Duke’s players haven’t given up on their coaches, but the losses are piling up anyway
The state of Duke football is such that any sign of life is a welcomed one.
Pittsburgh has designs on winning the ACC Coastal Division and kept those very real hopes alive with a 54-29 win over the struggling Blue Devils on Saturday at Wallace Wade Stadium.
Duke is now 0-5 in ACC play and has lost 10 consecutive league games dating back to last season. Over the past three seasons, Duke is now 4-19 in ACC play.
Late in the first half Saturday, starting quarterback Gunnar Holmberg absorbed a sack that sent him slowly walking to the sideline. He didn’t return to the game, instead heading for X-rays of his clavicle and ribs on his left (non-throwing) side.
Yes, the tough days keep piling one upon another for the Blue Devils.
Entering Saturday as a three-touchdown underdog was highly appropriate, as the Blue Devils’ previous two games resulted in a 48-0 loss at Virginia and a 45-7 setback at Wake Forest. Pittsburgh responded by scoring more points on Duke than any other team had this season.
One thing, though, stood out early in this game. With Duke mired in such an extended slump, conversations about its coaching staff’s future are taking place.
Yet early on Saturday, the Blue Devils played spirited football, with the bench fully engaged and the players on the field showing spunk. Now, that energy didn’t fix Duke’s ills. The Blue Devils still fumbled and stumbled, failing to score on three plays from the Pitt 1 in the first quarter. That’s right. Three plays.
But any talk of the coaching staff losing the team in light of the blowout losses didn’t prove true as far as the Blue Devils’ attitude.
“With the circumstances with those lopsided losses, obviously you worry as a coach what’s the temperature? How are we doing to respond?” Duke coach David Cutcliffe said. “How are we going to work? The thing that I do know is we have great young people. I met with them Thursday night as I always do and I told them they have been one of the best attitude teams that we’ve had here.”
That showed in the first half.
Pitt took a 7-0 lead only to see Duke, despite those red zone woes, score 12 points in a row to lead 12-7.
When Pitt jumped ahead 14-12, Jaylen Stinson returned a kickoff to give Duke the lead again.
Ultimately, Pitt’s offense reeled off 23 consecutive points over the second and third quarters to pull ahead and win comfortably. So the final result is more of the same in terms of Duke’s inability to be competitive in ACC play. The Blue Devils’ average margin of defeat against ACC teams this season is 29.2 points.
That one-sided ledger, coming on the heels of last season’s dismal 2-9 season, is why Duke athletics director Nina King said she’s as disappointed with the football team’s play as Cutcliffe and his staff are. She said she plans a “top-to-bottom” review of the program once the season ends.
Competitiveness will be a factor when decisions are made after the season about the direction of the program from here. The fight Duke showed early was an example of how the players still want to win for their coaches.
It wasn’t enough but it was progress from the previous two games.
Now the Blue Devils face the real possibility of the banged-up Holmberg not being available when they play at Virginia Tech on Saturday. As poorly as Duke’s defense has played this season, that sounds like a recipe for another lopsided loss.
The hits, as they say, keep on coming — good attitude or not.
This story was originally published November 7, 2021 at 8:00 AM.