Four Downs: Duke throttles Kansas, freshman RB sets rushing record
DURHAM, N.C. -- Duke (3-0) has cruised most of this season, and they made their first Power 5 opponent -- Kansas -- look as inferior as their first two opponents in a 41-3 dominating victory. The Blue Devils are now 3-0 for the first time since 1994. Oh, and it was Duke's first win against a Big 12 opponent in program history, too. As ACC pundits search for a Coastal Division favorite, maybe they should be looking, oh, around the same place last year's title resides -- Durham.
Shy smile, short answers and soft voice, Wilson -- all 5-foot-9 and 180 pounds of him -- was every bit the demure freshman in front of the media. "I wasn't expecting it," Wilson said of his 245-yard game. "Going into the game, I was just trying to do the best I can do. Give credit to the line. They were tremendous."
He's still new to this, so it's understandable. But he's still pretty new at college football, and that hasn't seemed to be too much of a problem.
In his first two college games, Wilson had a total of nine carries for 89 yards, and he hadn't had a first-half carry yet against anyone.
His first carry against Kansas came with just over five and a half minutes to go in the first quarter, and he burst through for a 69-yard touchdown. His next six carries went for 22 yards, but then he had a 68-yard touchdown run late in the third, a one-yard carry, a 32-yarder and a 45-yard touchdown to put Duke up 41-3 with 3:57 to go.
Duke running backs coach (and former Duke running back himself) Re'Quan Boyette nearly ran over head coach David Cutcliffe to let him know that the freshman was one yard away from the Duke single-game record.
Cutcliffe said that he'd put Wilson in for one more play -- but only if Duke got the ball back. Once the defense got the stop, he'd get his chance.
"We told all those kids, everybody going in knew, 'Block. Let's get this thing.' I really didn't want him to break a run in that circumstance," Cutcliffe said. "I actually told (Wilson), I said, if you find yourself broke, just go down. But happy that he could get the yardage. You don't ever want to be one yard short."
He finished with 12 rushes for 245 yards, seven more than the previous single-game record of 237 yards. That's 20.4 per carry, if you need him.
Cutcliffe, the offensive staff and his teammates have been high on him since he got to campus in July. This game was proof as to why.
"I think everybody knew, some of the plays and some of the cuts that he made when he first came in in fall camp, and he just continued to grow from that point on, getting comfortable and getting acquainted with the system," Duke wide receiver Jamison Crowder said. "We knew that he has that potential and that playmaking ability and today, he just went out there and displayed that."
Duke senior quarterback Anthony Boone knew, too. Duke's offensive line, a veteran-laden group, would pave the way for him. He just had to find the seam, which is easier said than done for many young backs. Not Wilson.
"I knew when he first got here," Boone said. "He's little, and he's probably our fastest back. Maybe. I don't know, between him and (Josh) Snead. But he's definitely our quickest and most versatile. When he hits seams, it's hard -- it's kind of Oregon-esque. When those little backs hit seams, they're kind of gone. That's kind of how he is."
With tailback Jela Duncan out for the season with academic issues, Cutcliffe knew he would enter this season with just four backs on his roster. So it was almost preordained that Wilson was going to play. But he's worked hard, and he's learned the playbook well enough to be able to contribute. Which is probably an understatement.
In the end, football isn't really that hard sometimes. At least, when you ask this freshman who's managed to make it look easy.
"Get the ball, and then you see green and you just go," Wilson said. "I just ran as fast as I could."
Crowder has been spectacular throughout his Duke career, but the senior wide receiver was held to just two catches for 14 yards, his fewest yards since Georgia Tech held him to 10 yards on just two catches back in November of 2012 (in a Duke loss).
In the past, Duke wouldn't have been able to win a game like that.
This time, everyone else stepped up. Junior Max McCaffrey hauled in seven catches for 79 yards and a career-high two touchdowns. Senior wideout Issac Blakeney, who seems destined for a breakout season, had four catches for 38 yards. And, of course, there's Wilson.
"We just utilized all our weapons. If you're not getting the ball, some players get down and get discouraged and not be a leader, as I am. But I pride myself in being an unselfish guy, so it's good and I feel happy when i see other players making plays," Crowder said. "As a coach and just as a teammate it just lets you know that your team is getting better and you have a lot of players that can make plays. That's rough on the defense. We went out there and had fun today and I was glad we got the win."
It wasn't anything Kansas did, necessarily, according to Cutcliffe. It's just kind of the way it worked out. Boone missed Crowder on a fade in the end zone at one point, but other than that, it wasn't a matter of Kansas taking him away.
"Kansas played press coverage on him, but we just didn't feel like we had to go there. They didn't take him away necessarily," Cutcliffe said. "But that's a good thing for our football team that other people step up and play, and that's going to help Jamison. I'd love to have Jamison get 10 balls a game, and we'll look at that too. We've got to make sure he gets his touches."
