Duke travels to Champaign, Ill., on Saturday to face Illinois, who defeated the Blue Devils 45-19 last season in Wallace Wade Stadium. The Fighting Illini opened their season with a 42-23 victory over UAB, while the Blue Devils dominated Tulane in a 17-3 win.
Blue Devils' head coach Manny Diaz spoke on Monday to recap the Tulane win and preview the matchup against Illinois.
Opening statement
Just looking back, actually, I mean, as I mentioned after the game, proud to be 1-0, proud of the way that our team played, proud of the way we dominated the line of scrimmage on both sides. It was a game that if you just believe in old-school ideals of football, whoever can run the ball, control the game, win the line of scrimmage, be the better tackling team,
be the more physical football team would win the game. And that's exactly what we did. We wanted to major in what we called our known quantities, what we knew about ourselves, and try to take some of the guesswork out of it. And I thought we played to our strengths, and at that point it was enough for us to win the game. Now, obviously, as with any performance, there's a ton we can improve at, that we'll need to improve at going on the road to a team, a Big 10 team in Illinois, who obviously beat us in all three phases pretty soundly over the course of 60 minutes last year.
But we're excited for the challenge, looking forward to getting up there, got a lot of respect for Bret, building a consistent winner there. It's not easy to do, and really kind of the model of what we're trying to accomplish here as well.
Where does the team need to improve the most?
I think the most obvious one is our passing offense, which I mean, if you look at the turnover that we had and not just the new faces, but the new faces when they arrived, I mean these are guys who've been playing together now for three and a half, four weeks basically, and even Walker and his ability to be fully cleared for participation. So it would only stand to reason that they'll improve as the year goes on. I keep reminding the staff and everybody, three years ago we were 3-0 against Elon with two minutes left in the first half. Last year we were 10-10 with Elon at halftime. Both those teams reserved the right to get better, and they did. And the numbers that they put up, and passing offense, for example, all those type of things obviously made a big jump as time went on.
So look, the focus was on how to win that game, and we won that game. It's pretty easy to see that if we finished drives, could have won it a lot more handily. But they get to say, ‘Well, if we would've done this, then the outcome could have changed as well.’ So we got the main things right. We got the meat and potatoes of the game correct, and that was our platform for victory.
The problem with the passing game come down to timing, chemistry?
Probably a little bit of both, right? Well, 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. 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.
On Illinois
A lot of new faces from a year ago, everybody in college football. But again, they're very creative in how they create their explosive plays. That's really, I think, one of the best things that they do. And they hit us on some a year ago, on some eye-deception plays. And so they're going to force you to stop, run the football. We did that well at times a year ago. Play-action pass ate us alive last year. We got to cover that better than we did last year. And then, like I said, just I think the cumulative effect, it was another hot day similar to Saturday, and whoever played, whoever stayed on the field longer, would have a disadvantage in the fourth quarter. And ultimately that was us, and they were able to put the game away rather handily at the end. So don't know that the score was a true reflection on the matchup in the game a year ago, but it doesn't matter. It's how it turned out. But like I said, it's funny, it's like last year's Tulane game. The laundry will be similar, but there's so many new faces on both sides. It'll be unique.
On playing on the road for the first time this season
I think it's neat because when you're on the road, you eliminate distractions. It's just sort of the guys in the hotel, and then it'll be a great environment. And so you really have to have an us-against-everybody mentality. So you do find out a little bit about yourself on the road. I think of the ‘24 team with all the uncertainty that offseason, and we had to go to the park in Chicago and found a way to win that game in double overtime or whatever.
And then last year, our first road test, we played very poorly in New Orleans and didn't match that intensity in that environment. So when you go on the road, you have to recognize there's going to be big momentum shifts, and when something good happens for Illinois, there's going to be a big emotional feeling that you have to respond to with that. So we try to tell our guys at all times, play at a seven out of 10, keep those emotions; it can't be a one, but if you're red-lining past eight, nine, 10, you'll start to make mistakes.
Does the Big 10 play a different way in football? If so, what challenge might that provide?
I think that's sort of a bygone era. I think if you look at really when Urban went into Ohio State and I think transformed that program, my time when I was at Penn State, I think the league- it's not the three yards and a cloud of dust league like it once was. However, it's still the land of large humans, and the game still comes down to winning the line of scrimmage, like I said, how we did against Tulane last week. So they can throw the football. I mean, they've got weapons, and the quarterback can really sling it, and then if everyone's covered, he can take off and run. So I think the game of college ball in general is more homogenized. I think more people are kind of running the same things on both sides. So it's not like how it used to be.
On the four defensive linemen all playing their first game in the opener
I thought they were outstanding. And it's funny, I don't even think about that. We play so many guys, so whoever's in and because even I think upfront, I guess we started Bryce and Kevin O'Connor. It's funny, I don't show you how much I pay attention to it, but Tyshon Reed was probably the best pass rusher we had. I know Bryce had the stats. Tyshon drew two holding penalties in addition to his sack. I felt this during training camp, I feel like we're rushing the passer better as a unit than we did really in the last couple of years, where last year we might have had individuals who could make an individual play, but the four guys or how many were rushing, the four guys kind of operating as one. And I really think that speaks to our entire defense. I think the 11 are acting as one better, but upfront, once they changed quarterbacks and it really turned into a dropback game, and then in the fourth quarter when score dictated it turned into a dropback game, they were going to have a hard time keeping their quarterback upright.
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This article originally appeared on Duke Wire: Duke HC Manny Diaz previews matchup against Illinois
