12 Years at Duke: Cutcliffe looks back, ahead

David Cutcliffe is beginning his twelfth year at Duke

Coach David Cutcliffe is entering year 12 at Duke. He’s the current longest-tenured coach in the ACC and the third-longest tenured coach in Duke history.

On his weekly TV show, Cutcliffe took time to reflect on his time at Duke.

“It’s been a labor of love,” he said. “Somebody recently asked me about it, and I was able to really go back to the beginning, to to how excited we were for this opportunity of ground-zero building. Year 12, to me is more exciting. It’s actually more of a team approach with all of the players who have been with us before, the players now, staff, people who have invested so much into this progam. It’s really become an elite program.”

The team’s success has helped solidify the program’s standing.

“Winning begets winning,” he said. “Winning gets you excited to get back to work. It gives you something to look forward to. This program now has expectations—not just bowl games, not just winning. We’ve got to continue to talk about how we’re going to become champions. I think thats the one thing we can impact right now is to do everything like champions. We can display championship habits.”

Cutcliffe then turned his attention to this year’s team.

“Going into year 12, the thing I’m looking most forward to—you don’t know outcomes—I do expect us to play a lot of players. I expect the team to be deep. I expect this team to play at a really high-level effort. I’m looking for consistency. That comes with depth. It comes with challenging for playing time.”

“The other thing I’d tell you,” he continued, “is that I like this team. I like hanging out with them. I like having dinner with them. I like being in meetings with them. They’re a likeable group. I look forward to this challenging season but doing it together with them.”

One area that has Cutcliffe particularly excited is Duke’s defense.

“It should be a strength,” he said. “Based on the number of playmakers we have back. Everybody looks to who’s gone every year. Okay, look how much Koby Quansah and Brandon Hill have played. Talk about our defensive front, which is basically back intact. The secondary, a little bit of same thing. Look at our safeties two-deep, our cornerbacks two-deep, we’ve got really explosive, outstanding football players on defense. We’ve still got a couple banged up. I expect, come September, at some point, we’re going to get reinforcements.”

The Duke defense won’t be evaluated by the highlight plays, as much as by their net results.

“We’ve got to have the mentality that we’re going to be winning games on defense,” he said, “and you cannot just look at turnovers or pick sixes. You still win games by field position. One thing we want to challenge the defense is when you get stops, where do you get the ball back to the offense. It’s important to get stops on the other end of the field.”