How a loss to No. 5 Miami shows how far Duke has come — and how far it wants to go

Duke football spent the last three seasons digging itself out of the ACC’s basement.

The Blue Devils found success, first under coach Mike Elko, now under Manny Diaz, and are going to a bowl game for the third consecutive season after posting losing records in the previous three seasons.

The next step is to elevate the results even more, to push through and have a chance to win an ACC championship.

On Saturday at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium,while losing 53-31, the Blue Devils received another lesson about the work they still have to complete to get where they’d like to be in the league hierarchy.

Duke pushed the ACC-leading Hurricanes, enough to take an 11-point lead in the third quarter that put an upset within reach.

That’s when quarterback Cam Ward and the high-powered Miami offense found another gear, one the Blue Devils were helpless to match.

“It’ll be a tough film study tomorrow,” Diaz said, “with the mistakes that we made, which allowed them, to their credit, they capitalized on.”

Wins over AP top 5 teams elusive

Duke hasn’t defeated a team ranked among the Associated Press Top 25’s first five teams since 1960. The Blue Devils have never done it on the road.

When Diaz left his offense on the field, rather than attempting a short field goal early in the third quarter, quarterback Maalik Murphy lofted a 6-yard touchdown pass to senior wide receiver Jordan Moore. That gave Duke a 28-17 lead with 10 minutes, 3 seconds left in the quarter.

It was the kind of gutsy call, and play, that springs massive upsets around the college football world. Considering Duke had bounced back in such a manner after trailing 14-0 early in the game, it looked in the moment like the Blue Devils could continue to go blow-for-blow with the ACC’s best.

But Miami (9-0, 5-0 ACC) has a Heisman Trophy candidate at quarterback and other top playmakers on both sides of the ball.

Ward and Miami’s offense needed just 2:40 of the game clock to score a touchdown on his 3-yard pass to Xavier Restrepo before adding a two-point conversion.

When Murphy overthrew Moore to toss his second interception of the game on the second play of Duke’s ensuing possession, Miami’s Romanas Frederique Jr. returned it 30 yards to the Duke 38.

Miami needed just five plays to advance inside Duke’s 5 before running back Elija Lofton’s 2-yard touchdown run gave it the lead for good at 32-28.

Offense goes silent

From that point forward, Duke’s offense only mustered three points. Those came in the fourth quarter, when after the Blue Devils had a first-and-goal at the Miami 6, Todd Pelino kicked a 24-yard field goal, slicing the Hurricanes’ lead to 32-31 with 13:51 to play.

Other than that scoring drive, Duke’s offense sputtered after building that 11-point lead. The Blue Devils had two three-and-outs. Two others ended on the second play due to interceptions. A fumble halted another drive after just three plays.

Meanwhile, Ward was piling up 400 passing yards with five touchdowns. Duke’s defenders struggled to keep up with Restrepo, who caught eight passes for 146 yards with three touchdowns.

“It’s a game of turnovers and explosive plays,” Diaz said. “It’s hard to beat anyone on the road, if you lose those two battles. It’s definitely hard to beat a team as talented as they are. I thought that was a telling difference in the second half, giving an offense like that short fields and then allowing the quarterback, as good enough as he is, to have breakdowns in our coverage to leave guys wide open. Allowing them to get separation on the scoreboard and really take control of the game.”

Coupled with Duke’s 28-27 loss to SMU a week earlier, that result coming despite the Mustangs turning the ball over six times, the Blue Devils (6-3, 2-3 ACC) have lost back-to-back games for the first time this season.

The last time Duke lost more than two games in a row was in 2021 when the Blue Devils went winless in ACC play in David Cutcliffe’s final season as their coach. So this group, the last three seasons anyway, has not completely collapsed.

It’s also continued to come up short, sometimes by the thinnest of margins, against top teams.

In late October last season, Duke held a three-point lead in the fourth quarter at unbeaten Florida State. The Blue Devils failed to score again while Jordan Travis led three touchdown drives as the Seminoles won 38-20.

Saturday’s loss at Miami feels a bit like that. The final margin shows a comfortable win for the heavily favored team. Duke played better than the final score but it didn’t play well enough to stay in the ACC title chase.

“We showed that we can play toe to toe with anybody in the country,” Diaz said. “That’s back-to- back games against ranked teams that are undefeated in our conference. The difference from last week and this week is just the mistakes that we made. You took a game that was going to be back and forth and come down to the last possession, and it made it comfortable for them in the final half of the fourth quarter.”