From his new ‘eye in the sky’ perch, Duke coach David Cutcliffe has a new perspective
Duke football players must finish off each activity at practice with full effort and pay extra close attention to each detail this season, or they face a new kind of instant wrath.
“We always talk about the eye in the sky doesn’t lie?” Blue Devils senior wide receiver Jake Bobo said. “Now it’s in real time. It’s Coach Cut. And he will light your tail up if you are even slacking a little bit, which is something we definitely need.”
Where previous Duke teams heard about such transgressions when reviewing practice film later, this team gets it instantaneously thanks to a new addition to the school’s Brooke Practice Facility.
At the edge of the two outdoor practice fields stands a tower from which head coach David Cutcliffe monitors their work from above. He climbs the ladder’s 12 steps, electric bullhorn in hand, to get his best view of their work.
“No plays off,” said Bobo, one of Duke’s team captains. “He’s a hawk. He’s got an eagle eye. No matter where you’re at.”
The new coaching perch is not a direct response to Duke’s 2-9 season last fall, which marked the program’s fewest wins since Cutcliffe became the Blue Devils’ coach for the 2008 season. Cutcliffe said the program had been seeking to add a tower and finally found a suitable one, at the right price, this year.
He’s previously climbed up to a spot on the roof of the team’s indoor practice facility, the Pascal Field House, to get a few from above. Because there’s a wide, paved path between there and the outdoor practice fields, the distance limited how much he could see and communicate.
The 12-foot tower puts him right above the action.
“I call it my little nest,” Cutcliffe said. “I can be interactive. You know, where I would have to go before I’m away from the team when I’d go up to see. I really believe as a football coach you’ve got to see everything. I want to see everybody’s individual drills. I’ve actually got my (bullhorn). I’ve actually run the batteries out of that thing. So maybe there’s something there that I should not be saying as much as I’m saying.”
Cutcliffe, who turns 67 on Sept. 16, went back to the earliest days of his coaching career seeking improvement, even though he’s closer to the end of his tenure than the beginning.
As a student working in the athletic department at Alabama in the 1970s, Cutcliffe saw Bear Bryant stand atop a raised tower to run his practices.
“I used to wonder why Coach Bryant went into the tower as much,” Cutcliffe said. “I was able to ask him a couple of times as I got a little older.”
Bobby Bowden did a similar thing at Florida State. So did Don James in his successful career at Washington. Cutcliffe talked to both of them about tower coaching prior to their deaths.
“It can be really effective,” Cutcliffe said. “So we’ve got this new tower where I can put it in different places. I wish it was motorized. I’d rev it up if I could. It’s allowed me to be interactive. I can correct a thing as it’s happening.”
That was the case last month. During a team period near the end of practice, when the offense broke loose for a big gain against the defense, Cutcliffe’s amplified voice from above instructed the players to stop the practice and, well, remove their posteriors from the field.
“Having him up in the tower and, really, keeping the standard,” Duke defensive tackle DeWayne Carter said. “He’s holding that standard because he can see everything. Especially in those team periods. It’s really important. Guys can’t say ‘Oh, I didn’t do this or I did do this.’ You can’t lie. Obviously the eye in the sky doesn’t lie but it’s way different when you see it with the human eye.”
As usual, Duke’s assistant coaches run drills with their respective position groups. Cutcliffe watches from above, instructs or encourages as needed, and sometimes comes down from the tower for closer chats.
“If I have to come down, I can come down,” Cutcliffe said. “I want to be involved with our team but I also want to do the best job that I can do. That’s part of why you go up.”
After going 7-16 over the past two season and aiming to get Duke to its first bowl game since 2018, his players appreciate his willingness to try new things.
“Coach Cut, a lot of people say he’s up in age but he’s sharp as a nail,” Carter said. “He doesn’t miss anything. It’s funny cause he can call out little things that we don’t even see. So we go back in the film room and we watch it out. So it’s crazy to see a man his age is still that sharp but he’s sharp because he cares. He works out. His expectations for us are the same for him. He’ll be working out in the morning, staying sharp like we are.”
All the while, especially when he’s up above during practices, they know he’s watching and looking to provide them an edge.
“You are coming off the field and you are praying he doesn’t yell your name out,” Bobo said. “But when he does it’s constructive and he’s trying to help out. That’s what he does. We are trying to soak that up as well.”
This story was originally published September 1, 2021 at 11:21 AM.