More Duke Stuff

Nathan has a billion things going on right now so he's been unable to write his usual Monday "Postscript" column. In its place last week, I simply wrote "More UAB Stuff." So why not write "More Duke Stuff" this week? There's so much more to talk about.

You don't want to hear it. In fact, you want to pretend like this game never happened. But it didn't happen, and I want to talk about more stuff. Two main things:

1. Clean Football

I've said this in maybe three different places now (my postgame article, the postgame podcast, the WCIA segment on Sunday night) but this game wasn't "why can't the defense stop anyone?" to me. This was "why can't we play clean football?"

Let's look at every Duke drive and the things we did to assist them:

• We get a sack on their first drive. But there was a defensive hold on that play, and a facemask call on the next play to add 15 yards to a long run, and suddenly Duke is at the Illinois 12 yard line two plays after they should have had 2nd and 15 at their own 32. They get a TD on this drive.
• Second Duke drive is a three-and-out. They punt.
• Third Duke drive gets one first down but then, on third and two at the Duke 42, Joe Barna and Will Holmes blow up the play for a two yard loss and Duke is forced to punt. BUT WAIT. Duke runs a fake punt, gets 15 yards, and the defense has the hurry back onto the field. They give up a touchdown.
• Fourth Duke drive, they just straight up take it two us. 75 yards for a touchdown.
• Fifth Duke drive they go for it on fourth down. We stop them. Illinois ball! Wait, there's a flag. An Illini player running off the field (running off the field when he didn't need to run off the field) was offsides and Duke gets a free first down. They punch it in two plays later.
• Sixth Duke drive they get to the Illinois 22 but stall out. They kick a field goal.
• Seventh Duke drive is a three-and-out. They punt.
• Eighth Duke drive, Will Holmes gets a strip sack. Ball ball ball ball ball! The way it fluttered out was the perfect scoop-and-score opportunity. Wait, no, the only Duke player in the vicinity (tight end Jake Taylor) falls on the fumble and there's no damage. Duke eventually punts it away.
• Ninth Duke "drive" they kneel-out the victory.

Let's now apply the "clean football" filter to all of these drives. We'll look for what would have happened without our assistance on all nine drives:

1. Hardest drive to read here. Depends on if you think they would have converted the 2nd & 15 after the sack. My cynicism says they would have still scored even without the 30 yards of penalties we gave them on this drive. But if we went straight "what are the average points scored on a drive that includes a 2nd and 15 from the 32"? from the EPA charts I've seen, I think the best way to frame this is to say that our 30 yards of penalties on this drive likely gave them 7 points instead of 3.
2. This was a three-and-out so... 0 points.
3. They were in punt formation at their own 40. The defense did its job and the ball was coming back to the offense. The coverage team gave up a play that was essentially a turnover. 0 points surrendered had we played clean football.
4. They drove it right down our throats. 7 points.
5. A fourth down stop handed the ball back to the offense. A penalty immediately gave it back to Duke. 0 points had we played clean football.
6. They drove into field goal range with no assistance from us. 3 points.
7. Three and out. 0 points.
8. Three and out. 0 points. (And could have been -7 points if we could have scooped that fumble.)
9. Kneel-out. 0 points.

13 points surrendered had we played clean football. 17 if you want to say that the first drive would have been a touchdown even without the 30 yards of penalties. I'll even grant you something crazy like "had Duke not kneeled and instead drove the ball (with their backup QB) in the final two minutes, they could have had 7 more points) which would max them out at 24 points. But... play clean football and most likely, Duke either scores 13 or 17 points.

We didn't play clean football, Duke scored 31, and we lost.

2. The Beckman Thing

I put those Duke drives out there on Twitter yesterday. And whenever I do that, the "Robert, Stop Making Excuses" brigade will always come after me. Usually with this reference:

First off, I just want to go through that whole thing again. It happened 12 years ago yesterday, if you can believe it. I should probably go back through the entire ordeal to make my point here.

After Illinois lost at Washington 44-19 in 2014, the following quote was all everyone talked about after the game. It became the defining quote of the entire Tim Beckman era:

“Can’t let a big strike go on you there defensively. In three plays we gave up 21 points. I mean, you take out 21 points on three plays and we’re in this football game.”

The issue with that quote, as I wrote at the time, was that it was a mashup quote. I was standing right there with the other media members at Husky Stadium. He did not say those three sentences consecutively. They were simply combined to make it sound like one quote.

He said the "big strike" thing in reference to the 21 point blitz (in the first half, Illinois gave up a 75 yard bomb, a fumble return for a touchdown three plays later, and a pick six not long after that), then he answered a question about penalties in the game, then he answered a question about the pressure from Washington's defensive ends, and then he was asked what message he gave to his team at halftime. He said that he told his team there were still 30 minutes left and that "you take out 21 points on three plays and we're in this game" as a way to communicate that there's a lot of football left. (Spoiler: we did not come back in the second half.)

With that context (answering a "how did you try to rally your team at halftime?" question), it's a fairly innocuous quote. Combine one of his answers from earlier ("in three plays we gave up 21 points") with that answer, making it sound like he stood in front of the media after a game he lost 44-19 and said "you take out 21 points on three plays and we're in this football game", and it will take off like wildfire. It's now all you remember about Beckman. And it was cooked up on a laptop by not telling the reader that he was asked to quote himself from halftime when he was trying to rally the troops for a comeback.

I had intended for this to be a free article, but I'm gonna toss up the paywall here because I want to share a story just with subscribers: