Duke enters this college football season with a lot more questions than usual. On the one hand, Duke is in a very good position to be a decent team. On the other hand, it's tough to say that the Blue Devils are far from what they were expected to be a season ago.
Had quarterback Darian Mensah returned as initially expected, we'd probably be viewing Duke as one of the best teams in the ACC. While the Blue Devils also lost talent via the NFL, transfer portal, and other avenues, Mensah was obviously key to much of it.
Unfortunately, Duke will have to be without him, but other factors should still help this team play really good football. According to head coach Manny Diaz, one of those factors is what he feels is his team's defensive side.
"We've got a different feel on the defensive side of the ball than we did a year ago," Diaz said, per Anna Snyder. "There's a bite and an urgency about them that it reminds me more of '24 than what we saw in '25. But you got to go out there and do it."
"We had to get better on defense and whatever it took to get better," defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke said. "Everybody understood they had to fight for their position and we're bringing guys in to compete.
Diaz is a defensive-minded head coach, so it's not surprising to hear that he was looking to fix some of the defensive issues that he saw a year ago. At the same time, he needs to recognize some of the offensive struggles we might see. If this offense can't score points at a competent level, even a good defense won't mean much because it'll still give up points against above-average teams in the ACC.
Now, if the defense is as good as Diaz is suggesting it can be and the offense steps up in a slight way, there's a lot to like here.
