February 2022 – Bull City Coordinators

Interview – Perry Simmons

Listen here.

To say Perry Simmons was a rock during his time at Duke would be an understatement of epic proportions. Perry started fifty, count them FIFTY, straight games before an injury kept him out of the Peach Bowl in 2013. Perry was kind of enough to stop by for a great talk about what it takes to make a team relevant after years of irrelevance.

Perry on Senior Day (I think that’s Senior Day).

During our hour plus conversation, we covered a lot of interesting topics including the importance of redshirting, Coaches Luke and Latina, how injuries can derail an offensive line and the great seasons that were 2012 and 2013. This interview will bring back some good memories for all you Blue Devil fans. Until we get to Miami in 2015. Um, yeah. Ugh.

Go Duke!

Bonus Episode – A Basketball Duke v. Syracuse Jam Session

Listen here.

After watching Duke handle Syracuse in the Carrier Dome, we recorded a bonus jam session for all you Blue Devil fans. I’m on rhythm guitar and Tim is on mandolin. The tracks are:

North Carolina Breakdown or A Mark Williams Dunk Fest

Roscoe or Griffin and Roach from Deep

Big Scioty or Duke G.R.I.N.D. (we’ve recorded this before, but it’s one of our favorites)

Temperance Reel or Elko Reel

Go Duke!

2022 Season – Five Things I’m Looking Forward To

With the 2021 season in the past, I’m cautiously optimistic about the 2022 season. I’ve said it on the podcast already, and I’ll say it again here, I’m going to be patient this season and look for signs of improvement. Given the massive hit Duke took in the transfer portal, including at quarterback, we have a lot of unknowns coming into this season. And while Coach Elko is doing all the right things to get the Elkra – Elkera – Era? Forget it, I’ve got nothing good for a combo of Elko and Era. Anyway, Coach Elko is doing all the right things as far as putting his stamp on the Blue Devils and getting things off on the right foot. That said, preseason and regular season are two different things. With that in mind, here’s what I’m looking forward to this season:

A new offense. Readers of the site will know that I complained a lot about how predictable the offense got over the last several years. I’m excited to see what Coach Elko and the OC, Kevin Johns, can bring to the table. Johns has a good track record having worked at both Texas Tech and Memphis. He was also on the coaching staff for an Indiana team that put up a lot of points against Duke in the Pinstripe Bowl in 2015.
Moving the student section. It’ll be interesting to see the student section behind the opposing team’s bench this year. Given that the cameras are generally pointed towards the opposing team’s sideline, we always see the opposing team’s fans and colors during home games. It’s a little annoying, and I’m glad Coach Elko is taking steps to try and fix this. Hopefully the students will show up and we’ll see a lot more blue on camera this season. But, again, that depends on students showing up. Let’s hope that happens.
Getting down to Durham. I checked with my dad who thinks that the following is correct, but I’m pretty certain I’ve been able to get to a home game for every coach since Spurrier. We can’t recall if we went to games for both Franks and Roof, but feel like we were there for at least one of them. I can’t wait to get to Durham this season for the first of what will hopefully be many successful seasons under Coach Elko.
Players from the new coaching era on the podcast. Since Duke FB Talk has been getting guys on who are current players, I’ve taken a different approach and, with a few exceptions, tried to get former players on. That way we aren’t overlapping and doing the same thing. Blue Devil football fandom is a bit of a niche market and we don’t need to water things down by doing the same thing. That said, I’m hopeful I can get a player or two to come on who is currently on the team. I’ve had players from every coaching era since Coach Sloan with the exception of Ted Roof (I’m efforting to solve that problem, believe me) and I want to keep that streak going.
Becoming relevant again. As I detailed previously, Cutcliffe did a lot for the Duke program. Perhaps most important, he made the Blue Devils relevant for an extended period of time. Unfortunately, we fell from that standard and that is why we got a new head coach. I’m really, really hopeful that this new era will get us relevant again.

What are you excited about for the 2022 season? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter.

Go Duke!

2021 Season – Additional information

This is an interesting article from The 9th Street Journal about how a series of meetings went poorly during Duke’s 2021 bye week. In brief, local law enforcement met with the team to discuss traffic stops. The meeting didn’t sit well with some of the players as there didn’t seem to be much concern for the rights of those who are stopped by law enforcement. Cutcliffe’s response to the players’ collective disinterest in the meeting wasn’t helpful. He called another meeting the following day and got on the team for being, according to Cutcliffe, disrespectful. That message, like the one before it, was also poorly received.

While there are many components to the issues that cropped up in these meetings which all merit discussion, one thing that I paid attention to was the timing of them. This is a football blog and that is the reason I am looking at the timing. The larger topics raised in the meeting with law enforcement can’t be fully and intelligently discussed on this blog. To begin with, I’m not an expert on use of force by law enforcement. Second, we would need a panel discussion and a series of interviews to be able to cover those. I’m just not set up to do that here. But I will say that use of force, and misuse of the same, by law enforcement is a very, very important issue that we all need to pay attention to.

You’ll see from the team’s Twitter account screenshot included in the article that the meeting with local law enforcement occurred on or about October 18, two days after a blowout loss to Virginia. After this meeting, the team certainly didn’t improve. In fact, the Blue Devils went winless after this and generally only showed life against Pitt (then Gunnar got hurt and, well, we know what happened).

