Down and out, Duke rediscovers what makes it Duke, and leaves NC State behind
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- Duke used a 21-point surge across halftime to defeat N.C. State 45-33 at home.
- The Blue Devils forced four turnovers and blocked a field goal to shift momentum.
- Coach Manny Diaz emphasized Duke's need to rediscover its core football identity.
The clock was ticking, the scoreboard was unfavorable, the home crowd leaned toward the visitors and Duke was well into its fourth game of the season still looking for the team it hoped and thought it would be. The season, to date, had been disappointing to say the least. Saturday was turning out no different.
Five turnovers against Illinois, to turn a winnable game against a ranked team into an embarrassing loss. A dismal first half in Darian Mensah’s return to Tulane that left the Blue Devils with too much work to do.
There was such promise going into Manny Diaz’s second season, and Duke had yet to locate it. Maybe it just took a visit from a rival, the games fans and players still care about and the ACC no longer does, to shake something loose. Maybe it took a mental reboot — “we kind of hit ctrl-alt-delete,” Diaz said — to get Duke back to where it needed to be.
“We talked at the hotel today about our identity and how Duke football wins,” Diaz said. “We thought we had gotten a little away from that.”
In less than four minutes on either side of halftime, Duke emerged as the team it was supposed to be, leaving N.C. State shattered and stunned. Down 13 and being outgained on a two-to-one basis, the Blue Devils scored three touchdowns in as many minutes and never looked back on their way to a 45-33 win, even busting a long touchdown run when they were just trying to run out the clock after a late Wolfpack score applied some belated game pressure.
Duke’s defense forced four turnovers, blocked a field goal and thumped C.J. Bailey every chance it got, rediscovering its confidence after N.C. State’s early push.
“A lot of little things that had not been going our way that went our way tonight,” Diaz said. “The thing we just kept saying was, ‘We just have to do us better.’ It wasn’t a schematic thing.”
Or, as Wes Williams, who blocked a field goal, said: “I feel at peace, a little bit. It feels good. It feels right.”
And as the Blue Devils emerged from whatever funk they’d gotten lost in, the Wolfpack found itself in an unfamiliar situation. N.C. State had been, to date this season, in three games it would likely have contrived to lose — one or more if not all — in recent years, but found ways in all three to make game-winning plays at critical moments.
It didn’t look, through most of the first half, like this was going to be a fourth. The Wolfpack was doubling up the Blue Devils in yardage, had a decided edge on defense and appeared comfortably ahead by two scores. There was every reason for the Wolfpack to believe it was about to be 4-0 en route to 6-0, even if the schedule got tougher from there.
Then the Blue Devils scored three touchdowns in less than four minutes on either side of halftime, benefitting from a bizarre play where N.C. State appeared to snap the ball unexpectedly while receivers were looking to the sideline and Bailey wasn’t expecting it. Bailey, under immediate pressure, threw up a jump ball over the middle that Tre Freeman ran nearly all the way back to set up the second of the three Duke touchdowns.
And after Duke scored on the first possession of the third quarter to go up 28-20, now N.C. State was in another one of those games, yet again.
There was a moment, late, when it looked like another big play would turn the tide. After cutting it to a one-score game with four minutes to go, the Wolfpack had Duke in 3rd-and-1. One stop there and it would have been N.C. State’s game to lose.
Anderson Castle, nominally a short-yardage back, broke through the line and never stopped, running 66 yards right into rivalry history for his third touchdown. And Duke had recaptured, along the way, what it always thought it would be.
“We just wanted to get back to doing what we do best,” Duke receiver Samir Hagans said. “I feel like this game was a good testament to the work we put in this week, showing everybody we are still who we are.”
N.C. State lost a game it could have won. Duke won a game it could have lost. After being on the other side, they swapped places Saturday night. The Wolfpack still has a cushion. The Blue Devils figured it out just in time.
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This story was originally published September 20, 2025 at 8:28 PM.
