David Cutcliffe has prowled many a practice sideline in his long coaching career, but the focused work done by his Blue Devils on Brooks Field this spring surprised him more than anything he has seen before.
"I don't know if I've ever been around a team that didn't waste a single minute on the practice field," Cutcliffe said Wednesday. "Now that doesn't mean that it was all absolutely correct, or good, but it meant that their focus and their intensity level and their attitude never changed, never wavered. I never one time wanted to restart a period or restart a practice.... Honestly, it's the first time I can say that in my career."
With only a final workout Friday and the spring game Saturday afternoon remaining in the spring practice period, Cutcliffe only has a few days left to evaluate his team in a practice environment. But with nearly three months of offseason conditioning and the past month of practices and scrimmages to consider, Cutcliffe cited his team's great gains in strength and conditioning as the spring period's top dividend.
Cutcliffe said that the team has lost a collective 400 pounds since Jan. 10, and many players who have not shed weight have simply shed body fat and offset it by gains in lean muscle. Senior wide receiver Eron Riley, for example, entered the season with a body fat percentage of 10.9 percent but has since reduced his percentage to 6.0 percent in his most recent test, all while maintaining his same overall weight of 210 lbs.
"When I first got back from Christmas, I was fat," Riley said. "But from the different workouts we've done, I credit a lot of the success to [Strength and Conditioning] Coach Durphy, Coach Falcone and Coach Combs. Also, we take some of the responsibility on our own to watch what we eat. Instead of ordering four drumsticks from KFC, we'll get a breast or something like that."
Riley added that he has personally seen gains in speed and strength due to this additional work, and that he has seen similar results among his teammates in the weightroom.
"When we're working out, they'll give us an assigned weight, but most of us end up bumping it up a little bit towards the end," Riley said. "If we've got four sets of five, or something like that, by set three we're bumping up the weight from what they've assigned us, so we're getting a lot stronger."
The gains haven't stopped since the team donned pads to open spring practice, either. Due to the team's limited roster depth-they suited only 64 position players for Wednesday's workout-Cutcliffe lauded the positive impact of added reps during practice.
"Conditioning level helps you focus, helps you maintain your intensity, and when you've got 66, 64, 67, 68 players out there, they're getting a lot of work," Cutcliffe said. "There's no place to run and hide. There are a lot of reps, and we practice with high intensity and high tempo.... Our conditioning level will be great when we come back in August."
Fixing a special problem
Cognizant of Duke's numerous miscues on special teams in the past, Cutcliffe stressed from the beginning of spring practice that developing consistency among his specialists would be a priority for this spring. The renovation of this unit, however, seems to still be a work in progress.
"Do you know how big a play it is when someone pins someone down inside the five-yard-line, or you've got a punter when you're backed up that hits a 55- or 60-yarder?" Cutcliffe said. "That's making a play. We've got people capable of making a play, but they don't do it on a consistent basis. They don't challenge themselves enough, consistently or make it tough enough."
Cutcliffe mentioned that incumbent kicker Joe Surgan nailed a 55-yard kick straight through the uprights in a recent practice, earning him a day off from conditioning drills. Despite the positive signs from such flashes of brilliance on the back fields, Cutcliffe adamantly said practice situations pale in comparison to live game scenarios.
"I promise you that I'm not as tough as a crowd is going to be on the road at Clemson or Virginia Tech on a specialist," Cutcliffe said. "They think I am, and I'm going to make them think I'm as tough as that to perform under, but I'm expecting to see drastic improvement from our specialists when we start back in August."
With such uncertainty, Cutcliffe said that his starters on the unit are "completely undecided," and that newcomers in the fall will have an opportunity to compete for playing time. Incoming recruit Paul Asack joins the team as a scholarship kicker in the fall and will compete for the position with Surgan and freshman Will Snyderwine, who joined the team as a walk-on last season.
Lewis retains starting spot
Entering his third season under as many different offensive coordinators, quarterback Thaddeus Lewis knows what it is like to go through the growing pains of learning a new offense. But with that experience under his belt, Lewis has progressed quickly this spring and secured the team's starting quarterback position entering the offseason.
Cutcliffe cited Lewis' performance in the team's last scrimmage Saturday as the quarterback's best of the spring. Lewis went 17-of-25 in the air with 151 passing yards.
"He really has started to pick up what we want in the tempo of the offense," Cutcliffe said. "All of them are throwing more consistently, with accuracy and on-time and with where it's supposed to go, [but] Thaddeus right now is our starter."
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