“For the generation we are dealing with, three years is tradition,” Cutcliffe said during the ACC Football Kickoff event today in Greensboro.
That’s good for a Blue Devil team that has been to a pair of bowl games in the last two years and played Florida State for the conference crown.
Duke lost all three of those games but they were high-profile games. “The impact of being the only game on TV – even though they were losses – was that people got to see that we are genuinely a good football team,” Cutcliffe said.
When the Devils were coming off 3-9 seasons, Cutcliffe said he had a hard time convincing the older guys who much fun it was going to be to go to a bowl game. “Once that you taste it, you’re fighting for it,” he said.
He says everything has changed or, at least, is changing at Duke. “When you change a culture, it changes every aspect of your program – from recruiting to the quality of practice,” Cutcliffe said adding that now he wants his squad to become a more physical football team.
“I’ve never believed that more contact is better, quality contact is better,” he said. In practice he wants the hits so solid that he has to ask the players to back off. “That’s a culture,” he said.
At Duke, while he has signed some good players, he hasn’t always been able to sign the best recruits coming out of high school. “Sometimes it’s harder to coach a guy whose been told he’s great by so many people,” Cutcliffe said. “Maybe it’s best to sign a bunch of two-star players for a four-star offense.”
Cutcliffe, whose team has been picked to finish second in the ACC Coastal Division, says he likes his staff and the mix of veteran and young players. He expects Duke to be good this year. Why not? They have the history.