Blue Devils camp report: Part 1

DURHAM – When bells chime at a Duke football practice, it means something special is about to happen.

That was the way these segments of practice — 1-on-1 reps, offense vs. defense, usually evenly matched experience and/or skill — were described in the spring. These “Ring the Bell” periods bring an excitement level that spices up practices, one that new coach Manny Diaz introduced.

It’s the period that started Duke’s first practice of fall camp on Tuesday morning.

“You want it to be kind of random, where they have to respond to it and they don’t know,” Diaz said of the loud period. “But yeah, we’d have had a hard time if we waited much longer than that.

“We almost did it in the building and did 1-on-1s in the locker room.”

Diaz’s first practice of fall camp at Duke rang in with a bang. More will come to light in the next three weeks, most notably a quarterback battle that needs to be won and an offensive line that needs to be sorted out.

Fall camp started on the upswing, with that Ring the Bell portion serving as warning enough that football season is here.

“I love the Ring the Bell period, it just gets our competitive juices flowing right from the get-go,” linebacker Tre Freeman said. “We don’t know when it’s going to happen, so when it happens we just know that we’re going to do our best.”

The penalty for the losing side of the ball is minimal, something like 10 pushups. The point is there in Freeman’s explanation, that it’s a team-building and bonding period that puts pressure on the players in each rep, with every one of their teammates gathered around the area.

Sure enough, after Duke finished stretching Tuesday, the bells rang.

This version of 1-on-1s were receivers against defensive backs, starting routes about 5-10 yards short of the end zone. Quarterbacks rotated making throws into tight windows for touchdowns or incompletions. While most 1-on-1 drills tend to favor offensive players — as has become the case with football rules in general — this one gives an edge to the defensive players, Diaz explained.

“That’s a difficult drill for the offense,” he said. “They’re really only allowed to run two routes.”

Duke’s defense won the period and the offense paid the price of pushups. For Diaz, the winning side wasn’t much the point.

“It doesn’t really matter what the score is when Jordan Moore and Chandler Rivers lock up for the last rep,” Diaz said, “because everybody is going through their Ring the Bell rep.”

“The scoreboard is a liar, right? It just tells us something that happens in the past. It does not tell us what’s going on right now. So, you get the players to be present-minded and understand, ‘This is where we have to have our mindset and our focus,’ and we can overcome a lot of sins of the past by locking in on what’s going on right now.”

Here were my observations during Duke’s first practice of fall camp:

Equipment: Helmets only.

Weather: Weird day … Duke started around 9:30 a.m. when it was cloudy and hazy, probably mid-70s. By the time practice finished about two hours later, it was at least high-80s, sunny and steamy.

Was today won by the offense, defense or neither: Neither.

There’s never a winner on the first day of practice. Everything is too new, it’s a feeling-out process, players and coaches are trying to make sure nothing catastrophic happens.

QB report: Welcome to a new feature of practice reports.

Since Duke has a quarterback battle, this will be the place to read about any updates on it. The tricky part is not being allowed to report on depth chart related observations, per Duke.

So, we’ll keep things simple: Both Maalik Murphy and Grayson Loftis — in that order because of the order it happened — were intercepted by senior cornerback Joshua Pickett late in Tuesday’s practice. Both of them went to the right side of the field and both would’ve been pick-6s (I think).

The most significant quarterback news of the day didn’t have to do with either Murphy or Loftis.

Henry Belin IV was throwing without any apparent discomfort or limitations. The redshirt sophomore dealt with a shoulder injury last season that lingered into the spring, to the point that he was shut down, so it was a positive sign that he was throwing on Tuesday.

Catch of the day: Jordan Moore.

There’s some doubt here because I’m not sure Moore actually made this catch in bounds.

But Moore made a fantastic leaping catch against Pickett (before his interceptions), going up through some contact and hauling in a catch of about 35 yards on the sideline. He landed hard and may or may not have gotten a foot down while he was parallel to the ground.

He gets the benefit of the doubt because nobody came in and signaled that it wasn’t a catch.

Quote of the day: “Even before we had a practice today, all of those guys, it didn’t matter what school they came from, they’ve gotta go through the baptism of the Church of Feeley, to understand what it means to play for Duke. Now that they do that, actually the practice is much easier to get acclimated to, compared to what goes on in the summertime here.” – Diaz, referencing the offseason work for the Blue Devils under strength and conditioning coach David Feeley

News of the day: One nugget that comes from the updated roster …

Travis Bates has moved from running back to safety. The third-year player from Tampa, Fla., had five rushes for 42 yards in his career and will make the same position switch that another player in his class — Terry Moore — made going into last season.

It worked out well for Moore, who is in line to be a starter at safety alongside Jaylen Stinson. Moore had 43 tackles, 2.5 sacks and two PBUs last year.

Duke signed three running backs in the Class of 2022 — the class recruited by David Cutcliffe’s staff and retained by Mike Elko — and none of the three stuck in Duke’s backfield. Moore and Bates are safeties, while Eric Weatherly is entering his second season as a receiver for Bucknell (he had 42 catches for 603 yards and seven touchdowns last year).