Duke football 2025 schedule: Can’t miss game. Toughest stretch. Intriguing opponent

Duke football continued its recent success with a 9-4 season in Manny Diaz’s first season as head coach last season.

To have a fourth consecutive winning season though, and approach the the 8.7 wins the program has averaged over the last three seasons, the Blue Devils will need to topple some of the nation’s top teams in 2025.

Duke’s football schedule, announced by the ACC on Monday night, features against against three teams that were ranked in the final Associated Press Top 25 for last season. Two of those games, against No. 14 Clemson and No. 20 Syracuse, will be on the road while No. 16 Illinois visits Wallace Wade Stadium.

As successful as the 2024 season was with the program’s first nine-win regular season since 2014, Duke did not beat a team that was ranked when the game was played or wound up in the final rankings. The Blue Devils lost 28-27 in overtime to SMU and were throttled 53-31 at Miami and 52-20 to Ole Miss in the Gator Bowl.

As Diaz and his staff put together this season’s roster, they focused on being able to better compete with teams at that level.

Can’t miss game

Duke at UNC, Nov. 22: The last three games in this series have all been decided by three points or less, including Duke’s 21-20 comeback win a season ago that provided its first win over UNC since 2018. Now 72-year-old Bill Belichick, who has been told his first words (uttered during the Eisenhower Administration) were “Beat Duke” since his father was a UNC assistant coach way back when, coaches against the Blue Devils for the first time.

Toughest stretch

The Blue Devils will be challenged early with four September games that will go a long way toward determining what kind of season they will have.

Duke’s consecutive games with Illinois, Tulane, N.C. State and Syracuse will test the Blue Devils in ways they rarely were in 2024.

The Illinois and N.C. State games are at home, while Duke plays at Tulane on Sept. 13 and at Syracuse on Sept. 27.

The Blue Devils own wins over N.C. State in each of the last two seasons so they have confidence against their Triangle rival. But that will only make the Wolfpack even more determined to reverse the course of the series.

Both Syracuse and Illinois posted 10-win seasons in 2024. Tulane was the American Athletic Conference runner-up and finished 9-5.

Easiest stretch

The closest thing Duke gets to a breather this season comes in October because the team enjoys two open weeks and only plays two games all month. The Blue Devils have a long road trip to play California on Oct. 4, then don’t play again until Oct. 18 at home with Georgia Tech. Neither of those games will be easy. But at least the team will rested when the Yellow Jackets come to Durham. Duke’s next game after Georgia Tech isn’t until Nov. 1, but that’s at Clemson.

Notable nonconference game

Illinois at Duke, Sept. 6: The Blue Devils put together a fantastic 9-4 season a year ago but did so without beating a ranked opponent. Duke gets an early chance to change that this season against the Illini, who went 10-3 last season and won their final four games. With quarterback Luke Altmyer returning, Illinois is a near-lock to be a preseason AP Top 25 team this summer.

Filled with intrigue

Duke at Tulane, Sept. 13: The NCAA Transfer Portal allows teams to remake rosters quickly while providing delicious storylines. Duke landed quarterback Darian Mensah last December when he decided to leave Tulane after two seasons on the Green Wave roster. He was Tulane’s starter as a redshirt freshman a season ago, throwing for 2,723 yards and helping Tulane to 9-4. Now he heads back to New Orleans to play his first road game with the Blue Devils.

DUKE SCHEDULE 2025

(*) - ACC games

What is the ACC scheduling model?

The ACC’s schedule model continues through 2030 with no divisions, featuring 17 schools, and including 68 annual conference matchups.

The top two teams based on conference winning percentage will compete in the ACC Football Championship Game on the first Saturday in December at Bank of America Stadium in Charlotte.

The format has each member institution play eight conference games per season, with all 17 teams playing each other at least twice in the seven-season span that began in 2024 — once at home and once on the road. The ACC’s 14 East Coast-based teams will play a total of three times each in California over the seven-year span that began in 2024 and none will travel west to California in back-to-back seasons.

The scheduling model protects 16 annual matchups: Boston College-Syracuse, Boston College-Pitt, Syracuse-Pitt, North Carolina-Virginia, North Carolina-Duke, North Carolina-NC State, NC State-Wake Forest, NC State-Duke, Duke-Wake Forest, Virginia Tech-Virginia, Florida State-Clemson, Miami-Florida State, Miami-Virginia Tech, Stanford-Cal, Stanford-SMU, and Cal-SMU.