DURHAM – Duke’s football team is coming out of a much-needed and deserved off week in a better place, having achieved some balance of taking a break and maintaining focus.
“Nice to get a week off, recharge, refresh,” coach Mike Elko said Monday at his weekly press conference. “I thought we did a really good balancing act of giving the kids enough time to kind of refresh and get caught up and get back healthy and get back charged for the final part of the season.
“But also making sure that we got enough work in that we were able to stay crisp.”
There is some bad news to go along with the recharge.
Wide receiver Eli Pancol will “probably” miss the rest of the season with a lower leg injury, Elko said Monday. The injury was suffered against Miami and means Duke will be without one of its top receivers.
Kicker Charlie Ham missed the Miami game and will also miss this week’s trip to Boston College as he deals with a personal matter. Elko was clear after the Miami game that he did not miss that game because of performance; that Ham is dealing with a personal matter is the extent of the detail on Ham.
“Charlie is dealing with a little bit of a personal situation. It’s not performance-based,” Elko said.
Duke emerges from its off week with an even slimmer chance of winning the Coastal Division than it had going into it by way of North Carolina’s 42-24 win over Pittsburgh on Saturday night, in which the Tar Heels scored the last 28 points of the game.
The Blue Devils trail UNC by two games in the Coastal, and UNC holds the head-to-head tiebreaker.
Bowl eligibility, though, is well within grasp. Duke is a 9.5-point favorite at Boston College on Friday (per BetOnline as of Monday morning) and a win against the Eagles would lock up Duke’s first bowl berth since 2018.
Not that that’s the goal.
“To get six wins is something that would be a really big step for this program,” Elko said. “But I think you’ve been around me long enough to know that as soon as we get six, we’re going to want seven.”
That’s where Elko’s “let’s go get greedy in November” words from the his last press conference echo.
When last we saw these Blue Devils, they proved their resolve with a resounding 45-21 win at Miami on the strength of eight turnovers forced. That performance was the answer that Elko needed to see in wake of back-to-back three-point losses to Georgia Tech and UNC.
Now Duke has the benefit of extra rest entering the final month of its season, and hopes to have avoided the rust that can attach itself during off weeks.
Off weeks aren’t as much of a strategic advantage as you might think. Teams across the country this season are 51-42 coming off of their off weeks.
And one week of rest, Elko explained, doesn’t completely refill the Blue Devils’ health meter.
“I talk to the kids about this all the time, I tell them, ‘You’re going to feel 100% sometime around the middle of February,’” Elko said, eliciting laughs from the room. “And so if you’re anticipating it happening before then, keep dreaming.
“It’s a physical game. You’re going to get banged up, you’re going to have to learn how to play banged up. Obviously we’re going to be more fresh coming off of a bye than if we were coming off of an 80-snap game on Saturday. … But you know, the nicks and bruises still exist.”
Pancol will be missed. He is third on the team in receptions (21) and second in receiving yards (335); and beyond that, he’s been the only deep threat with size (6-3, 205) for the Blue Devils. He’s in his fourth season and didn’t redshirt, but has an extra season of eligibility remaining because of 2020 not counting against players’ eligibility.
Elko sees second-year wide receiver Sahmir Hagans stepping into a larger role without Pancol, while he also mentioned Jontavis Robertson, Malik Bowen-Sims and Darrell Harding Jr. as players whose roles could be elevated.
In Ham’s absence against Miami, freshman Todd Pelino made a 28-yard field goal and all six PATs. He had to shift into kickoff duties after Jackson Hubbard was injured, and kicked off five times.
