Another slow offensive performance finally costs Duke football

Duke football came into its biggest test of the season last night with a 5-0 record under rookie head coach Manny Diaz and looking like a squad that would be competing at the top of the ACC for the remainder of the season. The Blue Devils came into the contest as heavy underdogs, but it was definitely a winnable game for the team as it matched up with the now 4-2 Yellow Jackets well.

What's plagued Duke throughout the season and kept them out of conversations for potentially being ranked is needing these sort of second-half offensive explosions to come back and win games against inferior opponents. Duke has certainly established itself as a second-half type of team, both offensively and defensively, yet last night it couldn't find any sort of rhythm.

The first quarter saw practically nothing from the Blue Devils in terms of offense, but the Blue Devil defense kept Georgia Tech in check to keep Duke in the game.

After the Yellow Jackets got in the end zone on its first offensive possession of the game to make the score 7-0, the Duke defense did not let up anything for the rest of the quarter. The issue was, Duke couldn't get anything going to put pressure on Georgia Tech.

Through the entire first quarter, Duke had possession for just a total of two minutes and 51 seconds, both drives ending in punts. With three minutes to go in the opening quarter, Duke had just six total yards of offense while Georgia Tech had already converted seven first downs.

Georgia Tech, who boasts one of the best run defenses in the ACC, completely shut down the Blue Devils run attack early on, making it really difficult for quarterback Maalik Murphy to get anything going in the air.

Duke ran on second-and-middle/long scenarios a good amount and it went nowhere. The Duke run game typically uses Star Thomas as a north-to-south moving back running vertically through the middle, and the Yellow Jackets saw it the entire way.

The offense just looked out of sync as a whole for the Blue Devils, with Murphy missing several throws and his receivers just not seeming to be on the same page. There looked to be a lot of forced deep balls into heavy traffic, with Duke having a lot of trouble getting downfield.

After Georgia Tech made the score 10-0 early in the second quarter, the Duke offense still just couldn't get anything to work.

It didn't come until Duke's last possession of the first half where it was finally able to get on the board. Thomas found some holes in the run game and offensive coordinator Jonathan Brewer used more dump-off passes to him in the backfield to get some yards moving.

The only passing attack that worked for Duke all night were short slant routes into the middle of the field. Duke finally found the end zone late in the second quarter after Murphy found wide receiver Eli Pancol on a slant and Pancol took it all the way in from twenty yards out.

The Georgia Tech blitz caused a lot of problems for the Blue Devils, but it also freed up a lot of space in the open field when Murphy was able to find a receiver there.

Duke fans were hoping this would be another case of a slow offensive half with rhythm being discovered in the second, but that wasn't the case.

Duke punted on its first possession of the second half, but had a smooth drive down the field all the way inside the GT red zone. After being stopped on third down, Diaz opted to go for it on 4th-and-1 where Thomas was completely stuffed and Duke walked away with no points, keeping the score 10-7.

It seemed like the tides might've been shifting in the third quarter after this in favor of the Blue Devils. The Duke defense forced a GT three-and-out, and on the first play of Duke's next possession, Murphy found wide out Sahmir Hagans on an almost-identical route to what he found Pancol on earlier, and Hagans took it 65 yards all the way to the end zone to silence the crowd and put Duke back in front 14-10.

When Murphy was able to get the ball out quickly against the Yellow Jacket blitz, the offense was able to move the ball down the field, but the blitz continued to cause too many issues.

Duke now had the game in its favor, as it has won the fourth quarter in every matchup so far. Before last night, Duke had a points margin of +34 in the fourth quarter and was the only FBS team to not allow a touchdown in the final fifteen minutes. Then, Georgia Tech scored two and Duke couldn't keep up.

Georgia Tech scored touchdowns on its first two offensive possessions of the fourth quarter, and Duke came back with a punt and then a missed field goal by Todd Pelino to put the game out of reach.

Duke has struggled offensively for good parts of games in just about every matchup this season. It was only a matter of time before the defense couldn't bail the rest of the team out, and that's what Duke saw last night.

Still 5-1 and now 1-1 in ACC play, Duke can still win out and now has a must-win game coming next week at home against 1-5 Florida State. Sooner rather than later, Duke just has to figure out how to adjust offensively when its original gameplan isn't working. The Georgia Tech blitz completely took the run away, and Thomas only carried the ball fourteen times after having at least seventeen in his previous three games. This was also Thomas's low in rushing yards (48) since week one.

For Murphy, it's going to be important to figure out how to handle pressure and blitzes as the season goes on. More often than not, the offensive line has given Murphy plenty of time to get comfortable in the pocket and make timely throws. We definitely saw some panic and forced throws as the Yellow Jackets were bringing the pressure.