Duke’s bowl hopes on life support after humbling loss to Syracuse
Duke’s dream of absorbing the loss of a first-round draft pick at quarterback and returning to a bowl game is dying faster than one of the Blue Devils’ ill-fated passes.
The Blue Devils suffered their fourth consecutive loss on Saturday, a humbling 49-6 thrashing at the hands of a Syracuse team that’s been anything but mighty this season.
Before Saturday, the Orange (4-6, 1-5 ACC) had no ACC wins and had yet to beat a team from a Power 5 conference. Duke now joins Liberty, Western Michigan and Holy Cross in the list of teams conquered by the Orange this season.
Duke’s losing streak is now four games and this latest loss appears the most disturbing because there really weren’t any new problems that led to it.
The Blue Devils’ offense continues to be stuck in the mud, unable to generate anything to put pressure on an opposing defense. Losing quarterback Daniel Jones to the New York Giants has proven lethal.
Syracuse had allowed 30.7 points per game over its first nine contests. Duke (4-6, 2-4 ACC) managed just two field goals on Saturday.
Yes the Orange made a change at defensive coordinator, firing Brian Ward after Boston College racked up 691 yards of total offense in beating the Orange 58-27 on Nov. 2.
Syracuse had an an open week prior to coming to Durham so their adjustments under interim defensive coordinator Steve Stanard were successful.
But it’s not like they recreated the schemes used by the 1985 Chicago Bears.
Duke coach David Cutcliffe explained what the Orange did and what his team didn’t do.
“You could tell with the change the emphasis was to stop the run,” Cutcliffe said. “So they loaded the box and we didn’t defeat man coverage and we couldn’t throw and catch it.”
Against that, Duke managed a mere 279 yards of total offense. It’s the third time in Duke’s four-game losing streak it has failed to reach 300 yards in that category.
Quarterback Quentin Harris completed 19 of 36 passes for just 157 yards while being sacked four times. This despite Syracuse focusing so much on the run that his receivers were in one-on-one coverage the majority of the time.
“We moved the ball at times and then we would help them,” Cutcliffe said, “either with a penalty or we took some sacks that, I’m anxious to see (on film) why we took them.”
Though the final score was lopsided, Duke squandered chance after chance in the first half to get points and even take a lead.
Six of Duke’s seven first-half drives reached Syracuse territory and the Blue Devils managed just six points out of them. The closest Duke got to the end zone was when it drove to the Orange 13 before AJ Reed kicked a 31-yard field goal in the second quarter.
It could, likely should, have been so different.
Duke ran 33 plays in Orange territory in the first half Saturday. The Blue Devils gained 66 total yards on them -- a mere two yards per play. It gets worse when the two penalties for 10 lost yards on plays in Syracuse territory are included.
Harris completed five of 16 passes for 51 yards on those plays. He was sacked three times.
Again, for emphasis, Syracuse lined its defense up to stop the run and dared Harris and the Duke passing game to make it hurt.
It did not.
That’s how this Duke season that looked so promising back in September after a 45-10 win at Virginia Tech has gone so wrong.
In its last 18 quarters, Duke had only five touchdowns.
Down 14-6 against Syracuse, the Blue Devils turned the ball over on three consecutive possessions -- two on deflected Harris passes that became interceptions and also on running back Mataeo Durant’s fumble.
The Orange scored touchdowns as a result of all three and there was no way Duke’s offense could keep up.
Only Georgia Tech, which is transitioning to a pro-style offense with players recruited to play in former coach Paul Johnson’s triple-option, entered Saturday averaging fewer total yards per game than Duke among ACC teams.
“Obviously it sucks,” Harris said. “You want to play better and have better outcomes than we’ve had the last few weeks. But everybody is still sticking together.”
Duke has proudly played in six bowl games in the last seven years, winning its last three bowl games in succession. The dream, even after Jones left a year early for the NFL, was to plug career backup Harris in for his redshirt senior season and continue that streak of success.
Now Duke finds itself needing wins over Wake Forest and Miami over the next two Saturdays to reach the six wins required for bowl eligibility.
There is a path for Duke to go bowling as a five-win team, thanks to its superior Academic Progress Rate that would put it at the front of the line if any 5-7 teams are needed to fill out the bowl lineup.
But even considering such a thing is preposterous unless the offense finds its way to the end zone more than one time a game on average.
Cutcliffe didn’t mince words about how he plans to deal with things over the regular season’s final two weeks.
“We’ve got to be better and we’ve got to be better fast but we’ve got to own it,” he said. “We are not going to run from it and we are not going to let this define us and we’re not going to let this defeat us. Anybody who thinks so doesn’t need to be around here. That’s the mentality we are going to have.”
This story was originally published November 16, 2019 at 9:34 PM with the headline "Duke’s bowl hopes on life support after humbling loss to Syracuse."