Duke football head coach Mike Elko (Jaylynn Nash-USA TODAY Sports)
Duke Football Secures Bowl Eligibility With Walk-Off Field Goal
On Thursday night in Wallace Wade Stadium, the Duke football squad struggled throughout and led the visiting Wake Forest Demon Deacons (4-5, 1-5 ACC) only once: at the end, 24-21.
The Blue Devils (6-3, 3-2 ACC), unranked following two consecutive losses and six scoreless quarters entering the game against Wake Forest, showed they're still fighting in the second year of the Mike Elko era.
They did so with a third-string rookie quarterback, Grayson Loftis, making the first start of his college career.
And they capped off their perseverant performance — they had extended their scoreless streak to seven quarters, trailing 7-0 at the end of the first before junior Jaquez Moore exploded for a 32-yard touchdown run 38 seconds into the second quarter — with a clutch 26-yard field goal by sophomore Todd Pelino as time expired.
"It is a really, really special group," Elko explained to the media after the contest. "I told them in the locker room that they continue to shock me with how proud they make me. From a football standpoint, it wasn't pretty. There was a lot of things on tape that we're going to have to look at and fix and clean up on both sides of the ball.
"At the end of the day, we got the result that we needed. And we got this moving in the direction we needed to go."
His team attained bowl eligibility with the victory.
In doing so, the group ensured Elko another mention in the program's history books as only the second Duke football head coach to guide the Blue Devils to a second straight bowl game. The other to achieve that feat was his predecessor, David Cutcliffe, who did so a couple of times: 2012-15 and 2017-18.
Mike Elko and his Blue Devils will now prepare for their showdown eight miles down the road in Chapel Hill against the archrival UNC Tar Heels on Nov. 11.
Stay tuned to Blue Devil Country on SI.com for more Duke football news.
