Despite late distraction, Duke does enough good things in loss to Irish to please Cutcliffe
After Duke’s 27-13 loss to Notre Dame on Saturday, David Cutcliffe was quick to praise his players.
The Blue Devils coach was proud of their effort in the 2020 season opener, he said. He liked they way they fought and competed. He liked much of what he saw from quarterback Chase Brice, who was making his first college start, at Notre Dame Stadium.
Cutcliffe talked of the “distractions” that the players had encountered as they tried to prepare for the season — the coronavirus and the constant testing for it, social unrest in the country, an early start to class, a different fall camp. So it will be in 2020 with the ever-changing challenges.
Distractions? There was another Saturday just a few hours before game time when the ACC announced it was moving Duke’s road game with Virginia up to Sept. 26 from Nov. 14. Cutcliffe said he came into the pregame team meal to find the players looking at their phones and talking about it, “Because that’s their world, social media.”
“We found about it (Friday) night and I chose not to tell the staff or the team this morning because I did not want them distracted with that,” Cutcliffe said in the postgame media call. “But sometimes, it’s just out of your hands.”
Not that Cutcliffe blamed the loss on an ill-timed ACC announcement. But at a time when college coaches are doing all they can to keep their teams healthy and focused on football, they cringe when something unexpected pops up, especially something so close to kickoff.
In looking at the game, the football answers were pretty obvious. Notre Dame, ranked 10th nationally in preseason, is a deep football team with few holes in the lineup. The Irish are physical and that rough-and-tumble element of their game took its toll on Duke as the game wore on, with an experienced offensive line pounding at Duke’s defensive front.
Brice was fine and said it was a fun experience “playing the Golden Domes” in Notre Dame Stadium. Could the Clemson transfer have been better? Yes, as he was the first to say after the game. And especially so inside the Note Dame 10 in the first half when the Blue Devils came away with two field goals and trailed 10-6 at halftime.
“We took advantage of some good field position our defense gave us,” Brice said. “But inside the 5 we shot ourselves in the foot both of those times. We put points on the board and that’s our goal, but in those situations we wish we could have come out with 7 instead of 3.
“We didn’t make enough plays. We left some out there, I left some out there. In critical situations and downs we didn’t make those plays.”
With Cutcliffe calling the plays, Brice tried to bootleg to his right on the second red-zone possession. He found himself staring at onrushing defensive end Isaiah Foskey and dumped the ball — initially called intentional grounding, the call was reviewed and made a 10-yard sack.
“You just can’t make those mistakes in a game like this,” Brice said, blaming himself.
Or be fooled by a fake punt. While there were a number of keys plays in the opener, as in any opener, it was Notre Dame’s decision to gamble early in the second quarter with fourth-and-8 at its 21 that was a game-changer. Punter Jay Bramblett ran for 14 yards and the Irish soon had their first TD of the season.
Notre Dame coach Brian Kelly later said the Irish were a little “sleepy eyed” and needed something to awaken them. That did it. The Irish went three-and-out on their first three possessions of the game but smoothed things out behind quarterback Ian Book, a graduate student.
“My thought process was I hope to heck it works,” Kelly said in his postgame. “It was there. We saw it on film. Jay’s a very good athlete. You saw he had to cut back to make that first down. We just needed a little bit of momentum and I felt it was the right time to make that call.”
For Duke, the running game was problematic. Deon Jackson had some nice runs in the first quarter but the Irish squeezed in and shut it down — Jackson finished with 52 yards and Duke with 75.
In contrast, the Irish had 178 yards rushing and 263 passing. Duke’s Lummie Young IV picked off a pass in the end zone in the first half and the Blue Devils would have had another pick by Josh Blackwell later in the half had defensive end Chris Rumph II not lined up in the neutral zone.
Cutcliffe hopes a lot of those mistakes can be cleaned up before the next game, Duke’s home opener against Boston College on Saturday. Brice believes the Blue Devils can, and will.
“If we can play a little bit faster, get in a little bit better shape, I think we’ll be able to move the ball, running wise, better but also the passing game,” Brice said.
Brice said the Blue Devils “got a little bit tired” in Saturday’s game. He said he needed to “take ownership” of that and further improve his conditioning to be at his best for four quarters.
But overall, Cutcliffe saw enough good things to say he believes this Duke team is better than the one that was 5-7 a year ago.
“We’ve got enough weapons on offense to be effective, we’ve got some defensive people who can make plays,” he said. “This is a pretty fierce group. This is a confident group. They’re going to get better and better and better.”
This story was originally published September 13, 2020 at 6:00 AM.
