Victor Dimukeje wins ACC weekly award

Junior named DL of the week after 3 sacks

Duke defensive lineman Victor Dimukeje won the ACC Defensive Lineman of the Week Award for his performance against Georgia Tech.

The junior had six total tackles, including thee quarterback sacks and three tackles for loss, in Saturday’s 41-23 win over the Yellow Jackets. It was the most sacks by a Blue Devil in a game in three years and most against an ACC foe since 2003.

Coach David Cutcliffe said that Dimukeje’s sacks came at key times in the game. Two of them were on third down, and the third was on a fourth-down attempt by Georgia Tech.

Dimukeje also caused a fumble and had two quarterback pressures. When Georgia Tech attempted a two-point conversion, Dimukeje had another quarterback pressure, which doesn’t count in the statistics.

Dimukeje is the first Blue Devil to win Defensive Lineman of the Week since Mike Ramsey on Sept. 18, 2017. It was the longest current weekly award drought for Duke at any position. He’s just the fourth Duke defensive lineman to win the award in the last 10 years, joining Ramsey, AJ Wolf in 2015 and Kenny Anunike in 2013.

In his postgame comments (below), Dimukeje credited the coaching staff and the rest of the Blue Devil line.

“It was a team effort,” he said. “The defensive tackles did a good job pressuring the pocket.”

“It’s not easy to get sacks,” he added, “because you have to know where the quarterback is at all times. You can’t just speed rush the whole time, because you have to know where he’s at. So we just tried to keep him in the pocket.”