Manny Diaz didn’t exactly walk into an empty cupboard at Duke, though some first-year struggles would have been understandable given the amount of production the program lost, and starting quarterback Riley Dixon heading to Notre Dame.
But Diaz, to his credit, has maintained the program’s level of play on the field: the Blue Devils’ offense and defense rank 71st and 26th, respectively in SP+, after finishing last season at 63rd and 25th. The football gods decided to bless him in the turnover department, and hey, you just gotta take that kind of thing and run with it.
Which Duke has, making the most of a forgiving schedule by starting 5-0. It has a dramatic come-from-behind win against UNC under its belt, and it will be playing in a bowl game. As far as all that goes, this season has been an unqualified success.
Diaz’s most important first task was finding a quarterback to lead his offense, and he landed on former four-star prospect Maalik Murphy, who was buried on the depth chart at Texas. His transition to starter at Duke has gone about as well as Diaz could have hoped, and the Blue Devils look like they have a guy they can build around for a couple years.
Murphy has had his share of rough stretches, but he’s got 20 touchdown passes against eight interceptions, and he’s had to work with little run support. Duke’s passing game hasn’t been explosive, and Murphy’s averaging just 6.6 yards per attempt on a modest 58.6 completion rate, but that’s been good enough for the team’s purposes.
It helps that Murphy has veteran pass-catchers to work with: Jordan Moore (39-556-5), Eli Pancol (41-482-6), and Sahmir Hagans (32-345-2) each have been in the Duke program since at least 2021 (Pancol’s been there since 2019). Moore has had 60 grabs or more in each of the last two seasons, and could reach that milestone again with a strong finish.
The offense has spent much of 2024 playing off the defense, which already has forced six more turnovers than it did in all of 2023. Duke is averaging a little over two takeaways per game, and that as much as anything else goes a long way for a young quarterback with a dodgy ground game.
Duke has gone without a takeaway only twice this season and has forced four takeaways or more in three games.
The Blue Devils’ defense has been impressively disruptive, ranking among the nation’s best in havoc rate. They struck gold through the portal with linebackers Ozzie Nicholas (Princeton) and Alex Howard (Youngstown State)—they’ve combined for 122 tackles, while Howard leads the team in TFL (11) and sacks (five).
It’s a veteran-heavy defense and the back end in particular has plenty of quality and experience: the Blue Devils can roll out five guys in the secondary with double-digit career starts. Standout safety Jaylen Stinson, for instance, has 39 college starts under his belt, while corner Chandler Rivers, who leads the team in interceptions, has made 28 starts.
That secondary does quite a lot well, so after that breather provided by Stanford, CJ Bailey’s got his work cut out for him on Saturday.