Duke

Death, Taxes & Duke. The universe did not turn on its axis. There are still three things that we can all truly count on. Thank God for Devils.

Happiness is a fried snickers in one hand, a foot long sausage dog in the other and the hordes that always invade Wallace Wade on Saturday in front of you. You know that you are in Duke when there was not a parking spot to be found on Friday afternoon, roughly 6 hours before the start of a basketball scrimmage, and on Saturday about two hours before the football game, $10 and a smile will get you within a Nike Driver of the football stadium. Durham is where you can truly evaluate our cheerleading squad because we can hear each of them cheer individually – from the top row of the Stadium. The home team has radically increased the depth in their band. They now have multiple drummers and a quite possibly a horn “section”, although these 60 hearty souls sporting bandish togs were not allowed to play during the actual game.

Who was that tall, distinguished gentleman leading our offense wearing #3? Oh yeah, that is that Manuel kid that we saw last season. Great to have him back. Apparently, coach Fisher was saving him for Duke. We did not see this type of leadership and athletic ability in the first two games, and injuries stopped him in the next 3 games. First play from scrimmage, he naked rolls and wide open options are all over the field. Well, he missed Ty Jones on that one, but he did not miss much after that. Clearly, the Devils coaching staff are not alumni, because My Gawd, are they idiots. How many times are you going to put your DB’s in single coverage with no deep help against us? Maybe one 50+ yard gain will change their mind. No? How about two? Ok, THREE 50+ pass plays in the first quarter alone with the same sideline Mensa-meistro job. To EJ’s credit, he absolutely threw perfect strikes to all three guys, and one was pressured from the goal line on third down. 14 passes all day? Awesome. I will take it. That spells domination. Again, it was Duke, but our young lineman needed this like a diabetic kindergartner needs Halloween. Add up the ages of the right side of our line, and I have socks older than that. They created holes and pushed forward for young Devonta better than at any point this season. It could be the building block that these youngsters need to create their sandcastle.

Defensively, I continue to be mystified by what our coordinator is thinking during these games. On one first half third down, he dialed up a corner zone blitz that had Mike Harris chasing the QB – and 280 lb lumbering lineman Tank Caradine trailing the primary wideout. Had the pass not been an absolute skunk, it would have been an easy 90 yard TD. He continues to stand Brandon Jenkins up to try and fool the other team as to where he may be coming from. Well, Brandon's grand total of a half sack this season speaks to this brainiac strategem. How about we put our 11 hats on the field and just beat their ass? Sure, send a Lb on a blitz every moon or so, but this mutiple formation idiocy is only mitigating our talent and insuring that our back 7 guys are in a perpetual state of confusion. Mark has five 5 star kids to work with on defense. These are not academic all-americans, so lets slow down on the algebra 4, and let them play football. Speaking of All-Americans, how about our German? (insert Arnold voice here) Yahhh, he will mash you. He will knock down your balls and crush you like a bug…sorry to see JMac get hurt this week as both Madison HS alums have been lost for the season in the last pair of away games. Other teams are apparently picking on Greg Reid on every key 3rd (and in Duke's case - 4th) down play. Believe it or not, he is holding his own considering the volume of work coming his way. Compare him to Martin Mayhew in the Deion era. Eventually, he will make enough plays to make that decision to default to his side tougher.

Big ups to our little gold-toed wonder this week as well. Never missing an extra point while wearing the colors, Dustin broke the Nole record this week for consecutive PAT’s, and is only a few field goals away from that consecutive mark as well. He is also such a good kid that on two occasions this week, he tried to send a complimentary football into the pitiful Blue Devil Band section. Jimbo was not amused as these gifts accounted for two of our only five penalities this week. Who knew that we would ever wish for a Ron Cherry crew at a Nole game?

Sorry for the late blog this week, but having been in five states in the last three days, finding time to muse has been tough. Time for some home cooking this weekend - or better yet - Stansbury cooking...