{"id":190,"date":"2010-08-31T13:07:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-31T20:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/capitalsports.us\/?p=190"},"modified":"2010-08-31T13:07:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-31T20:07:00","slug":"duke-needs-an-opening-win-and-a-ground-game","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/?p=190","title":{"rendered":"Duke needs an opening win (and a ground game)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div style=\"text-align: right;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_na0H8CJUvY4\/TH1hfBE-jOI\/AAAAAAAAARk\/ecdhkHOiRik\/s1600\/Wallace+Wade.jpg\" imageanchor=\"1\" style=\"clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" border=\"0\" height=\"150\" src=\"http:\/\/2.bp.blogspot.com\/_na0H8CJUvY4\/TH1hfBE-jOI\/AAAAAAAAARk\/ecdhkHOiRik\/s200\/Wallace+Wade.jpg\" width=\"200\" \/><\/a><\/div>\n<p>Duke finished 5-7 last year, and if you look back, the loss that really crippled the season was the opener. The Blue Devils lost at home, 24-16, to a Richmond team en route to a big year in the Football Championship Subdivision.<\/p>\n<p>Duke needed some early wins to help survive a tough ending stretch, and in fact the Devils lost five straight to conclude the season.<\/p>\n<p>This year, the Devils open at home Saturday night with&nbsp; a 7 p.m. game with Elon. While that might sound like a gift, Elon was 9-3 last season and is ranked No. 7 in the FCS.<\/p>\n<p>Duke, by the way, released a depth chart Tuesday at its news conference. There&#8217;s real talent on offense, with nine starters back and sophomore Sean Renfree expected to fill in capably at quarterback now that Thad Lewis is gone. He&#8217;s got experienced receivers in senior tight end Brett Huffman and receivers Donovan Varner, Conner Vernon and Austin Kelly.<\/p>\n<p>The running game has to improve. Part of the reason Lewis threw so much last season was he had to. Desmond Scott led the team in rushing with a paltry 29.1 yards per game. Duke&#8217;s 63.5 yards rushing per game was, well, pretty lame. Even worse &#8211; the team averaged 2.2 yards per rush.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Duke finished 5-7 last year, and if you look back, the loss that really crippled the season was the opener. The Blue Devils lost at&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-190","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=190"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/190\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=190"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=190"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/capitalsportsnc.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=190"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}