Duke Hate Week

Well, did not think I was going to have to do another one of these post mortems for a loss this week. 

And yet, here we are.

With Saturday’s loss to Virginia Tech, we have officially reached Overreaction Season in Hurricane Nation the Miami Hurricane fan base.

While I for one tend to take a longer time to turn on people than most, and I for one am not one to fire someone over one or two games, I do think some very valid concerns were raised in this game; longstanding concerns that HAVE to be addressed if this program is going to get out of UNC zone (read: 7-9 wins and a shitty bowl) and back to competing with the elites. Let’s go in order.

1.)    Getting Out-Coached in Big Games

2.)    The defense lacks imagination and creativity

These two should be addressed together. In big games (FSU twice, Kansas State, Notre Dame, Virginia Tech) the slightest mistake completely derails this team. The margin of error is nothing, which is a problem, because football is a sport of managed chaos. Elite teams can withstand errors because they can fall back on a sound game plan. Unfortunately, errors for us almost always result in a complete reversal of all momentum because it craters the already thin ice we were skating on.

Pretty representative.

Now, part of this particular loss was just shitty, shitty luck. Two consecutive three and outs by our defense were turned sour when big returns by our electric freshmen ended in forced fumbles. By a kicker. And then our punter had to bend down to field a bad snap and his knee hit the ground…that is something I have never seen in a game before. And I watch A LOT of football.

You realize, during the course of games like this, that things aren’t going to work out for you when 2 different times your defense forces a fumble that the other team then recovers in the end zone / on the goal line. Those are the games you aren’t going to win, no matter what.

HOWEVER, that does not change the fact that our defense leaked like a sieve all game, and consistently committed the same errors they have committed for three years. They overpursued and left open the same misdirection screen that killed us last week and last season and consistently for what seems like eternity. They had seemingly no idea/interest in covering a crossing route, particularly on 3^rd down, which is a problem. And it was consistent, for 4 quarters. Against a TERRIBLE quarterback.

And therein lays the major problem. Logan Thomas is awful. And yet, just like Tanner Price and Brynn Renner and Jeff Driskell before him, our defense made him look like a 1^st Rounder. Without getting too technical, this defense is super complicated and difficult to learn. It is used by the San Francisco 49ers a lot of the time. I know that sounds cool…”we run the same defense as a Super Bowl team!”

But here is the problem: these kids aren’t NFL players. They have 20 hours of instruction per week, in addition to whatever they can fit in on their own time in between class and tutoring and study hall and being a teenager. Know how I know this scheme isn’t working? Denzel Perryman is one of the 10 best linebackers in the country, regardless of conference. The kid is a machine and one of my favorite things about him is his “football intelligence”, which is a fancy word for “knowing what the hell he’s doing”. He has been in the scheme for 3 years now. He still looks like he doesn’t know what is going on half the time. If he doesn’t have it down, how is anyone else supposed to?

This team has struggled to get a pass rush for 3 years now. And yet, they never do anything creative to try and generate one. When we DO blitz, it is the same slow developing blitz every time. It is never disguised. Honestly, this is getting in the weeds and very Inside Baseball…the point is that we have BIG TIME issues with this defense, big time issues that have been dogging us for years now, and yet we never do anything to try and fix them except for “well, we need to learn the system”. I can buy that for a little while, but I simply cannot keep buying it for 3 years. At some point, it becomes a bill of goods.

3.)    Leadership

All I have heard for a year is how mentally tough this group is and how Shayon Green and Stephen Morris are the leaders and have accepted the mantle of responsibility. Now, I know I am not in the locker room, but did ANYONE think that these guys had solid leadership in place on Saturday night? No. Because you know how that would have looked? Like…gulp…FSU.

4.)    No 2^nd Half Adjustments

We keep getting the ball to start the 2^nd Half and keep doing nothing with it. What is the point of deferring if we can’t figure out a way to drive the ball on our opening possession? ISN’T THAT THE POINT OF HALFTIME?!

