Duke had a chance to beat FSU with a limping Riley Leonard, but not without him entirely
Even before Riley Leonard was spun to the turf by his facemask, reinjuring his already balky right ankle, Duke was engaged in a grand football experiment worthy of any of the cutting-edge research being done on campus.
Was it possible not only to win a game without a fully functioning quarterback — a thesis they successfully tested a week ago against N.C. State — but to hand the fourth-ranked team in the country its first loss on the road on a raucous Saturday night?
The answer, not surprisingly, was that it was going to take a little something more from that position to win at Florida State than Duke got, but they made it work for a lot longer than anyone probably expected, a tribute to the progress Duke has made across the board as a program.
The Blue Devils still led by three at the end of the third quarter, but Leonard was done for the night by then and Florida State rumbled to an all-but-inevitable 38-20 win to claim pole position in the race for one of the two spots in the ACC championship game. Duke, thanks to North Carolina’s inexplicable loss to Virginia, still has every shot at the other.
With their quarterback clearly at less than full strength but gutting it out, Duke was in the fight and led for almost 47 minutes. It all turned when Florida State’s Braden Fiske grabbed Leonard by the facemask and tore his helmet off. The torque spun Leonard to his right — putting all the weight on the right ankle he hurt on the final play of the loss to Notre Dame three weeks ago.
Leonard got up, tried to walk it off and fell to the turf. There was more than a third of the game still to play, but it became, at that point, academic. He wasn’t going back in, and Duke wasn’t going to win without him, even at 75 percent of his best. Not on this night, against this opponent.
“Riley’s a warrior and I know if they were going to give him a shot to go, he was going to go, regardless,” defensive lineman Dwayne Carter said. “I’m proud of him. He gave us his best.”
Henry Belin IV had one shot to make a play, but overthrew Jalon Calhoun in the end zone on fourth down with a chance to give Duke a 10-point lead. There was no point in kicking the short field goal; six wasn’t nearly enough of a cushion. Ten wouldn’t have been either, as it turned out.
“At the end of the day, in these types of games, these types of atmospheres, we’ve got to be more effective in the throw game,” Duke coach Mike Elko said. “We’ve got to complete more than eight passes to win a game like that.”
For most of three quarters, Duke was on its way to one of the most memorable Triangle visits to Tallahassee, up there with Torry Holt’s five touchdowns for N.C. State in 1997 — the Wolfpack lost, but upset the Seminoles in Raleigh a year later — and the Wolfpack breaking FSU’s 39-game home ACC winning streak in 2001 and Nick Weiler’s Tomahawk Chop celebration after kicking a 54-yard field goal to give UNC a memorable win in 2016.
(If Mack Brown ever beats his alma mater, that’d probably rank up there whatever the circumstances, at this point, whether it’s in Tallahassee or not.)
Given that Duke was still looking for its first win against Florida State in its 22nd attempt, a win would be one for the Blue Devils’ record books in any case, but the stakes within the ACC couldn’t have been higher. The Blue Devils hadn’t shied away from the moment in big-time Saturday night national TV games against Clemson and Notre Dame, but both of those were at home. This was different, with every seat filled in a hostile environment that’s hosted a few of these kinds of games over the years.
And yet Duke still answered the call, twice stopping Florida State on 4th-and-short to start the game and jumping out to 10-0 and 17-7 leads, the second on a Chandler Rivers tip-six after the Blue Devils pinned the Seminoles deep in their own territory, walking into the end zone with a deflected pass.
The Blue Devils took it to Florida State despite Leonard not quite his normal self throwing the ball — two of his early incompletions were drops, but three were uncharacteristic overthrows — and with none of his trademark elusiveness, although he did scramble for 13 yards at one point. He opened 1-for-8 before zinging one across the middle to Jordan Moore; he finished 7-for-16 for 69 yards, with one interception and that one fateful sack.
As long as he was in the game, that was enough, because the Duke offense was able to keep things moving on the ground as Jaquez Moore sprinted to a career night, opening the scoring with a 42-yard touchdown run that saw him turn the corner on the Florida State defense and outrun it to the end zone.
“From a game-plan standpoint, we knew we couldn’t get behind the chains because we’d have a really hard time keeping the pass rush off of us,” Elko said. “The plan was to force them to stop us, force them to be physical, and when we did throw the ball, to not be in third-and-long situations.”
Thanks to North Carolina’s loss, with the Tar Heels and Louisville still on the schedule, the Blue Devils still have a wide-open path to Charlotte and what would assuredly be a rematch with Florida State — of 2013’s title game, of Saturday night — on a neutral field.
They’re going to need a healthy Leonard to follow that path to its conclusion. Duke got enough from him Saturday to beat just about anyone other than Florida State — and maybe even enough to beat the Seminoles if he’d made it to the finish. It’s a testament to everyone else on the roster how close they came.
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This story was originally published October 22, 2023 at 12:09 AM with the headline "Duke had a chance to beat FSU with a limping Riley Leonard, but not without him entirely."
