Keep it all in perspective. That was the theme of Blue Devil football head coach Fred Goldsmith's press conference on Monday.
"It's not like somebody died," Goldsmith said. "My wife loves me. I came home and my dog, she was up bright and early this morning and she was ready to go."
Despite being obviously concerned about the results from Duke's first two games, Goldsmith anchored his comments in a belief in giving his young team a clean slate from which to start.
"This is the first day of a new season," Goldsmith said. "You forget-you drive on. I don't want any of my players coming to practice with their heads hanging down."
The spirit and hard-working attitude of his team have given Goldsmith extra reason to believe in his young squad.
"I'm enjoying coaching this football team, probably more so than the other two teams I've had at Duke," Goldsmith said. "Obviously I'm not enjoying the results as much as two years ago, when we got off to that great start. But as far as the day-to-day enjoyment of it, with these football players and their team attitude and the skill that they bring-I can speak for myself and the entire coaching staff, we're enjoying that quite a bit. I've never seen more scrappiness, and there is ability, so I don't want you to get me wrong."
With such a youthful squad, the Blue Devil coaching staff will concentrate on the number of key mistakes that put last week's game out of reach.
"I'm concerned about the mistakes we are making," Goldsmith said. "Obviously you can't do anything about your opponents' strengths and weaknesses... but there were some things we didn't do very well.
"I'm extremely disappointed in the outcome of the game. I felt going in that we had a chance to win. I felt like at half time we really had things going our way. After our defense held after the turnover at the beginning of the third quarter-we blocked a field goal and had the ball on their 48-I felt good about that. Then things kind of slipped from there.
"We just got two or three plays that all of the sudden got a score out of hand of what was a close game that we were very much in."
Included in that breakdown were mistakes from all parts of the team. The offense sputtered for the first time all day, the defense finally started to yield to Northwestern's power running game and the special teams fell apart, allowing a "back-breaking" punt return for a touchdown.
"That punt return was probably the easiest one that we had to cover of the three, and that was the one where we broke down and made some mistakes," Goldsmith said.
The offense was successful in the first half led by sophomore quarterback Matt Rader, who completed 20 of 28 passes for 200 yards.
"Our young quarterback, under the circumstances, what we asked him to do... he responded pretty well, especially in the first half," Goldsmith said.
Such solid play from the back-up would normally cause at least a slight quarterback controversy.
"We're fortunate enough to have a back-up in Matt Rader who is capable, but if Dave Green is healthy, then he is our starting quarterback," Goldsmith said.
Green is day-to-day as he recovers from an ankle injury. He should be able to start on Saturday against Army.
Also returning for the Blue Devils is senior offensive lineman Patrick Mannelly.
"Mannelly will be back practicing this evening, so hopefully he is permanently returned," Goldsmith said. "If he is back, that will give us a little more edge on the offensive line with both talent and experience."
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