Maybe Duke and North Carolina State should only play once a decade. This game was a mess, full of penalties, miscues, mistakes, dirty plays and one very ugly injury.
But their first meeting since 2013 and N.C. State's first win against Duke since 2008, 31-20 on Saturday, also represented, almost exactly, the directions these two programs are headed this season: The Wolfpack resilient and feisty _ too feisty at times _ the Blue Devils willing to fight but unable to surmount consistent issues at the most important position, the one position that shouldn't be an issue on a team coached by quarterback guru David Cutcliffe.
N.C. State had to rally twice, once after a slow start and then again after losing quarterback Devin Leary in the third quarter to a nasty-looking ankle injury, the first comeback in 31 tries in Dave Doeren's tenure from a double-digit deficit in an ACC game, according to ESPN. It was entirely in keeping with the way the Wolfpack has done things this season, rarely easy but often effective, as it was against Wake Forest, against Virginia, against Pittsburgh.
(The no-show in Blacksburg against a Virginia Tech team missing a full defensive unit to COVID and quarantine remains, and will likely remain, the most inexplicable loss of the entire ACC season.)
While the offense struggled at times and the defense picked up the slack, the Wolfpack's biggest issues were self-inflicted, a rash of late hits and dumb penalties, almost all of it entirely avoidable. The targeting ejection on Jakeen Harris was the third in as many games for a Wolfpack defensive back, one of eight penalties for 108 yards in the first half.
"Quit being idiots," Doeren said he told the team at halftime, and that's some good coaching. And good listening on the part of his team, which had no penalties in the second half.
It was actually indiscipline on Duke's part that did the most damage. Leary was injured when he was hit while sliding by Duke's Lummie Young IV, always a no-no because of the danger to the head and neck, but in this case Leary's left leg was pinned underneath him and the aggregate body weight of Leary and Young combined to twist Leary's left foot in a very unnatural direction.
Leary was carted off with his lower left leg in an air cast but found his way to the sideline on crutches and in a walking boot, a relatively positive sign even though Doeren said the Wolfpack expected to be without him for an extended period.
"It doesn't look like we'll have him for a while," Doeren said.
Ankles can be funny that way: North Carolina's Armando Bacot and the Carolina Hurricanes' Andrei Svechnikov both suffered gruesome-looking injuries in the past year but were available to play again quickly. (Svechnikov never got the chance.) If Leary didn't need surgery right away, perhaps the door is open for a quicker-than-expected return.
The Wolfpack went back to Bailey Hockman in the fourth quarter, and he did no harm. Still, the timing is terrible, not that there's ever good timing, with North Carolina up next week. That suddenly looms as a pivotal game in the race to second place in the ACC, no consolation prize in this division-free season.
Duke, as far from that conversation as you can get, has quarterback issues of its own. It's easy to sympathize with Chase Brice's struggles, a transfer who hasn't had a lot of time to adjust to a new offense or acclimatize to his new teammates in the midst of a pandemic, so much so that it's hard to tell whether Brice is out of place or just not that good. It could be either.
The bigger question, and one that has left Duke's season hanging in the balance, is how the coach famous for grooming the Manning brothers _ and who has recruited and developed any number of players on offense and defense into NFL players at Duke _ doesn't have a stable of quarterback prospects ready to step into the job.
Daniel Jones is certainly a success story, a walk-on groomed into a top-10 draft pick, but it's curious how Cutcliffe hasn't recruited more quarterback talent to Duke. Especially now, where the well is so dry he has resorted to taking a grad transfer who is averaging almost two interceptions a game and unable to connect on anything other than short passes.
There are potential reasons for that, starting with Cutcliffe's principled refusal to play the kind of silly recruiting games even mid-level quarterback recruits like to play. But you would think, at some point, his extraordinary reputation as a developer of quarterbacks would lead to him actually, you know, having some quarterbacks to develop at Duke.
There's a lot to like about Duke's defense and at times the running-back tandem of Deon Jackson and Mateo Durant can really get rolling, although not Saturday. But Duke's 1-5 and headed the wrong way, and as Brice continues to make bad throws for interceptions _ two of the three Saturday were entirely his fault _ it's not something Duke can easily overcome. The momentum of last week's win over Syracuse was so easily wiped away.
Duke has a reprieve now: A week off, then Charlotte. North Carolina looms after that, what's starting to look like the most important game of the season for the Blue Devils. They have that in common with the Wolfpack, if not much else.
