More turnovers. A shutout loss. Duke is losing in ways of yesteryear
Duke football came full circle in not a good way Saturday night.
For the first time since 2008, the first season David Cutcliffe coached the team, the Blue Devils suffered a shutout loss.
Miami limited Duke to 177 total yards of offense and, not surprisingly, benefited from Duke’s five turnovers in a 48-0 win at Wallace Wade Stadium.
“Being blanked on the scoreboard certainly hurts your pride as an offensive player,” Duke junior wide receiver Jake Bobo said. “It hurts. There’s not much you can say right now that is going to make you feel a whole lot better. It’s embarrassing.”
Back on Oct. 4, 2008, when Georgia Tech posted a 27-0 win over Duke in Atlanta, the team had been through so many losses during losing season after losing season the outcome barely registered.
Cutcliffe, after all, was coaching just his fifth game with Duke that day. Better days appeared to be ahead.
Of course, they were. Six bowl games in seven seasons between 2012-18, including an ACC championship game appearance in 2013.
But Saturday night’s performance brought back memories of Duke’s lost decade of football in the first years of this millennium.
“Where my mind is is not the point total as much as the breakdowns and the circumstances that lead to something like that,” Cutcliffe said. “Obviously you can point to turnovers but you’ve got to go beyond that to breakdowns. You look at scheme. You look at every little thing we are doing.”
The 177 churned out by the offense that has Cutcliffe calling plays? That’s the lowest Duke’s produced in a game since a 2009 loss to North Carolina when the Blue Devils had just 125 total yards.
So here Duke is, saddled with a 2-8 record heading into Saturday’s season finale at Florida State. The last time the Blue Devils won fewer than four games in a season was 2011 when they were 3-9 for the second consecutive season.
Those records marked the low-water mark in terms of wins in a season during Cutcliffe’s era in Durham. If the Blue Devils lose to Florida State this week, they will have failed to win three games for the first time since 2007 when they went 1-11 in Ted Roof’s final year as their coach.
Those were the days when Duke routinely suffered lopsided losses. But, in the waning days of the pandemic-altered 2020 season, those days have arrived again.
Duke has been outscored 160-57 while losing 56-24 to North Carolina, 56-33 to Georgia Tech and 48-0 to Miami.
The Blue Devils have more turnovers than any college team in the country with 35 after losing four fumbles and throwing an interception against Miami.
This is an awful stretch of football, one that Cutcliffe and the Blue Devils surely believed they had left behind when they strung together all those bowl appearances, with wins in the last three.
Duke has one more game this season to try and carry a better memory into its offseason work. A year ago, the Blue Devils suffered through a five-game losing streak before beating Miami 27-17 in the season finale to close a 5-7 campaign.
“We’ve got a lot of things to work on and it starts up front and we’ll work back,” Cutcliffe said. “It’s not any one area. Our players are playing hard so it’s my responsibility to put them in positions to be successful and put them in position to execute. We’ve got one more game left and we’re happy we have that opportunity to play.”
This story was originally published December 6, 2020 at 6:00 AM.