My fellow Blue Devils, welcome to October-the cruelest month in all of sport.
Sure, you might be walking across the quad right now, basking in the sun-kissed warmth of a North Carolinian Indian summer. And sure, T.S. Eliot once wrote that April is the "cruellest month." But surely, Eliot never knew a Cubs fan. I do. October is harsh.
And so far, the merciless month responsible for returning teams to reality hasn't been kind to Duke Football. I know, it's early, but watching Saturday's game I could have sworn I saw the ghost of seasons past returning to haunt the Blue Devils just in time for All Hallows Eve. A 27-0 blanking by a rebuilding Georgia Tech led by a first-year coach and a quarterback who had never started a college contest? That's unfortunately neither a trick nor a treat.
"If you have zero on one side, you don't lose many," Yellow Jacket head coach Paul Johnson after the game.
And if you have zero on the other side, you don't win many either. Just ask Carl Franks or Ted Roof, whose teams were shut out seven times over their collective eight seasons in Durham-with three of those goose eggs coming in 2006 and, it's worth noting, none in 2007.
So with the fresh yet familiar wounds of a zero-point performance and the easy, sunny days of September fading into the distance, I feel compelled to ask the uncomfortable question: Is this really the Dawn of a New Day? Or were these last few weeks merely an era of good feelings with the transformative "dawn" still seasons away?
The Blue Devils gave up 24 points in the second half against the Yellow Jackets while looking completely befuddled on offense. It was classic Duke in a season when even fans were pushed to expect more. Why? Because David Cutcliffe is an offensive guru, remember? He coached Peyton and Eli Manning, whose floor seats at last March's UNC game in Cameron left them practically sitting in Greg Paulus' lap.
Fast forward seven months and some dude named Jaybo is lighting up the Blue Devils for 280 yards in an offense that doesn't encourage passing, and Thaddeus Lewis looks like what some dude named Jaybo is supposed to look like. The Duke quarterback was held to a meager 97 yards, forced into an interception and sacked twice.
"We've got some people that can make some plays, and we're either not getting them in position to make plays often enough, or they're not making plays often enough. That's kind of what offensive football is," Cutcliffe said Saturday. "It really does go back to matchups and people that can make plays. You saw it in reverse today-the exact opposite."
In Duke's defense, Johnson (who coached at Navy before this season) said this Blue Devil squad was markedly better than those he had faced over the past five years with the Midshipmen. But those compliments were a modest consolation prize when you haven't found the uprights or the end zone in 60 minutes of play after averaging 30.8 points per game in the first four weeks.
I'm not trying to say this team should win every game-really, I'm not. But given Cutcliffe's pedigree (impressive) and the current state of the ACC (abysmal), I do think it's reasonable to expect the new-look Duke to put up at least one score per game.
That's not just reasonable. It's critical.
The David-Cutcliffe-Change-We-Can-Believe-In energy is only going to go so far and last so long. I remember sitting in Yoh Football Center on the rainy December afternoon Cutcliffe was hired, listening to him promise he was going to make Duke Football more exciting to watch-that even if his team might not win right away, it would score.
Through the first four contests, Cutcliffe delivered. But, then again, the 2007 Blue Devils put up 20 against Northwestern and 43 against Navy in their opening weeks (almost identical to this team's 20- and 41-point outputs). Saturday's contest against a good but not great Georgia Tech team makes me wonder how realistic that promise could be right from the get-go. Granted, Duke did beat Virginia by 31 at home last weekend. But expectations are finicky: once you've set them, you leave yourself more vulnerable to being questioned when you don't come close to meeting them on any given Saturday. Maybe that's what this disillusioned feeling is in the wake of a chilly run-in with the Yellow Jackets.
And while October is indeed brutal, with a little luck, it can instead be the best of months. For Duke, winning another game in the coming weeks wouldn't be as big as, say, the Cubs taking a World Series-every team in the ACC is beatable and becoming more beatable every week (see: Maryland).
At least a Blue Devil win is still in the realm of possibility. And possibilities, like expectations, can either be refreshing or devastating when the calendar turns to November and the final whistle blows.
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