Alabama Football First Look: Duke

Duke meets Alabama on Saturday in Atlanta, Ga. Here is your first look at Duke.

Duke Season So Far

Season opener.

Key Stats (2018 Stats)

Duke Injuries and Suspensions

Challenges for Alabama

If you are an Alabama fan, you are probably rolling your eyes at the possibility of the Blue Devils posing a threat to knock off the Crimson Tide. The fact is, Duke has a pretty decent football program. They’ve gone to bowls four of the last five seasons but have dropped a little the past couple seasons. Last season the Devils finished 8-5 and Independence Bowl, drilling Temple 56-27. Duke returns 13 starters, 8 on defense and 4 on offense. Duke has graduated its QB from last season. The Demons do return their top rusher, Deon Jackson, who ran for 847 yards a year ago. They took heavy losses of receivers, losing their four top pass catchers. Duke lost their top tackler from a year ago but return the No. 2 and 3 tacklers in DBs Dylan Singleton (73) and Marquis Waters (68). Not to be negative towards Duke, but the Blue Demons seem to have regressed the past couple years. Last year, other than Clemson, the ACC was awful. Duke benefited from that and eeked out the winning season despite a very poor defense.

If you watched the Florida-Miami game, you probably cringed at the number of stupid mistakes made by both teams. Alabama’s challenge for the game is to not be stupid like Florida and Miami. The Crimson Tide will destroy Duke if they can avoid mistakes like those two teams made.

Saturday‘s game kicks off at 2:30 PM CT (3:30 PM ET). Watch on the ABC network.

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