The Duke football program had its media day on Thursday, July 24th, as part of ACC Football Kickoff 2025 in Charlotte, North Carolina. Blue Devils head coach Manny Diaz, along with several players, spoke to the media throughout the day in press conferences and interviews. However, Diaz made a bold claim about his program that will have Duke fans fired up for the 2025 season.
"We just met as a staff, we went over all of our numbers from the summer running, conditioning, and lifting period," Diaz told reporters. "This is the strongest team we've had at Duke in the last four years. This is the fastest team we've had at Duke in the last four years since our strength coach, David Feeley, has been around. And, really what those two things mean together, that if we get challenged into a arm wrestling competition, we should expect to come on top, and if anybody wants to run relay races against us, we feel confident that we can win relay races."
Feeley has been the Director of Football Sports Performance at Duke since January 2022.
As Diaz enters his second season as the head coach in Durham, he feels pretty confident that this is the best team, in terms of athleticism, that Duke has had in the last several years.
Duke is looking to build on an extremely successful year one under Diaz, one in which the Blue Devils won at least nine games in a season for just the fourth time. Diaz and the rest of his staff completely revamped the roster on both sides of the ball, and the Blue Devils are entering 2025 ready to make some noise in the ACC.
Darian Mensah, the new Blue Devils quarterback, spoke to reporters this morning and also showed the same level of confidence, saying he and the rest of the squad are ready to "shock some people" around the ACC.
Along with the QB upgrade with Mensah, the Blue Devils are also returning several key guys on the defensive side of the ball, such as Chandler Rivers, Terry Moore, and Wesley Williams.
Duke has slid under the radar throughout the offseason despite reloading a roster that won nine games a season ago, and the program is ready to prove it belongs in conversations amongst the best teams in the conference in 2025.