In what has become a painfully repetitive trend for the football team, the Blue Devils once again head into practice this week trying to forget the tribulations of yet another loss and focus on the lessons to be learned.
The biggest plus on the weekend for the Blue Devils was undoubtedly the emergence of freshman Letavious Wilks as a star in the backfield. Wilks capitalized on his first start of the year, garnering 137 yards on 19 carries and two touchdowns.
Wilks' performance was by far the most impressive of any Duke runner this year. In order to move Wilks into the starting line-up, coach Fred Goldsmith was faced with a decision about the playing status of Duke's usual starting running back, Laymarr Marshall. Instead of sticking with the Blue Devil's traditional one-back set, Goldsmith opted instead to keep Marshall in the backfield by shifting him to a sort of fullback and going primarily with the two-back set.
Marshall welcomed the change, noting that the new alignment helped the running game by providing an extra lead blocker out of the backfield and increased opportunities to utilize the play-action pass. He also pointed out that shifting to the two-back set forced opposing defenses to adjust to a new look.
Duke's passing game was not nearly as impressive. Junior quarterback David Green, who played his first complete game of the season, started off promisingly, completing a 43-yard strike to Corey Thomas on the Blue Devils' opening drive. That was the lone highlight, however, as Green finished 9-of-20 for 103 yards with one interception. Green's bad day was punctuated by his inability to hit a wide-open Thomas on the long bomb, not once, but twice-something which Green excels at in practice.
Green's sub-par performance has prompted the Blue Devil coaches to sit down and reevaluate their quarterback situation. Redshirt sophomore Matt Rader has outperformed Green statistically thus far this year, but the Duke coaching staff has been waiting for Green to have an opportunity to spend an entire game under center before officially reassessing the situation.
"Now that [Green and Rader] have both started and played a full game-David this week and Matt two weeks ago against Clemson-we will take both game tapes and take a good hard look at them side to side," Goldsmith said.
Redshirt freshman Kevin Thompson has been impressive in both of his brief outings this year-against Georgia Tech and Navy-but Goldsmith has not been impressed enough to consider him for the starting role this year.
"[Thompson] led us down the field in both those games for a score, but that was against their reserves, there wasn't the intensity of [earlier in the game]," Goldsmith said. "He got some looks in practice after those two games, but we don't see anything stronger."
Special teams play was especially pivotal in the Maryland loss. Duke had perhaps its best all-around performance on special teams this season, but the one mistake-a blocked punt in the third quarter-allowed the stagnant Terrapin offense to score the winning touchdown.
"Except for one play, it was by far the best special teams outing we've had," Goldsmith said. "The kickoff coverage was our best yet. A good addition to that team has been Lyle Burdine who made a big hit early.
"We covered punts as well as we have all year long. Kickoff returns with Richmond [Flowers]-we got a lot of yards and some good blocks and came with in a hair of breaking one early."
Senior punter John Krueger continued to shine on Saturday, averaging 49.3 yards on 8 punts with a long of 57. He is currently second in the Atlantic Coast Conference and sixth in the nation with a 46.6 yards per kick average.
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