Duke Football dropped its fifth game in six opportunities on Saturday, squandering an early 10 point lead to NC State in Raleigh.
After leading by six at the half, the Blue Devils watched as NC State shut out head coach David Cutcliffe's offense in the third and fourth quarters while the Wolfpack offense - down its starting quarterback - managed to score 17 unanswered to win 31-20.
Following the game the Duke head coach continued to offer his feedback and analysis of where the season is heading as the Blue Devils will now enjoy a Bye week before returning to action against Charlotte on Halloween.
Here's what Cutcliffe said following the game:
Opening Statement:
'First thing I'll do is tell you what I told our players in the locker room after the game. I'll tell you what I saw. I saw every position on our team fight and fight and fight. Obviously, we were not perfect by any means. And that's my job to get us to that point. But their job is to go compete to never go away. Every series everybody doing everything they possibly could to try to win the game on every play. And I saw that. When you have a team doing that, you have a really good football team. We played a really good team in NC State and they are a good-looking football team. They're going to win a lot of games. I think at this point, we can still win a lot of games.
"Now what we have to do, we have to play better in third downs. We lost on both sides of the ball there and we did that really well at Syracuse. We struggled with it all year offensively and I've got to look at what we're doing. We didn't finish a couple of drives on offense. I thought the last one there in the third quarter, I just did a poor job with sequence of calls down there once we got inside the five-yard line. You don't get those back. But we'll certainly study all that we're doing in that regard. In the first one, we missed an open guy for a touchdown and that generally bites you like dropping a foul ball and then hit a home run. Then we turn the ball over. Also, Chase Brice played fierce tonight and competed with everything he had. I told him after I was really proud of him and that the last two interceptions certainly all me. I've got to put him in better positions. They did a good job with mixing coverages and you know I just have to do a better job with that and helping him. The opportunities were there. That's all you can ask for. But our team fought. We will continue to strive to get better. We've got an open date that is badly needed after six Power-5 football games in a row. We're pretty beat up. We were pretty beat up coming in. Looks like a little bit more beat up coming out. So we need this time to assess everything we're doing schematically, to heal a bit more and to look at what we can do to make a stretch run as we get to a point playing at home a bit more and we're looking forward to that."
On coming up short on fourth-and-goal:
"Most of the time during the first three quarters with the ball inside the 2- to 3-yard line we will go for it. Statistically, everything I believe in, is that you try to score a touchdown there. I know it would have put us up nine points. I didn't think that was enough, particularly at that stage of the game. It's in the fourth quarter that I'm going to go up two scores. But right there, I felt like we were going to score a touchdown. I just felt that I didn't sequence the plays the right way. Obviously, we didn't get it done. But, you move forward, you learn and you move forward."
On quarterback Chase Brice's play tonight:
"Well, as I mentioned about Chase, I thought he played terrific. Those interceptions really weren't forces, part of it was good coverage. I took a risk on a call on the last one that I talked to him about and he tried to hammer it in and it was a little bit desperate. I told him their guy made a great play. He gets hit and one goes up in the air. I probably went to the well too much with our max protection. We could have picked it up, but he's just trying to compete. You know he can't do anything about that one. Then the first one, he probably held onto it and over competed a little bit. But I'd rather have one over compete than under compete. I thought he made strides tonight to make himself a better quarterback without a doubt."
On struggles converting in the red zone:
"Well, I don't know if it's energy. We've got plenty of energy. As I said, you got to look at the sequencing of calls. What we're doing and who you're doing it with, every detail. It's not like we practiced poorly. There's no quick fix just by commenting it is just a hard area of the field. It's a hard part of football. And we've got to find a way to be better at it or we won't win. That's the bottom line and our guys were so willing to fight. If we put them in the best positions they can be in I believe we can get it done. We missed an opportunity to score on one. Then, I did a poor job with sequencing of play calls if you understand what I mean. If you score those two drives against the defense like that, you're feeling pretty solid about the day. Fourteen more points puts a different spin on this game."
"six" - Google News
October 18, 2020 at 05:28PM
https://ift.tt/348Y2G4
Everything Cutcliffe said following Duke's 5th loss in six games - 247Sports
"six" - Google News
https://ift.tt/3dcBbL9
https://ift.tt/2Wis8la
No comments:
Post a Comment