How Secure Is a Spot on Duke's Depth Chart?

Duke will release its first depth chart early next week, as the Blue Devils prepare for their opening game against Notre Dame.

The two-deep will let players know where they stand at the start of the season. Like most coaches, however, David Cutcliffe is a big proponent of competition.

He frequently quotes his mentor, Bear Bryant, saying, “When you can’t tell your twos from your ones, that means you have a good team.”

Players on top of the depth chart will be cautioned that they need to fight to hold onto their position, while second teamers or players who didn’t earn a spot on the two-deep will be told that they can play their way onto it during the season.

But can they, really?

How secure is a player’s spot on the opening day depth chart? Just as importantly, how real is the dream that a player can move up the chart through a combination of hard work and attrition to the players above him?

To study this, we took a look at Duke’s weekly depth charts since David Cutcliffe took over as coach in 2008 to see just how much mobility there is.

Starter for life

It’s not quite a government job, but if you got named a starter for David Cutcliffe, you enjoyed a fairly high level of job security.

Over Cutcliffe’s 12 seasons at Duke, an average of 7.9 opening day starters at the 11 offensive positions went the entire year in that spot. That includes 2012 and 2014, when there was no turnover among the 11 starters all year long, and 2017, when 10 of the 11 starters went wire to wire. The fewest offensive starters to make it all year was six, which happened in 2009, 2013, 2016 and 2018.

The defense was less secure, but not by much. An average of seven starters went wire-to-wire on D. That ranges from a high of 10, last season, to a low of four, in 2011 and 2015.

On special teams, where there are a total of eight positions—although not all eight were on the depth chart every year—an average of 5.2 starters held their jobs all year long. That ranges from a high of seven, each of the last two years, as well as 2015, to a low of two—in 2010 and 2016.

Backups are solid, too

Not only that, but the two deep is hard for a third-teamer to crack. Under Cutcliffe,, an average of 5.8 positions a year saw absolutely no change in the two deep on offense. On defense, 4.3 positions had the same two-deep every week, as well as 4.3 on special teams.

From week-to-week, the depth chart is, for the most part, stable. There were an average of just 13.6 changes a year of any type on offense. The high was 24 in 2009, and the low was just one change on offense in 2014. Looking at it on a per position and, that means that there’s just a 10.7 percent chance of seeing any change at all at a given position.

On defense, there were 15.8 changes a year, ranging from 31 in 2012 and 2018 to just two last season. Defensive players have a 12.4 percent chance of seeing a change of any kind at their spot in a season.

Special teams saw 6.5 moves a year, on average, from a high of 13 in 2016 to a low of one, in 2014 and 2015. That’s an eight percent chance of seeing movement at your spot.

What’s a player to do?

That doesn’t mean all hope is lost. Some positions are less stable than others. In our next post in the series, we’ll look at which spots have the most turnover and which are the hardest for a newbie to crack.