WINSTON-SALEM — The newly renamed BB&T Field earned itself a nickname Saturday afternoon: The Defense-Free Zone.
Between the two, Duke and Wake Forest surrendered an unprecedented 987 total yards of offense along with 96 points. The difference in the outcome, however, came down to defending the running game. The Demon Deacons’ four-pronged ground attack of Ted Stachitas, Tanner Price, Josh Harris and Devon Brown proved just too much to handle for the young starting front.
“We’d have our heads down, and the guy would run right by us,” head coach David Cutcliffe said. “8.6, 5.6, 4.2, 4.8 on the average, and you just can’t give up that.”
The opening drive of the game exemplified the Blue Devils’ woes. Rushing the ball nine straight times for 82 yards, Wake Forest used the option to perfection and showed its quickness in the backfield. Four of the first five keepers by the quarterback Stachitas went for over 10 yards.
Compounding the rushing problem was the inability to protect in the secondary, partly because of the constant ground assault. Forced into a short zone or man-on-man coverage in order to protect the line of scrimmage, the Duke cornerbacks quickly surrendered two long touchdown passes.
Still, heading into the locker room at halftime, with the score tied at 35, the Blue Devils had succeeded in looking better on defense then their Wake Forest counterparts. After having given up only one third down conversion in the first half, Duke appeared to have the game’s momentum in hand. Yet while the Demon Deacon defense came out energized and improved, the Blue Devils lost any luster that they had remaining in the first half.
“I thought we were gassed,” Cutcliffe said. “There was a lot of emotion spent in the first half.”
In the fourth quarter, Wake Forest used small yardage plays as opposed to the long ball, keeping tighter possession while continuing to bully the Blue Devil front line. Utilizing 10 and 13-play drives to score, the Demon Deacons wore down a Duke defense already reeling from a long first half. Furthermore, the Blue Devils failed to play well on third down—their lone first half strength—by giving up three of five conversions.
Other issues came due to inexperience and mental lapses on the part of the defense. On Wake Forest’s sixth touchdown of the game, a 38-yard strike from Price, redshirt-freshman Ross Cockrell bit on a screen to leave his man unmarked for a score. Similarly, other members of the Duke secondary, among them Cockrell, failed to turn around and make plays when balls were thrown to their receivers.
“Ross is a really good athlete, and he’s going to be a real good player,” Cutcliffe said. “But he’s a young corner, and he’s basically developed a habit of not looking for the ball…. He’s right there. He’s just got to make a play on the ball.”
But Cockrell is just one of a group of players that Cutcliffe expects to improve as the season progresses.
“We’re in the process of growing a program,” Cutcliffe said. “[And] we need to be focused on Duke.”
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