One of the biggest questions facing Duke coming into the 2026 season was play at the quarterback position. After winning the starting job during fall camp, Walker Eget struggled in his first game for the Blue Devils, completing just 13-of-26 passes for 131 yards.
Manny Diaz isn’t ready to panic about the passing game yet.
"If you look at the turnover that we had, and not just the new faces, but the new faces and when they arrived- I mean, these are guys who've been playing together now for three and a half, four weeks basically,” the head coach said. “So it would only stand to reason that they'll improve as the year goes on.”
Diaz was quick to point out that the passing offense wasn’t exactly on fire in the past two season openers, both against
FCS-level Elon. The Blue Devils led the Phoenix 10-0 at halftime in 2024, while they were tied at the break in last year’s game.
Still, Diaz understands that for the Blue Devils to make another run at the ACC title and reach nine wins for the third straight season, Eget and the passing game have to come around soon.
“It's going to have to get ironed out quickly, obviously, because you can't be one-dimensional and expect to win games, but we've seen it,” he said. “We've seen it in practice. There's a difference between taking it from practice to a scrimmage or from a scrimmage to a game, but I suspect that we'll make a big jump. I'm confident in the guys that we have, and certainly conceptually we know what we're doing.”
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This article originally appeared on Duke Wire: Manny Diaz confident Duke passing game will improve quickly
