Duke’s Domination Of Northwestern Shows It Belongs

An average team can pull off a fluke upset, but good teams also dominate overmatched opponents

With its season opening upset over Clemson, Duke Football announced its return to national relevance. With this weekend’s dominant victory over Northwestern, it showed that it has the firepower to stick around. And that may be the more important accomplishment in Year 2 of the Elko Era.

At first glance, that’s a take that admittedly should generate some scoffs; after all, the victory over Clemson was arguably Duke’s biggest since at least Steve Spurrier’s time in Durham. But college football is a notoriously mercurial game, one in which the energy of a home crowd and a few lucky bounces can yield seemingly unpredictable results. Upsetting Clemson showed that the Blue Devils would be a legitimately competitive squad, but any further conclusions were hot takes at best.

But after dismantling Northwestern, it’s more fair to say this Duke team has staying power. Northwestern may not be a powerhouse program (and is down even relative to their own standards given their tumultuous offseason), but they’re still a Power 5 team. Any team can dismantle a team of Lafeyette’s caliber at home, and most can beat teams like Northwestern. But legitimate Top 25 squads are expected to demolish the Northwestern’s of the college football world, especially at home, and the Blue Devils did just that.

The result represents a marked difference from last year’s squad. Despite their impressive 9-4 record, Duke was prone to play down to the quality of their opponent: they beat a 1-win Northwestern team by a mere 8 points (albeit on the road), and a nearly as bad Boston College team by just 7. The last time Duke was ranked in the AP Top 20 was 2014 during David Cutcliffe’s prime years, but that team had similar issues: they beat a below .500 Virginia squad by just a touchdown at home and needed two overtimes to defeat a similar caliber Pittsburgh team on the road.

It’s still early in the season, but Saturday’s result is a strong indication that this year’s Blue Devils may avoid those nail-biting situations against seemingly inferior opponents. That’s what the best college football teams do: they eliminate the influence of chance through sheer dominance of overmatched opponents. Given the challenging road ahead for the Blue Devils (including matchups against ranked Notre Dame, Florida State, and UNC teams) Mike Elko’s margin for error is much smaller than it was a year ago. But if the performance against Northwestern is indeed this team’s norm, it should be in a position to comfortably win the games it should win and compete in those it can win.

For a rebuilding program, that’s arguably more important than a lone upset victory.