Duke Football: Fans show up, watch Blue Devils reenact fifth game of 2017

Is this the 2018 season for the Duke football program or just 2017 set on repeat?

During the Duke football team’s 31-14 loss to Virginia Tech on Saturday night in Wallace Wade Stadium in front of a season-high crowd of 32,177, its defensive backs looked like those who played in Durham during the late 1990s and early 2000s. Like squirrels crossing a road.

Just confused.

It seemed as if the Blue Devils’ loss of All-ACC cornerback Mark Gilbert to an injury against Northwestern on Sept. 8 finally caught up with them.

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The Hokies’ quarterback, Ryan Willis — taking over for Josh Jackson, who was injured last week — kept finding his receivers either wide open or with a Duke defender with his back to the pass, and he finished with 332 yards through the air and three touchdown strikes.

Also, the Blue Devils’ wide receivers looked like they thought the ball would somehow catch itself on long passes that could have changed the momentum of the game had they come down with the catches.

At the same time, Duke quarterback Daniel Jones often looked like a guy feeling the trepidation that comes with coming back from an injury. Although he had 226 yards through the air, completing 23 of his 35 passes — he had one touchdown pass and one interception — he rushed six times for only one yard (a sign that he may have been protecting his injury that took him out of action the past two weeks).

Speaking of rushing, Brittain Brown had 12 attempts for 35 yards and Deon Jackson had 15 attempts for 34 yards. That’s it. And that’s not even close to their yards-per-attempt averages.

And, as a result of all of the above, the squad’s current record–and how it got here–looks nearly just like it did at this same point last year. Heck, even the total number of points the Blue Devils gave up matched that of their 31-6 loss to Miami during the fifth game of the 2017 season.

So now the Blue Devils will have a week off before heading to Georgia Tech on Oct. 13. They will be trying to figure out how not to suffer a six-game losing streak like they did last year.

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But after letting down the fans who showed up with high hopes — just as was the case in the Miami game a year ago — the Duke football team will have a tough time keeping its home attendance from slipping as it did a year ago.

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