Duke Head Coach Confident One Area of Offense Will Improve

The Duke Blue Devils are off to a 1-0 start after they beat Tulane 17-3 in Week 1 in Durham.

Duke was able to do so on the back of running back Nate Sheppard. He rushed for 227 yards and two touchdowns, accounting for almost all of Duke's points. It was an impressive performance by Sheppard and without him, Duke likely would have been doomed.

One area of struggles was at quarterback.

Following a competition all offseason, it was Walker Eget who won the job beating out Dan Mahan. As Eget made his debut, he struggled at times. Eget finished the game 13 of 26 for 131 yards, never really looking comfortable out there. 

Now, a few days later head coach Manny Diaz spoke on the quarterback situation and he's confident it will turn around. 

"If you look at the turnover that we had, and not just the new faces, but the new faces and when they arrived- I mean, these are guys who've been playing together now for three and a half, four weeks basically,” the head coach said this week via Duke Wire. “So it would only stand to reason that they'll improve as the year goes on.”

Diaz isn't panicking, nor should he. It's Week 1 and there's a long way to go in the season, plus they won the game. However, the flip side of that is that the schedule gets tougher moving forward and that starts this week against Illinois.

Ideally, the Blue Devils would love to compliment the pass game with the run game this season. They appear to have a good rushing attack early on and now it's on the passing game to get back on track. 

Eget will get the start against Illinois and there's no sign that they will make a change to Mahan unless it goes south in a hurry. But for Eget, he can answer all of these questions by performing well on the road and helping Duke get a big win on the road.

Duke and Illinois will kickoff at 3:30 P.M. ET and will be broadcast live on Fox Sports 1.