5.)    This is a New One…Bland Offense

It was somewhere around the 57^th delayed handoff for a loss of yards or the 13^th tight end screen pass that I decided that maybe, just maybe, first time playcaller James Coley doesn’t know what the fuck he is doing. I felt like I was watching the Patrick Nix offense. We will leave it at that. 

All in all, I don’t think it is panic time. But I do think we have some trouble on our hands. David Cutcliffe is a great coach and has Duke playing great football. I know that sounds like a joke, and I know the whole point of this blog is for me to make fun of Duke, but the reality is that we gave up 45 points to them last year, and they are better this year. You can bet your ass they are watching how we are unable to defend the middle of the field and getting their 8 million little slot receivers ready to run a 12 yard cross to the exact mid point on the field on 3^rd and 12. 

This team needs to win out, if for no other reason than 9-3 or 8-4 feels REALLY hollow after a 7-0 start.

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What can I say about Duke’s women that can’t be said about downtown Baghdad? They both look bombed out and depleted.

Yeah, I like their basketball team a little. But isn’t that the point? This is a basketball school that just figured out they had a football team for the first time since 1994 because they beat the almighty Virginia Tech Hokies. Newsflash: Virginia Tech sucks. I know that sounds like sour grapes coming from a guy whose team just got destroyed by Virginia Tech on national television, but trust me, Virginia Tech sucks. Our defense just sucks more.

Everyone always talks about how awesome their fans are and how they camp out in tents for basketball tickets.

Let me present you the alternative. 

Instead of camping out, you can either bury yourself at the library and not get laid OR join a frat full of douche Jersey transplants and get so drunk that you actually talk yourself in to hooking up with one of the unattractive, bitchy, thinks-they-are-smarter-than-they-are-because-mommy –and-daddy-locked-them-in-their-room-after- Forensics Club-in-High School-and-forced-them-to –study-for-the-SAT women that populate the South Campus.

If presented with these alternatives, camping out in the cold and rain so you can watch a really good basketball team sounds awesome, doesn’t it?

I visited Duke’s campus. They say a college tour tells you a lot about how much you would enjoy a university. Well, my dad and I were so bored on our Duke Campus Tour that we snuck away halfway through.

The moral? People that go to Duke suck.

This man is capable of great horrors.

Duke’s coach? David Cutcliffe. I honestly have nothing bad to say about the man. He is classy and kind of a mad genius. His claim to fame? The Manning Bros. Perhaps you have heard of them. He is also the guy Ole Miss fired so they could hire Ed Orgeron to run their program, so he is also responsible for the greatest case of Buyer’s Remorse in history. And that HAS to count for something, right?

Jamison Crowder is their receiver that WILL torch us. These are facts. And for anyone thinks that is me being pessimistic, have I been wrong yet? Ebron from UNC got us. Campanaro from Wake got us. Everyone from FSU got us. Logan Thomas from VT got us. This shit is so predictable it borders on absurd.

They play two quarterbacks. The “passing one” is Anthony Boone and the “running one” is Brandon Connette, even though Connette is actually better than Boone at passing too. Weird.

Duke’s defense is actually playing really well right now, although on paper our offense has far more fire power than anyone they have faced, even without Duke Johnson and Phillip Dorsett. 

The fact is that they are going to get their 500+ yards of offense. I suggest everyone square away with that immediately. I don’t want anyone to be upset when it actually happens…that would be like getting mad at the rain. 

What you should save your emotion for is the offense. If we get down a couple of scores this will not go well and we will have to say to people that we watched our once promising season end at the hands of fucking Duke.

We need to get aggressive and creative. We need to start hitting their undersized defensive line in the mouth with our MASSIVE offensive line early, and then keep leaning on them. We need to find ways to get the ball to our playmakers (Coley, Waters, Hurns) in space, and for God’s sake, we have to hold on to the football.

Right now we rank 123^rd in time of possession, which I know can be underrated if your offense is Oregon’s offense, but the reality is our offense isn’t that good, so they need to AT A MINIMUM do a better job of keeping the defense resting on the bench. If Duke dominates the ball in the first half then this could actually get ugly.

I can’t believe I just typed that. I hate Duke. But if this one goes wrong, the next post might be HATE WEEK: Miami’s Defense.