Following the meetings discussed in the Journal, Duke lost a series of games in an ugly fashion. While we may never know with certainty, it’s more than plausible that the meeting with law enforcement and Cutcliffe’s reaction played a factor in the way the Blue Devils continued to struggle last season. That said, we’d already seen bad losses to UVA and UNC.

Again, we may never fully know the story here, but it’s an interesting piece of information.

Go Duke!

Interview – Clarkston Hines (A true GOAT)

Listen to the interview here.

While it is hard to compare wide receivers from different eras of football, no one can dispute that Clarkston Hines is one of the greatest wide receivers to ever play at Duke. He has an unbelievable list of records and accomplishments as a Blue Devil that includes an ACC Championship in 1989. If you haven’t seen him play, pull up some old games on YouTube and you’ll see that he was a true playmaker.

Hines Added To College Football Hall Of Fame Ballot - Duke University — Clarkston celebrates after one of many big plays.

Clarkston is a member of the Duke Athletics Hall of Fame, the College Football Hall of Fame and was a member of the ACC 50th Anniversary Team. And his teams went 4-1 against Carolina. Not too shabby!

And here is one of his most memorable catches to help turn the tide against Clemson and spark the Blue Devils to a conference title.

We covered a lot of topics including the current real estate market, the 1990 Bills team, Clarkston’s former OC Tommy Bowden, Coaches Sloan and Spurrier, the 1989 ACC Championship season and two scoreboard pictures taken that year – one against Maryland and one against UNC.

Enjoy!

The History of the David Cutcliffe Era – Part V, The Legacy

In part four of what was supposed to be a four part series on the David Cutcliffe era, I hinted that an additional part of the series would be forthcoming. As promised, I’ve added a fifth part that more fully discusses what Cutcliffe meant to Duke and how we, as Blue Devil fans, should remember his time in Durham. To discuss that legacy, I am going to riff on the Five Things I utilized for game recaps this past season.

So, with that in mind, let’s get to it!

Bowl games. From 2012 until 2018, Coach Cutcliffe’s teams went to six bowl games and won three of them. Had it not been for the injuries in 2016, I think we see seven straight. Prior to his tenure, Duke had been to eight bowl games and won three of them – that’s the entire history of the program before Cutcliffe. Let that sink in for a minute. When the Blue Devils won the Pinstripe Bowl in 2015, it was the first time since 1960 that any Duke team won a bowl game. That’s a big deal. And I know some people may say that it’s easier to get to bowls now, so who cares about the Blue Devils going to six of them during seven seasons? Well, if it’s easier to get to bowl games and a team isn’t doing it regularly, it becomes a big deal once a coach shows a program it can be done and does it.
Players in the NFL. I’m going to leave some guys out, and that isn’t intentional, but Sean Renfree, Ross Cockrell, Jamison Crowder, Laken Tomlinson, Daniel Jones, Chris Rumph, Victor Dimukeje, Noah Gray and Michael Carter were all drafted during Cutcliffe’s tenure. That doesn’t take into account the UDFAs that made it to the league and turned into significant contributors. Guys like Thad Lewis, Vincent Rey, Lucas Patrick, Matt Skura, Breon Borders and Thomas Hennessy. Ross Cockrell won a championship. Last Sunday, Duke had two guys playing to go the Super Bowl – Laken Tomlinson and Noah Gray. That’s a big deal. Especially for the Blue Devils.
A division championship. Let’s just kick up our feet and remember how darned sweet that magical 2013 season was. Do we need to say anything else about how great it was that Duke played for the ACC Championship? Nope, I didn’t think so.
Coaches. A lot of guys who played under Cutcliffe are now in the coaching ranks. Carlos Wray is running the DL at Crest High School. Takoby Cofield is a GA at ECU. Max McCaffrey is breaking clipboards and serving as the offensive coordinator at the University of Northern Colorado. Thad Lewis made up part of the coaching staff that saw the Bucs win a Super Bowl in 2021. Re’quan Boyette is the WR coach at ECU. Now, this isn’t a complete list and only includes former players under Cutcliffe as opposed to former coaches like Scottie Montgomery and Jim Knowles. There are a lot of former Blue Devils who will become major coaches in time. Just keep an eye out for that. When that occurs, Cutcliffe’s legacy will grow. It’s just a shame that we didn’t see a lot of these guys, and guys like Anthony Boone who tutors QBs, on staff after they graduated. That was a misstep by Cutcliffe that eventually came back to haunt him.
Relevance. From 2012 until The Jump Pass, Duke was a relevant football program. For almost eight seasons, the Blue Devils were important nationally. They went to bowl games, won a Coastal, played in a conference championship game and put several players into the NFL. This program was relevant for an extended period of time in a way that it hadn’t been for too damn long. We can’t overlook just how important that was and how that has to be factored into the ultimate historical analysis of Cutcliffe. While the terrible conference record and sub-.500 win-loss record isn’t ideal, the fact that the program became relevant for an extended period of time under his watch cannot be forgotten. Given all the mess he inherited and had to unmake, it’s easier to understand why he ended with the win-loss record he did.

So, as promised, we are now done with the history of the Cutcliffe era. You can read part one here, part two here, part three here and part four here.

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

Go Duke!