Football preview: 5 most-important games

Let’s get this out of the way first: They’re all big games.

And now let’s kill the cliché and be realistic: Some of them are a whole lot bigger than others.

This preview list will look at Duke’s five most-important games of the upcoming season, Mike Elko’s first as coach of the Blue Devils.

While we’re being realistic, the bar isn’t all that high for Duke. While nobody’s waving a white flag before kickoff of any games, there’s the reality that this is a program that’s a combined 5-18 (1-17 ACC) in the past two seasons. Six wins and a bowl would be a substantial first step in the right direction.

Here are the five most-important games for the Blue Devils to win this season:

Date: Sept. 2

Location: Wallace Wade Stadium

Last meeting; series: Duke won 56-27 in 2018; Duke leads 1-0.

Overview: We’re going full cliché here.

The next game/the first game is the most important and really the only one that matters for Duke for the next month.

Getting Elko’s tenure off to a positive start isn’t a make-or-break situation but the benefits are obvious – especially considering Duke has two non-conference road games against Power 5 opponents.

Duke will be facing a team that had a similar 2021: Temple was 3-9 last season and lost its final seven games by an average margin of 34.3 points. The Owls fired Rod Carey after the season and hired Stan Drayton, who’s also a first-time head coach with a well-traveled background – including a stop at Penn while Elko was a player in 1995.

Temple was picked in the AAC poll to finish last; Duke was pegged by ACC media to finish last in the Coastal Division. It’s too early to tell if D’Wan Mathis or Quincy Patterson will be Temple’s QB to start the opener, just like it’s too early to tell if it’ll be Riley Leonard or Jordan Moore for the Blue Devils.

An interesting note to squeeze in here: The last few off-seasons have seen a rash of first-time head coaches hired in the ACC after a period in which it wasn’t common. From 2009-19, five ACC hires were first-time head coaches: Two of them won national titles (Dabo Swinney and Jimbo Fisher), one of them won the ACC last year (Pat Narduzzi), and two of them were forgettable, short-lived hires (Frank Spaziani at BC and Scott Schafer at Syracuse).

In the last three years, four first-time coaches have been hired at ACC schools, including three in the Coastal Division this year. Jeff Hafley was hired at BC in 2020, while Elko, Tony Elliott (Virginia) and Brent Pry (Virginia Tech) will all embark on their maiden seasons at the same time.

Duke wins if: It gets through the opener without any glitches and whoever wins the QB job doesn’t have jitters.

Not to heap too much pressure on the winner of the Leonard-Moore battle, but whichever one starts the opener will have the first say in how quickly Duke’s season gets off the ground.

It’s also best to come to prepare for this now: There are going to be some bumps in the road. Elko is ready to be a head coach but he’s also bound to make a mistake or two in game management – that’s the nature of gaining experience.

Date: Oct. 15

Location: Wallace Wade Stadium

Last meeting; series: UNC won 38-7 in 2021; UNC leads 63-41-4.

Overview: Each win only counts for one in the column, but winning the Victory Bell back to Durham for the first time since 2018 would be a nice feather in Elko’s cap.

The only one of the last three meetings that was competitive was 2019, the ill-fated jump-pass game.

It’s a bit of a crossroads for UNC, which moves into the post-Sam Howell era without many known commodities on offense.

At this point, that’s a good thing for a Duke defense that’s also going to be ironing out personnel throughout the first month of the season (at least).

Duke wins if: Slowing Josh Downs is the primary objective – with a new quarterback, he’ll likely top the 144 targets he received last season.

By this point of the season, we’ll know a decent amount about what Duke does (and doesn’t) have on offense. It’ll have to be going in a positive direction for this game, seemingly.

We’ve also got to see what kind of impact Gene Chizik has on UNC’s defense. It’s a unit that isn’t lacking talent but has struggled at times, and their hope is that Chizik’s return provides a shot in the arm similar to 2015.

It’d be helpful if, of the two Tobacco Road teams with QB battles, Duke is more solidified at the position than the Tar Heels by the midway point of the season.

