When Duke started its 2008 season off with a win against an FCS opponent in head coach David Cutcliffe’s debut, he had to discourage students from taking down the goalposts.
There were no such shenanigans last Saturday.
Even though Duke finished with similar statistics on offense in the contests against James Madison in 2008 and Elon last week and collected a win in both games, the tone last Saturday was drastically different. Instead of talking about how the team enjoyed competing and joking how his seniors didn’t know what to do after what he termed “a great win,” Cutcliffe harped Tuesday on the presence of too many mistakes in assignments and techniques. For him now, the expectations are higher and simply winning is not enough.
“You have to expect to win, and in the same sense you have to expect to play well,” Cutcliffe said at a press conference yesterday. “The confidence to play well is earned, not given. That was my theme Sunday to our team. We’ve created some expectations. There’s a purpose behind that. I really believe if our players don’t have expectations, if our fans and our university don’t have expectations, then nothing is ever really going to happen.”
The players also want that higher standard to shine through on Saturdays, said redshirt senior tight end Brett Huffman, who served as last week’s game captain. Huffman caught two of Sean Renfree’s passes for 17 total yards.
“The biggest difference from prior years to this year and the past couple years under coach Cutcliffe is not only the coaches’ expectation to win, but us as players genuinely have an expectation to win now,” Huffman said. “Even with the win last week against Elon, we weren’t completely satisfied in the locker room afterwards. We won, we got the W, but we wanted to win even bigger than that. That’s the change in attitude that this team needed.”
The cultural revolution extends off-the-field as well. Duke Football is an around-the-clock commitment now, redshirt senior captain Abraham Kromah said, as the high standards Cutcliffe has set for class participation and behavior translate into on-the-field results.
Players must sit in the first three rows in their classes. They’re also discouraged from using crude language in front of anyone, all in order to project a positive influence of the program.
“I can honestly say that everybody has bought into what Coach Cut is saying,” said Kromah, who registered four tackles and helped secure the Blue Devils victory with a fourth quarter interception. “Coach may say things that sometimes go over our heads, but we listen to all of that stuff and make sure we are in the front three rows in class and ask questions. Those little little things like that, they really transfer on the field. We pride ourselves in trying to become better at everything we do.”
The attitude shift has Cutcliffe this week calling Saturday’s game Wake Forest a must-win, despite the fact that the Demon Deacons have won the two teams’ last 10 contests.
“There are a lot of those milestones that we have gone past,” he said. “There are many still out in front of us. Winning an ACC game was one. That doesn’t sound like it needed to be one, but it was. Then winning one on the road and then winning consecutive games. Now certainly winning our rivalry games and being able to beat Wake Forest and being able to put some streaks together in a positive manner. All of those things you better face them head on and not deny them; it’s what we have to do to grow the program.”
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