The lowest point of a low season for Duke last year came with 4:24 on the clock against Virginia Oct. 1.
Backed up to their own one-yard line, the Blue Devils still had a chance to drive 99 yards for a game-tying touchdown when Daniel Jones took the snap from center Austin Davis and dropped back into his own end zone. Jones was upright for a little more than two seconds before linebacker Jordan Mack ran past the offensive line untouched and steamrolled him in the chest, knocking the ball loose for defensive tackle Eli Hanback to recover in the end zone for a Cavalier touchdown.
It was the most jarring and the most costly of the 31 times Duke quarterbacks were sacked last season, sealing a home defeat to a lowly Virginia team that did not win a game the rest of the season. If the Blue Devils expect this year to go any better, it will start up front on both sides of the ball with a renewed emphasis on controlling the line of scrimmage.
“That needs to be different than we were a year ago, just purely how physical we are as a football team,” head coach David Cutcliffe said following an early August practice. “We’ve got to find who’s playing at the highest level, and the old saying is that if you’re churning, cream will rise to the top. We’ve just got to keep churning and find who the best football players we’ve got on this team are.”
Duke’s offensive line will likely be improved this season—three starters return, and Davis is getting some attention as one of the top centers in the ACC. More importantly, the Blue Devils added Ohio State graduate transfer Evan Lisle at right tackle to replace Casey Blaser.
Cutcliffe has not welcomed many graduate transfers since the NCAA instituted a rule in 2011 granting athletes immediate eligibility if they enroll in a graduate program that is not offered by their undergraduate school. But he said at ACC media day in July that he is comfortable taking a graduate transfer if they intend to complete a graduate degree.
“I don’t think any rule should be made a farce,” Cutcliffe said. “Guys out there playing without really going to school, that’s not the student-athlete model. That’s not what the NCAA was founded on.”
Lisle enrolled in the Fuqua School of Business’ one-year master’s in management studies program in January and joined the Duke team for spring practice. After playing in all 13 of the Buckeyes’ games last season, the 6-foot-7, 310-pounder will be the biggest body in the Blue Devils’ starting offensive front.
“He’s acting like he’s got a purpose, and now he’s entrenched in our culture,” Cutcliffe said. “He did a good job of caring greatly coming in, but he’s entrenched into this now, and he’s taken ownership. I love that about him. He’s a special young man.”
The other new starter on the line will have much less college experience than Lisle. Sophomore Julian Santos will replace Tanner Stone at guard after playing 101 snaps as a true freshman last year. Santos is listed at 305 pounds—10 lighter than he was last year—and Cutcliffe and his teammates say he made a commitment to his conditioning in the offseason.
“He knew he had a chance to be a starter, and he wasn’t going to let that opportunity slip through his fingers,” Davis said. “I could see his work ethic change, his mentality. He really matured.”
But the bigger question marks for the Blue Devils in the trenches will be on the other side of the line of scrimmage.
A.J. Wolf, who anchored the defensive tackle position for years, graduated after last season, and defensive linemen Marquies Price and Brandon Boyce were both dismissed from the team in February.
“When we had those two dismissals, I was a second-stringer and I had to move up, so at that time in my head, I was like, ‘This is my shot,’” said redshirt junior defensive tackle Edgar Cerenord, who is now slated to start next to redshirt senior Mike Ramsay. “I can’t blow it.”
Cerenord has never started a game in his career, but has a lot more experience than the two players Duke is expected to start on the ends—sophomore Tre Hornbuckle and true freshman Victor Dimukeje.
Cutcliffe said during fall camp that other underclassmen and true freshmen could be in the mix on the defensive line, including Drew Jordan and Ben Frye.
“The size and force of people, we haven’t had, and they’re going to have to get in a little better shape, which is going to happen with playing and practicing,” Cutcliffe said Aug. 9. “There’s some promise there.”
Defensive line coach Ben Albert has faced a challenge before, inheriting a team that only had 17 sacks in 2015 before helping that number improve to 29 in his first year. It will be an even more daunting task to improve that number again without Wolf in uniform against some of the strong offensive fronts the Blue Devils will face this year.
But a good pass rush up front is one factor that could prevent some of the explosive plays that haunted the Blue Devils last year.
“[Wolf] was definitely a great guy, great player, great motivation,” Ramsay said. “But I feel like every team loses a great talent. Every team always moves on. I feel more than capable to fill that role.”
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