How secure is David Cutcliffe’s coaching job after Duke football’s 2-9 season?
Duke just finished the season with its worst football record since 2007, the year before David Cutcliffe began his job as the Blue Devils coach.
But this season’s struggles, with a 2-9 record and a number of lopsided losses, don’t mean he won’t be around for his 14th season in 2021.
“Simply put, David Cutcliffe has more job security than you or I, and it isn’t even close,” Duke athletics director Kevin White told the News & Observer via email on Tuesday.
Cutcliffe turned 66 in September just as games were getting underway in a season thrown out of whack by the coronavirus pandemic.
The Blue Devils, even with Cutcliffe calling plays for the first time in his Duke tenure, struggled offensively. They committed more turnovers (39) than any team in the country. They averaged just 24.8 points per game.
Duke’s defense allowed 38.1 points per game and, in a four-game losing streak to end the season, the Blue Devils lost 56-24 to North Carolina, 56-33 to Georgia Tech, 48-0 to Miami and 56-35 to Florida State.
White, though, said the restrictions caused by the pandemic, aimed at keeping the players, coaches and the Duke community healthy, were particularly detrimental to Duke’s football team.
The team held only three spring practice sessions before athletics were shut down in March due to the pandemic. The Blue Devils’ offseason conditioning program didn’t go off as planned, losing weightlifting and conditioning sessions.
Duke was the last ACC team to allow its players back to campus in mid-July as school leadership instituted strict protocols that made Duke a leader in keeping coronavirus infections low. The Blue Devils never had to cancel a game or pause activities due to COVID-19 all season.
“While there were additional factors that prevented us from having a successful win-loss record, no one -- and certainly not David -- walked around making excuses for what this team did not do,” White said. “We didn’t play well enough on a consistent basis to win more games. There are many commendable achievements from this particularly complex season, perhaps most notably being available to play each week.”
Cutcliffe’s salary compared to other coaches
Cutcliffe, who is 74-88 in 13 years as Duke’s coach, last received a contract extension in May 2019, when his deal was reworked through the 2022 season. That leaves two years remaining on the deal.
A private school, Duke doesn’t make public contract details for its head coaches. But according to the latest IRS Form 990 the school files to the federal government, Cutcliffe’s compensation is $2,784,769 annually.
USA Today’s salary database for college football head coaches nationwide shows Cutcliffe among the lowest-paid coaches in the ACC. That information shows only Wake Forest’s Dave Clawson, at $2,303,069, below Cutcliffe.
Every other ACC coach has a salary in excess of $3 million.
Looking back on this past season, Cutcliffe said the team has “a lot to be thankful for” as difficult as that may seem given the record.
“What we do have coming back is a very strong nucleus of a team,” Cutcliffe said. “I’ve been asked a lot about, “what are you going to do to fix football,” and to begin with the focus is going to be on strength, conditioning, development, everything that we do and we do well in our program. That’s got to be the focus. We’ve got two classes returning that absolutely have not had a full offseason or even a spring practice. We certainly are looking forward to that opportunity, but when we come back, we know we’re going to be involved in protocol again, as it looks now. It’s just part of the way of life.”
Cutcliffe’s success with academics
When White and Cutcliffe agreed to that contract extension in May 2019, Duke had a 46-32 record over the previous six seasons. That included five seasons with winning records and three bowl victories.
Since then, Duke is 7-16 over the last two seasons, including a 4-14 record against ACC opponents.
But White said he’s looking beyond the recent past in his belief that Cutcliffe should remain Duke’s coach, also taking into account the team’s stellar academic achievements. The NCAA’s latest Graduation Success Rate report, released last month, showed Duke’s football team with a 97% rate. That means 97% of freshmen entering Duke between 2010-13 graduated in six years.
Duke and Northwestern were tied for No. 1 in the country among football programs. Vanderbilt was next with 95. The only other ACC programs to reach 90% were Louisville (94), Boston College (90) and Virginia (90).
“Over the course of his tenure, David’s track record encompassing success on the field, academically and socially is that of someone Duke is extremely proud to have leading its football program,” White said. “The college football landscape, especially for an elite private institution like Duke, is filled with ebbs and flows, and the complete 13-year body of work, which includes the rare combination of bowl game victories and NCAA graduation rate “championships”, under David’s guidance is held in the highest regard.”
The last time Duke posted a record as poorly as this season was in 2010 and 2011 when the Blue Devils went 3-9. Duke followed that up by going to bowls in six of the next seven seasons.
As he did a decade ago, Cutcliffe said last weekend he’s confident the program can be turned around because they persevered through this season.
“The bottom line is, we learned whatever we have to do, we can,” Cutcliffe said. “There is strength and value in that. But I can promise you, regardless of what you may or may not have seen, this team found a way to get better every day it went out to practice. I told the seniors I will be forever grateful for the Sundays that they fought back. It’s been hard, hard on everybody. But they came to work every Sunday. They came to work every Tuesday. Somewhere along the way, that’s going to pay dividends.”