairly. But what isn’t in dispute is that any control Cutcliffe had over the locker room was gone at this point. The scores of the next four games of 2019 and the 2020-2021 seasons would prove it. While the Cutcliffe era had been good for Duke, it was time for it to end.

And that’s Part Three of the Cucliffe era. We’ll get to work on Part Four soon, but that’s going to be tough. The end was brutal for the Blue Devils and it’s hard to relive it. I’ll do my best to keep it short.

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

Go Duke!