Duke football fans are no strangers to seeing their team fly under the radar. This season might take the cake so far, though.
The Blue Devils are the defending ACC Champions, but because of the preseason narrative that this team wouldn't be nearly the same without Darian Mensah at QB, they remain unranked in both major polls despite getting off to a 3-0 start and being one of just eight teams in the country so far to defeat multiple Power Four opponents.
Duke opened the year by beating a College Football Playoff team from last year, Tulane. They followed that up by winning a road game over the Big Ten's Illinois, and then routed ACC opponent Stanford last weekend in Durham.
But they're still nowhere close to the Top 25. They remain 9th in the "others receiving votes" category of the AP Poll. That's nothing new. As ESPN's David Hale pointed out on X this week, that's just par for the course for the Blue Devils under Manny Diaz.
Duke is 3-0 with a road win over Illinois and is still NINTH in "others receiving votes" and it's no surprise... The AP voters are not Blue Devils fans. pic.twitter.com/zyZtBW54eq
— 💫🅰️♈️🆔 (@ADavidHaleJoint) September 20, 2026
There have been 20 teams since 2024 that have won at least 21 games. Of those 20 teams, every one of them has appeared in at least 10 of the 38 AP Polls since the beginning of the 2024 season.
Except for Duke.
Which has zero. None. Zilch.
Back-to-back nine-win seasons, an ACC Championship, and now a 3-0 start to the 2026 campaign, and not one national ranking to their name.
Duke continues to get massive disrespect because they are Duke
Of the 68 Power Four teams in college football, how many of them would be ranked right now with Duke's resume? 90%? 95%? Something like that, right?
Perhaps it's good news overall. Diaz can continue to use the "nobody believes in us" mantra he's used since Mensah transferred away. A lot of teams use it, but it's not true for most of them. It's 100% true for Duke right now.
But maybe not for much longer. The matchup against William & Mary this weekend won't move the needle for anyone, but there is beginning to be a bit of a shift in the national media as it pertains to this team. David Hale started the fire on Sunday, and CBS Sports' Tom Fornelli grabbed hold of the torch on the Cover 3 podcast on Monday. Amidst his significant praise for Nate Sheppard, Fornelli dropped the following quote:
"Duke, to me, is one of the teams that is getting absolutely no respect so far," Fornelli said. "If we talk about strength of record and resumes and all that kind of stuff, they've got one of the better resumes in the country to this point. They are one of those teams with two Power Four wins, and there's only eight of them in the country that can say that. And they are the defending ACC champion. Maybe the drop-off wasn't as big as we thought it was gonna be because Darian Mensah went to Miami. Maybe this team is still pretty good. Maybe Manny Diaz's defense is going to help them win games, and if Nate Sheppard keeps at this pace, they're a team that might still be in the running to get to Charlotte at the end of the year."
Duke still needs to get its passing game figured out in the coming weeks to have the type of balance that would make it a real contender in the ACC. But the defensive improvement is real. And so is Sheppard as one of the best players in the nation. Those things can carry this team a long way on their own.
Regardless of what happens from there, it's clear that this Duke team is outperforming everyone's preseason expectations. Rumors of their demise were greatly exaggerated.
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