FSU football: Breaking down Duke’s defense in every metric
By Kelvin Hunt
One thing that stands out right away about the Duke Blue Devil’s defense is their ability to create turnovers.
They are similar to a defense FSU played last week in Syracuse, with four fumble recoveries and five interceptions in six games.
Duke winning the turnover margin against Clemson is the only reason they won that game with such a dominant score. They only allow 9.8 ppg on average and 4.44 yards per play. However, those numbers ticked up a few notches when they played Clemson and Notre Dame.
Those two offenses combined to average 5.6 yards per play and five yards per rush. Clemson running backs averaged 5.9 and 6.7 yards per rush, with Will Shipley running for 114 yards on 14 carries.
Notre Dame running backs averaged 4.5 and 8.8 yards per carry, with both hitting 30-yard runs. Duke only had 14 sacks, 23 QB hurries, and 36 tackles for a loss. They also allow third down conversions 37 percent of the time.
Clemson converted 46 percent and Notre Dame was only 20 percent. Amazingly, Northwestern converted 10 of 18 third downs against Duke.