Cutcliffe: Mistakes costly in lopsided loss to Tar Heels

A day after Duke’s 66-31 loss to North Carolina, Duke head coach David Cutcliffe attributed the blowout to a string of simple mistakes.

“Watching the tape early this morning, meeting with out staff, meeting with our team, it's just errors,” Cutcliffe said during his weekly Sunday teleconference with reporters. “Football starts with alignment, starts with assignment and discipline of doing your job.... You have to win a game like that one play at a time doing every little thing well, which obviously we did not do.”

Led by quarterback Marquise Williams—who amassed 524 total yards—North Carolina capitalized off of Duke’s defensive miscues. The Tar Heels picked apart the Blue Devil secondary with nine completions of more than 20 yards and averaged 8.8 yards per play. By the end of the first half, defensive coordinator Jim Knowles’ unit had surrendered 486 total yards and 38 points.

With the defense constantly on its heels, Duke’s offense had to play catch-up and struggled to find a rhythm. Although the Blue Devils ran for 327 yards on the ground, quarterback Thomas Sirk completed just 18 of his 37 passes for 191 yards and threw two interceptions.

The Blue Devils now face a pivotal stretch as they try to end their two-game losing streak and remain in the hunt for an upper echelon ACC bowl bid. With just three games left in the season—including a showdown against Pittsburgh Saturday—Cutcliffe said he hopes his squad can quickly correct the mistakes in practice.

“We’re going to come back with a fever pitch of work,” Cutcliffe said. “We’re trying to move as quickly as we can in the right direction. We’ll get better from this. I hope it’s immediately.”