Blue Devils camp report: Part 7

DURHAM – Duke’s first scrimmage of fall camp was balanced in the eyes of coach Mike Elko, who was also pleased with a few other aspects.

“For the first scrimmage, I though it was clean,” Elko said. “We didn’t have a lot of penalties, we didn’t have a lot of turnovers, so from that standpoint I thought it was good.”

The Blue Devils are hardly a finished product, though.

Elko wants to see a few things improve over this next week, which began Tuesday after the Blue Devils didn’t practice Monday.

One of those areas is the passing game – with improvement needed on behalf of quarterbacks and receivers.

“I think we’ve still got to get a little bit better at executing our passing game,” Elko said. “And that was with every quarterback – I think Riley (Leonard) and Jordan (Moore) and Henry (Belin IV), I think that’s a big point of emphasis for us.”

On the receiving end, Duke has had a variety of players show flashes of becoming downfield threats – it’s just that none of them have done it consistently enough.

“We certainly have seen flash plays,” Elko said, noting standout catches or days by Eli Pancol, Jontavis Robertson, Sahmir Hagans, Jalon Calhoun and Moore when he’s been at receiver. “But then there’s a consistency to execution and route running and consistently catching the football and throwing it in the right places. …

“We’ve seen that we have guys who have the ability to make explosive plays. We’ve just got to make sure that we’re consistent play in and play out. I think that’s probably the big gap we’ve gotta get closed this week.”

The first-year head coach was pleased with Duke’s offensive line and the way the Blue Devils ran the ball. Running back is one of the positions that even if media were allowed to report depth chart movement, it’d be futile – Duke appears to have at least four running backs* it trusts in the backfield.

Backtracking to what Elko said about turnovers, that’s obviously an area ripe for improvement. Duke was minus-7 last season and minus-19 in 2020.

While Elko and the rest of the Blue Devils have made it clear they’ve turned the page from the previous staff, they’re not ignorant to what plagued Duke in past seasons.

“The last time we had a positive turnover margin was 2014,” Elko said. “In 2013, 2014, we had a positive turnover margin and those were obviously extremely successful years for Duke football.”

On that note, Elko was also pleased with how well Duke tackled.

“I thought we tackled as a defense better than we have in live situations up until that point,” Elko said.

* in alphabetical order: Jaylen Coleman, Jaquez Moore, Terry Moore, Jordan Waters … and Eric Weatherly had a strong run or two today.

Here were my observations during Duke’s 12th practice of fall camp:

Equipment: Helmets, shoulder pads and shorts.

Was today won by the offense, defense or neither: Offense

I thought today was the best day I’ve seen from Leonard (I’ve seen seven of Duke’s 12 practices, for context), and that has a lot to do with giving the offense the edge here.

Timing throws were mostly on point and Leonard connected on what felt like more than 50% of his deep balls – some of those against decent coverage. Duke’s offense was clicking and you got a sense of what it could look like in best-case scenarios – a complementary style of spread-option offense with an emphasis on getting the ball into open space as quickly as possible.

This didn’t feel like a “bad” day for the defense; it just felt like the offense was sharper.

Catch of the day: Jalon Calhoun

There were several to choose from.

Jordan Moore pulled in about a 40-yard catch falling backward, landing around the goal line, in the first full-team period. The celebration by the offensive sideline was the loudest moment of practice.

Hagans had a great catch on the far sideline, and one of the tight ends (couldn’t read the number) pulled a nice throw by Gavin Spurrier with a toe-tap on the sideline.

Calhoun’s catch is the winner because of how he went up and snagged a well-throw deep ball from Leonard along the sideline, and maintained control of the ball through strong coverage by Chandler Rivers.

Calhoun and Rivers both came down holding the ball but it looked like it would’ve been ruled a catch by Calhoun – there was an official on top of the play and I thought I saw him signal a catch for the offense.

There might be a little proximity bias here: Calhoun was about 15 yards away from me when he made this play.

Quote of the day: “Let me get that!” – Jalon Calhoun

This was right after the above-mentioned catch. Nothing wrong with a fourth-year receiver letting a freshman cornerback he won a rep.

Freshman/newcomer of the day: Cam Dillon, transfer linebacker

Duke’s defense is going to have several new contributors, as you’d expect for A) a program that lost a chunk of its secondary and B) a team that was dead last in yards allowed per game last season.

You probably know about freshmen Vincent Anthony Jr. and Rivers being contributors; you also should know Darius Joiner and Datrone Young playing big roles in the secondary. Anthony Nelson, a grad transfer from Harvard, has been working his way into substantial reps, also.

But Duke’s defense added an impact newcomer in the mid-level, too.

Dillon is a grad transfer from Columbia who’s come on strong over the last week, and he’s being rewarded for his strong and consistent play with more opportunities.

The 6-2, 229-pounder is from Findlay, Ohio, and has one season of eligibility. Dillon had 8½ sacks in 10 games for Columbia last season; for his career, he had 81 tackles in 23 games.

“I think all four of those kids that (transferred) in on defense are going to play big, big roles for us,” Elko said. “The two kids in the secondary have been there since Day One. I think Cam and Anthony, as camp has gone on, have continued to get better and certainly are going to find ways to get on the field when we start playing games for real.”

News of the day: This isn’t so much breaking news as it’s status quo news – if such a thing exists.

As you can tell from the catch-of-the-day section, Jordan Moore was working again at receiver. This marked the fifth practice (including Sunday’s scrimmage) that he was taking snaps at receiver and, also noted above, he’s already shown a penchant for making big plays.

And as has been the case for about a week, Moore also cycled into the rotation with the quarterbacks.

“Yeah, he’s still doing everything,” Elko said. “I think obviously, he’s an extremely talented player. And so it’s our job as coaches to find the best way to get him involved in what we’re doing.”

Elko continued to say that the charge for Duke’s staff is to make sure the ball is in Moore’s hands enough to impact the game.