My Take: “Heartbroken” Duke is past moral victories

DURHAM – This isn’t where we talk about how positive it is that Duke almost beat Notre Dame.

The rise of this program puts us past that point. The elevation has come quickly and given the history, it’s easy to shrug this off and think, “good job, good effort.”

It’s not good enough that the Blue Devils could’ve beaten the Irish, should’ve stopped a fourth-and-16, and would’ve shot up the national rankings with a win.

Duke’s locker room after a 21-14 loss to the Irish, in which Audric Estimé scored the game-winning touchdown with 31 seconds left, reflects a team that isn’t just interested in putting forth a good effort.

“Heartbroken. Heartbroken,” coach Mike Elko said when asked of the mood in his locker room. “You’re a fourth-and-16 away from beating No. 11 Notre Dame and going into the bye week 5-0.

“So, heartbroken.”

Notre Dame needed a fake punt, two missed field goals and a fourth-and-16 miracle to beat a Duke team that overcame its worst half of the season to take a fourth-quarter lead.

“We’re not looking for positive reinforcement,” Elko said. “We’re looking to win football games.”

The 17th-ranked Blue Devils didn’t do that and it wasn’t for lack of effort. It was just a piling up of mistakes, most of which came in the first half.

That half was as much of a detachment from Duke’s identity as there has been at any point this season.

“It’s just football,” captain DeWayne Carter said. “You have your good days, your bad days, not everything is going to be perfect. Throughout this first part of the season, we’ve been pretty lucky with the Football Gods. We were probably due for one.”

An offense that prides itself on running the ball couldn’t establish anything on the ground; a defense that had limited big passes gave up three passes of at least 20 yards. It was tough to figure out which held more water: That Duke was lucky to only be down 10 at halftime or that Notre Dame had blown its chance to be up by more.

And then there was the disaster of special teams.

The fake punt went for 34 yards and set up a touchdown when Duke thought it was getting the ball. Todd Pelino missed from 38 and 25 yards; he’d missed two field goals this season and three total for his career.

Duke had been somewhere between above average and decent on special teams this season.

“They’re killers. You give up a fake punt like that where we didn’t execute real well what we were trying to do and we didn’t really even challenge it,” Elko said. “It’s disappointing, it’s surprising. I’ve got a lot of confidence in those guys.”

Duke found its rushing attack midway through the third quarter. Its defense struggled to defend the mid-level tight end cross — Mitchell Evans had 134 of Notre Dame’s 222 receiving yards — but otherwise put clamps on the Irish. Riley Leonard’s effectiveness as a runner was on full display.

It spelled out a game Duke should’ve won.

Fourth-and-16 for the game is where you want to be. Duke just didn’t have the second level of its defense where it needed to be, defending more against the deep shot to the end zone than the first down.

And for how many self-implosion games Sam Hartman has had in a six-year college career, he’s had twice as many games in which he makes the courageous play to win a game — as was the case on his 17-yard scramble.

“When you drop eight like that, you’re building a five-underneath wall at the sticks,” Elko said. “And you have a hard time believing that a kid can scramble for 16 yards. … You drop eight in that long-yardage situation because you think the scramble is out of play.

“You know, in hindsight, maybe we just should’ve kept pressuring. I don’t know.”

Hindsight is what the next week is for. Duke doesn’t play again until Oct. 14, when it plays host to N.C. State here at Wallace Wade Stadium (again).

And then comes a stretch of four road games in five weeks, with the only home game being a Thursday night game against Wake Forest. That’s the chunk of the season — with trips to Florida State, Louisville and UNC — that’s going to determine whether Duke will play for an ACC championship.

Notre Dame has a vote in all ACC matters and it’s won 30 straight regular-season games against the league.

But Saturday night’s loss to the Irish means nothing when it comes to ACC standings.

“That’s kind of the whole message behind our team,” Carter said. “You don’t put all your eggs in one basket. One weekend doesn’t determine the season.

“We’re into conference play and we like where we are. I think we have a lot of potential, I think we have the ability to run the table, so I’m excited to see what we do.”

And now we wait for a status update on a certain right ankle.