Category: Duke History

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!

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.