In the first half, Boone started off really well, completing 3-of-4 passes for 55 yards and a touchdown on Duke's first drive. The rest of the half, he was just 6-of-18 for 44 yards. But he finished off well, going 10-of-11 for 81 yards in the second half.
It was just the in-between that was confusing. He missed on a few deep balls, sure, but he also missed on some relatively easy short stuff during that first-half stretch.
"It was really just throwing the football, the mechanics of throwing the football. There's times, sometimes in the first half, it was highly humid, highly wet. You never really know at times. I would like to think that it's not going to happen, but you saw what he did," Cutcliffe said.
"I told him, I said, 'Sometimes, you're trying to make every play. Just play football. Have fun.' We missed some deep balls today that we -- I know Anthony was irritated with it -- that we've got to hit. But we can do better than what we've done."
It was just a matter of execution, according to Boone. The game plan was sound, because they knew they were going to take shots on Kansas' aggressive defense. They just didn't hit some of them, and one that was hit -- a long touchdown pass to Blakeney -- was called back due to offensive pass interference.
"We took a lot of shots and we didn't come down with them but if it was the other way around, then we would throw for 400 yards and they'd be saying 'How'd you guys take advantage of their DBs?' It's just one of those days where the ball didn't fall the right way. It's just kind of how football is," Boone said.
"We started hot, and then we kind of hit a rut where even now, that's what we need to work on, being able to keep our foot on the throttle for four quarters, not going in and out."
That Duke offense can hit some ruts from time to time, and it's not just Boone. It feels like nitpicking when they put up 41 points, but the puzzling stagnation of first-half drives is concerning to the Blue Devils, who have become perfectionists in that way.
"I don't want to say it's one specific reason. It's different reasons. For example last game (at Troy), we had two penalties on our first three plays. Sometimes, we have little minor penalties that kind of get us off schedule as far as moving the ball down the field," Crowder said. "It's just a lack of execution is really what it comes down to. In those cold stretches, we don't execute as well as we can. So if we can eliminate those, those cold stretches, then I think that we'll have a pretty good season."
Duke's 38-point win over the Jayhawks was its largest margin over a Power 5 team since 1998, when it won 44-10 at Northwestern. The Blue Devils have gone from awful to respectable to downright fearsome so quickly under Cutcliffe, it's hard to keep in perspective where they came from.
Kansas should know, though, because the Jayhawks -- thoroughly dominated in all aspects of the game -- are now, essentially, what Duke used to be. A major-conference team in name only that the other teams beg to schedule for a win that looks better than it actually is.
That used to be Duke, and the Blue Devils' hapless football history prior to the last few years is well known. But this time, Duke did what good teams do to inferior opponents -- dominate them.
"Right now, I think that the mentality in the locker room and in the coaching room is every game, we expect to win. We know that we have a lot of players and we know that if we go out there and execute, we can compete with anybody, especially offensively," Crowder said. "So today just felt like a routine win."
That doesn't diminish what Duke has accomplished, though, since the last (and only other) time it played Kansas back in 2009. The Blue Devils would finish with five wins in Cutcliffe's second season in Durham, but this one was a loss, and a bad one -- 44-16. Since that season, Duke is 22-22 (16-11 the last two seasons) with 19 FBS wins (11 over Power 5 teams) and Kansas is 9-39 with just six wins over FBS teams (three in the last two seasons) and three over Power 5 opponents.
"That's a big deal, because from 2009 to now is pretty significant, the difference. We knew that going in. Any time you win one of those games, and particularly when you win it in a dominating fashion, that's a good thing," Cutcliffe said. "Other people in other parts of the country pay a little bit more attention to who we are. Now, you've got to do something to take advantage of it."
This time around, Duke dominated the game in all phases, but most jarring perhaps was its dominance at the line of scrimmage. Because it wasn't just dominance. It was often an annihilation.
"I felt like going into the game ... I thought the key one was our d-line against their offensive line and vice versa. And I thought we would win that big, and I think we did. I'd have to look at the tape, but I thought that was the thing that favored us the most, which is a nice thing to go into a game feeling, particularly against a Big 12 opponent."
Cutcliffe said, though, that after he left the field in Lawrence post-thrashing back in 2009, he never lost hope. Even as Duke had back-to-back 3-9 seasons in 2010 and 2011 that followed that five-win season in 2009.
"I never have had any doubts here, and I'm not saying that arrogantly. We've never doubted ourselves," Cutcliffe said. "We were just ill-equipped or ready for it at that point. I think our team still has enough guys around that they know where we've come from that the best way for us to continue to reap benefits and that kind of turnaround is just to keep working. We've got an outstanding work ethic in this program. It's a tribute to those guys that played in 2008, 2009. They bought in. They helped pass this on.
"But I don't think we ever really doubted ourselves, though. I think we've grown and we've got a lot of growing left to do, I can tell you that."
