Chansky’s Notebook: Fortuitous Scheduling

Duke’s impressive win got drowned out by Hurricane Florence.

The Blue Devils were the only Triangle team to play a football game Saturday, because they got out of town for their scheduled game at Baylor before Florence hit. And, if anybody noticed, it was another of those games that proved David Cutcliffe has built a solid program in Durham.

Maybe Duke isn’t Stanford quite yet, but the Blue Devils are approaching the status of an academic school with a regular winning football team.

Going to Baylor was a task in itself, as the team had to leave at the crack of dawn Thursday to fly out of RDU before the airport was shut down. It turned out to be a fortuitous bit of scheduling even though Duke had lost its starting quarterback and best linebacker last week at Northwestern.

While the Carolina and N.C. State home games were cancelled due to Flo’s impending arrival, Duke outclassed a Baylor team packed with athletes but not in the same league with the well-coached and hard-hitting Blue Devils, who took the fight to the Bears early and won easily, 40-27.

Fourth-year junior Quentin Harris took over for regular starter Daniel Jones and actually gave Duke a more versatile offense, as Harris is quicker than Jones and ran for 83 yards including third-down conversions that kept scoring drives alive. In years past, losing its quarterback might have been doomsday in Durham, but Cutcliffe has a deep and talented squad.

The defensive front is one of the best in the ACC, and the Blue Devils converted two turnovers into touchdowns to begin the game and put it away in the fourth quarter. They have legitimate athletes at the skilled positions on offense and in the secondary, plus more size on the interior lines than in past years.

Baylor could not handle the constant pressure in its first non-conference home game against a Power 5 school in ten years. The Bears proved almost helpless against a well-schemed Duke team that always had players in the right position on both sides of the ball. It was 23-0 at the half and the Devils answered every Baylor threat in the second half.

Duke will be 4-0 after Saturday’s home game against North Carolina Central, but then comes the meat of the ACC schedule that will determine whether it can contend for its second Coastal Division crown in five years.

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