Duke defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke named a Broyles Award nominee

Duke defensive coordinator Jonahtan Patke was one of 65 assistant coaches nominated for the Broyles Award on Tuesday.

Duke defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke was one of 65 assistant coaches nominated for the Broyles Award on Tuesday afternoon.

The trophy is given to the nation’s best assistant coach each season, and Patke’s work in his first year with the Blue Devils deserves commendation.

Through 11 games this season, the Blue Devils have racked up 99 tackles for loss (second among FBS defenses), 25 turnovers (also second), and 36 sacks (fifth) while allowing 6.0 yards per pass attempt (14th). Miami quarterback Cam Ward, a seasonlong contender for the Heisman Trophy, was the only quarterback to throw for more than 258 yards against Patke’s squad, and the Blue Devils nearly ended the season with as many interceptions (12) as touchdowns allowed (14).

The Blue Devils allowed 22.6 points per game this season, fifth-fewest in the ACC, and held seven of their first 11 opponents to 21 points or fewer.

Patke spent four years as [autotag]Manny Diaz[/autotag]’s linebackers coach with the Miami Hurricanes from 2018-21 before heading to Incarnate Word to coordinate the Cardinals’ defense. He spent one season there and one season in the same role at Texas State before rejoining Diaz in Durham.

Duke is excited for the challenge of Virginia Tech’s ground game, Jonathan Patke says

Virginia Tech brings a dominant rushing attack to Durham, but defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke’s unit won’t shy from a challenge.

The Duke defense welcomes Virginia Tech to Wallace Wade Stadium on Saturday, and the Hokies bring one of the ACC’s best ground games with them to Durham.

Through Week 12, the Hokies are one of five ACC teams averaging more than five yards per carry, and they’re second among those five teams in total attempts. The end result is an offense picking up more than 185 rushing yards per week.

“I think they do a great job in the run game trying to attack you with some outside zone, some stretch, and a lot of motion on every play,” Duke defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke said on Monday. “About 75 percent of their normal downs have some type of motion on it to get your eyes going in the wrong direction.”

Running back Bhayshul Tuten and quarterback Kyron Drones form the heartbeat of that attack. Tuten picked up 951 yards and scored 12 touchdowns through the Hokies’ first eight games, surpassing the 100-yard mark five different times. He’s battled injury over the last two weeks, but he rumbled around for 266 yards and three scores against Boston College just a month ago.

Drones, who has also battled some injuries for the last three weeks, has added 336 yards and six scores with his legs. While the Blue Devils have faced SMU’s Kevin Jennings, Miami’s Cam Ward, and NC State’s CJ Bailey in the past three games, Patke says Drones presents a different challenge.

“He’s a little bit different than the guys we’ve seen in the past few weeks,” Patke said on Monday. “He’s going to try to run through you and he’s a big guy, so they designed some runs for him and sometimes he just makes it happen on his own.”

The duo has combined for more than 69% of the Hokies’ rushing yards. Despite their talent, however, Patke didn’t make it sound like his defense carried any nerves.

“It’s a great challenge for us,” he concluded. “It will be a physical football game and we’re excited.”

With six games left, either the Duke offense or defense will buck its trends

With six games left in the 2024 Duke football season, one of two things will probably happen over the rest of the year.

First-year Duke football coach [autotag]Manny Diaz[/autotag] won his first five games as the Blue Devils head coach, the first time in three decades that the program started 5-0, and his team now stands just one win from the postseason.

With fourth-quarter comebacks over Northwestern, Connecticut, and the North Carolina Tar Heels, Duke looked like a team with no quit. The three second-half touchdowns against UNC created the second-biggest comeback in Blue Devils history, and as there always is around novel teams with a good story, there was an air of destiny around Diaz’s fit with the program.

However, the first loss of the season to Georgia Tech highlighted a key problem around the current Duke formula. Duke fell behind by 10 points in the first half, their second straight game trailing by double-digits to open conference play, and allowed two fourth-quarter touchdowns to lose 24-14.

Those two late scores, believe it or not, were the first fourth-quarter touchdowns the Duke defense had allowed in Week 6. On one hand, that sounds like a statement about the Blue Devils. Diaz has talked about how his team feels prepared for those final 15 minutes thanks to their conditioning, and that’s an asset to the program.

On the other hand, Duke didn’t allow a fourth-quarter touchdown in a 5-0 start that included three one-score victories. And now the problem arises.

Over the final six games of the season, with talented teams like the Miami Hurricanes and SMU Mustangs left on the schedule, one of two things will likely happen to the Blue Devils: the offense will thrive or the defense will regress.

