Duke walked into Saturday night with another one of those rivalry games hanging in the balance and walked out with the same frustration that has followed them after recent close calls against North Carolina.
The Blue Devils fell 24-20, and once again the difference came down to the little things Manny Diaz kept circling back to afterward.
“Doing the simple things better.”
He used that line, or some version of it, repeatedly while breaking down a loss that looked a lot like Duke’s other recent heartbreaks. The Blue Devils erased a double-digit deficit and grabbed the lead late, but the defense could not land the final blow and the offense left too much on the field when it had a chance to finish the job.
Duke had more total yards and more possession time. North Carolina had more points.
That gap told the story as much as anything else.
The opening stretch was rough for Duke from the start. North Carolina held the ball for five minutes on the first possession before settling for a field goal, and Duke was already trailing 3-0 before it ran its first play. The Blue Devils were also missing starting center Matt Craycraft, forcing Bradley Smith, Jr. to slide over from guard while Micah Sahakian stepped in at guard.
Smith said he was comfortable at center, and he wasn’t being thrown into the deep end. Still, Diaz made clear that Craycraft was missed.
The game slipped further away in a hurry. A bad snap helped set up a blocked punt, and North Carolina turned that into a short field and a 10-0 lead. Then came a three-and-out, followed by a UNC drive that converted both a third-and-13 and a third-and-two on the way to a 17-0 cushion.
Bradley Smith said he didn’t think Duke was nervous. He said the Tar Heels simply executed better.
That was true in enough key moments to matter. Diaz said Duke’s pass rush never consistently got home against Billy Edwards, who picked up 32 yards on scrambles or designed runs.
“He did a much better job off the spot than we had thought. I just didn’t think we did a great job of rushing the passer.
I felt like we left too many big gaps. I just didn’t feel like we rushed the passer as a four-man group today, way too many plays where he stepped up and found someone open.”
Preston Watson had one of Duke’s two sacks, but the pressure overall never matched the need.
“Going into the game, we knew it was an NFL-style offense. They communicated a lot up front whether it was run or pass and they did a good job hiding that.”
Duke did get a lifeline before halftime. Down 17-0, Andrew Pellicciotta’s scoop-and-score got the Blue Devils on the board. But even after that swing, Duke’s offense went back out twice before the break and managed only one first down across those two possessions.
That pattern returned in the second half: long stretches of control without enough payoff.
Duke owned much of the third quarter and most of the second half, but the scoring kept stopping short of where it needed to. The Blue Devils opened the half by holding the ball for almost eight minutes, only to see a first-and-goal at the 5 turn into three points after Walker Eget missed on second and third down.
Then Patrick Smith-Young forced and recovered a fumble at the Duke nine to keep North Carolina from stretching the lead.
Duke went back inside the 20 again and settled for another field goal. Suddenly it was 17-13, but the missed chances kept piling up.
Diaz was asked about those goal-line decisions, and the answer came back to the same theme.
“If you can’t run the ball, there’s not a lot of space to throw it,” Diaz said. “They’re well-drilled on trying to flood the areas.
We had some guys that we didn’t think were open and sometimes it’s about how you layer the ball. The red-zone is about tough runs and tough catches in not a lot of space and I just don’t think we excuted at a high level down there.”
Smith said the offensive line had to shoulder some of that blame.
“We’ve got to do a better job up front making Walker’s decisions easier, Nate’s decisions easier. It’s on me, it’s on the rest of the O-line, it should be easy to get in the end zone and we’ve got to do a better job.”
At last, Duke found the end zone. After six straight empty North Carolina possessions, the Blue Devils got a short field off a special-teams mistake and needed a little more than three minutes to cover 34 yards. Eget completed passes to Nate Sheppard for 13 and then another pair to Jerry Hasley and Sheppard again before finishing the drive with a touchdown.
UNC had done a solid job against Sheppard on the ground, holding him to 77 rushing yards on 20 carries, but he made a bigger impact in the passing game with 98 yards on 11 receptions.
That touchdown put Duke ahead with 4:34 left. But the finish never quite tightened the way it needed to. North Carolina faced a fourth-and-four and Duke didn’t pressure Edwards or cover Jelani Thurman, whose 12-yard catch kept the drive alive.
The Tar Heels still had a long way to go, but the outcome started to feel inevitable from there. Jaylen McGill ripped off runs of 16 and 4 yards, Edwards added a 16-yard completion, and then McGill broke free for a 24-yard touchdown with no one touching him. North Carolina led 24-20.
Duke still had time and all three timeouts, but the offense never got the clean answer it needed. Diaz said the clock management in the final minute slipped away.
“There were some things in the one-minute situation, from a time standpoint, that got away from us, that hurt us in the last minute,” Diaz acknowledged.
An Eget interception closed the door.
Now Duke turns to Virginia on Friday night on the road. Virginia started 2-0 and has since lost three of five, leaving both teams in need of a win.
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