Date: Nov. 26

Location: Wallace Wade Stadium

Last meeting; series: Wake Forest won 45-7 in 2021; Duke leads 58-41-2.

Overview: The last game of the season might see Duke as the biggest underdog of any game.

It’s tough enough to predict what teams will look like in November, let alone the last game in November, but chances are Duke will have been through some ups and downs – while Wake Forest is geared up for another shot at a double-digit win season.

The Deacons return the majority of offensive production – including quarterback Sam Hartman – from a unit that averaged 41 points per game last season. A recalibration of the defensive coaching staff has Wake Forest optimistic that its inconsistent defense from a year ago will have some issues ironed out.

Duke wins if: It’s hard to see Duke having a legitimate shot at a win here without one of its quarterbacks seizing the job and excelling. Teams to beat Wake Forest in the past few seasons that aren’t named Clemson have done so by winning high-scoring shootouts.

So the offense needs to be clicking at the end of the season and, given Wake’s prolific offense, Duke’s defense needs to be capable of at least slowing down a high-powered and balanced attack.

You could see a role reversal of these teams’ meeting in 2018, when a Wake Forest team in need of one win to reach a bowl game throttled a Duke team that had already clinched a bowl berth and was sleepwalking through the last game of the regular season.

Date: Sept. 10

Location: Ryan Field

Last meeting; series: Duke won 30-23 in 2021; Duke leads 11-10.

Overview: We’ll have one of two scenarios heading into Duke’s second game: The Blue Devils notched a season-opening win and will be aiming for their first 2-0 start since 2018.

Or Temple deals Duke with a sour start to the season in the same way that Charlotte did last year, and now the Blue Devils are staring down the barrel of a 0-2 start.

Like Temple and Duke, Northwestern was 3-9 last season. Like Temple and Duke, Northwestern had a prolonged losing streak (six) end its season.

Unlike Temple and Duke, Northwestern has the same coach – Pat Fitzgerald has accrued too much goodwill over 17 seasons to be axed after going 3-9 for the second time in the last three seasons.

It stands to reason that Northwestern will have a bounce-back season: Fitzgerald has had six losing seasons at Northwestern; of the five seasons that followed a losing season, four of them saw multi-win improvements, including twice going from a losing season to a 10-win season.

Duke wins if: Things click into place for Duke and its new staff as quickly as they’d like.

This reads like a bit of a buzzsaw. It’s a Northwestern team that returns nine offensive starters – granted, from a team that didn’t score more than 14 points in seven of its last eight games last year – and has traditionally been a defensive stalwart.

If Duke truly has talent that was just misused/misplaced over the last couple of years, a win in this game would be the clearest evidence of that.

This figures to be the stiffest of the four non-conference games for Duke; and you’ll notice that three of the Blue Devils’ four non-conference games appear on this list. Duke’s staff is almost all new, but it’s a lot of the same players who have experienced the snowball effect of a season getting sideways in a hurry over the last 24 months.

Avoiding that same pitfall seems paramount to how successful Elko’s first season is.

Of note here: Northwestern gets an early start to the season with a Week 0 game against Nebraska on Aug. 27. That game will be played in Ireland, and the Wildcats will have a week off before facing Duke.

Date: Sept. 24

Location: Memorial Stadium

Last meeting; series: Duke won 52-33; Duke leads 2-1.

Overview: The Kansas that hung with Duke for three quarters last season was not the train wreck that you’re accustomed to seeing.

Sure, neither of those teams was going anywhere – Kansas was 2-10 last season – but the future under second-year coach Lance Leipold is seemingly bright. The Jayhawks return 17 starters and benefit from a full spring under Leipold, as opposed to still being limited by COVID when he took over the reins.

Duke wins if: This will be the more telling game, as Duke’s fourth of the season, as to whether the Blue Devils’ staff is able to get the right pieces into place before the start of ACC play.

With so few projected ACC games that Duke will be favored in, it’s also important for the Blue Devils to go at least 3-1 in non-conference play to have a decent shot at a bowl berth. Going 2-2 in the non-conference and then trying to win four ACC games is a tough ask – even in the Coastal Division (RIP after this year).