The Duke pass defense doesn’t just look like the best in the ACC through six games. It might be one of the best in the country. The Blue Devils have allowed 4.9 yards per attempt through the air, third among FBS defenses, with only six passing touchdowns allowed.

The veteran secondary, featuring longtime starters like Chandler Rivers and Jaylen Stinson, compliment a destructive defensive line. Duke’s 18 sacks and 58 tackles for loss rank 16th and second among FBS defenses, a testament to talented pass rushers like Vincent Anthony Jr. (3.5 sacks) and the discipline of linebackers like Alex Howard (47 total tackles and 9.0 TFLs).

It all adds up to a unit allowing 309.3 yards and 17.5 points per game, both the second-fewest among ACC teams.

The Duke offense, however, has been a little more inconsistent. Transfer quarterback [autotag]Maalik Murphy[/autotag] threw for 1,017 yards and 11 touchdowns in his first four games, but he’s thrown five interceptions already and completed just 50.8% of his passes against the Tar Heels and Yellow Jackets.

Running back [autotag]Star Thomas[/autotag] looked like he could buoy the offense after his performance against UNC, scoring two touchdowns and gaining 211 yards from scrimmage, but he managed just 48 yards on 14 carries against Georgia Tech.

That was the third time the Blue Devils failed to reach 100 team rushing yards despite running the ball at least 27 times in five of the six games. Among 17 ACC teams, Duke sits 14th in yards per rush (3.53) and 15th in yards per pass attempt (6.9). The Blue Devils’ 26.3 points per game are tied for the fourth-fewest in the conference.

The dichotomy between those two units creates the issue laid out above. Outside of the Middle Tennessee game, boosted by three forced fumbles in opposing territory, the offense has scored 8.2 points per game before halftime. Even with a great defense, Duke consistently finds itself in holes because of the slow starts.

The Florida State Seminoles, the next team on the schedule, have been the worst offense in the conference this season, so the issue should be fine for another week. But the two following opponents, SMU and Miami, both score more than 40 points per game.

There’s a chance that Duke can keep winning games in this fashion, especially with how FSU, Wake Forest, and NC State look. However, the current system leaves a minuscule margin of error for the defense against Power Four talent, and that will almost assuredly come back to bite the Blue Devils over a 12-game sample size. Unless, of course, the offense finds its first-half footing after the bye.

The Duke secondary and pass rush have created an unbeatable combination through Week 6

Through Week 6, the Duke Blue Devils are one of five FBS defenses allowing fewer than five yards per pass attempt.

Even with the Blue Devils losing their first game of the season on Saturday, Duke remains one of the most formidable pass defenses in the country.

Through Week 6, opposing quarterbacks are averaging just 4.9 yards per attempt against defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke and his secondary. Only four FBS teams have been better so far this season, and no other ACC defense is giving up fewer than six yards per pass.

Georgia Tech quarterback Haynes King, one of the most productive signal-callers in the country, completed 74.2% of his passes during Saturday’s win, but he only managed 167 yards on 31 attempts. That average of 5.4 is by far his lowest total of the season, and it was just the second time he finished below nine yards per attempt.

The anaconda-esque nature of Duke’s aerial blockade starts up front with the pass rush. The Blue Devils have already picked up 18 sacks as a team, tied for the sixth-most among Power Four programs, and their lone sack on King last week was the first Georgia Tech had given up all season.

Five different members of the pass rush already have multiple sacks this season, including 3.5 from junior edge rusher Vincent Anthony Jr. and 3.0 from transfer linebacker Alex Howard. The Duke trenches have taken over games, finishing with eight sacks against Elon and six against Middle Tennessee.

But even if a quarterback evades the pressure, there’s rarely any space downfield. Duke’s four primary defensive backs (Chandler Rivers, Joshua Pickett, Jaylen Stinson, and Terry Moore) are all upperclassmen, and they’ve played like veteran leaders so far this season.

According to Pro Football Focus, between the 44 times Rivers and Pickett have been targeted, the cornerback duo has given up 22 catches while forcing 11 incompletions. Even if a pass finds its way to the target, there’s a one-in-three chance that the Duke corners ensure it remains a broken play.

Moore already has multiple interceptions this season, reading the quarterback’s eyes and roving around downfield as a constant threat, and Stinson has only missed two tackles this season.

Each member of the four provides an essential skill to the set, and as a result, Patke’s defense forces opposing offenses to abandon big plays. Even without factoring in yards lost on sacks, no team has thrown for more than 251 yards against the Blue Devils, and Miami quarterback Cam Ward might be the only one capable of cracking that trend.

Questions remain about an offense that’s managed just one first-half touchdown in the last two games, but Duke can comfortably win eight games on the back of this defense.