The 2025 season was among the best in Duke football history as Manny Diaz led the team to an Atlantic Coast Conference Championship.

With Duke winning the tiebreaker in the conference, they earned the trip to Charlotte and took care of business against Virginia in overtime. That built some momentum for the offseason and now, the excitement for the program is at a high going into 2026. 

For the Blue Devils, they did lose some talent including watching quarterback Darian Mensah leave after one year and head to Miami. But under Diaz, the team still has talent and should find themselves in the mix for a bowl game as long as nothing drastically bad happens. 

While Duke likely won't be in contention to make the College Football Playoff, getting to a big bowl game should be the plan this year. But which one is eyeing the Blue Devils early on?

With the spring practice season officially in the books, Brad Crawford of CBS Sports released updated bowl projections. He doesn't have Duke in the College Football Playoff, which is not surprising, but he does have them in a bowl game.

And the opponent hails from the SEC. 

Crawford is predicting that Duke and Vanderbilt will meet in the Birmingham Bowl in December. The date and time for the bowl game are still to be determined but it will air on an ESPN channel and take place at Protective Stadium.

Now, this isn't a major bowl game by any means but with losing the talent that Duke did, especially at quarterback, getting to a bowl game is still important. They can't have a let down this season and miss out on a bowl game.

For Vanderbilt, they begin a new era as quarterback Diego Pavia has run out of eligibility. The Commodores are coming off a campaign in which they were fifth in the SEC last season with a 10-3 overall record and a 6-2 record in conference play. 

Like Duke, they have their own questions to answer but if it does end up happening, it would be an intriguing bowl game.