Walker Eget threw two touchdown passes Saturday and then handed the offense to Dan Mahan, who threw three more. Duke beat William & Mary 62-7, scoring more points than it had in any game since a 67-0 victory over Richmond in 1949. The Blue Devils led 38-7 at halftime after a 24-0 second quarter, out-gained the Tribe 638-170, and allowed two second-half first downs. Nate Sheppard ran nine times for 116 yards and a touchdown before the reserves took over.
That is a fun box score and a thin piece of evidence, and Duke fans should hold both thoughts at once. The real case that this roster is better than the 10th-place finish ACC media projected for it in the preseason still rests on September's two serious games, the road win at Illinois that ended the Illini's 10-game nonconference winning streak and overcame Illinois touchdown drives of 75, 62 and 75 yards, and the 28-point ACC-opening win over Stanford. Saturday did not add to that case. It just didn't subtract.
What four games did and didn't settle
The two reconstruction projects Duke started the season with are both trending the right way and neither is finished.
The passing game had to be rebuilt from nothing after Darian Mensah, who set Duke single-season records with 3,973 yards and 34 touchdown passes in 2025, transferred to Miami. Eget's 16-of-22, 182-yard, two-touchdown day was his cleanest of the year, and touchdown passes went to five different Blue Devils, including Jared Richardson and three players scoring for the first time in their college careers. Manny Diaz still wasn't buying it. "We're going to get more in sync," he said afterward, pointing at throws that went off fingertips and could have blown the score open earlier. When the head coach is talking about missed separation in a 55-point win, take him seriously rather than the scoreboard.
The defensive front is the other one. Duke lost all four starting defensive linemen and returned no starter up front, and the replacements have been alternately dominant and invisible. They were strong against Tulane and had four sacks against Stanford. Against William & Mary they recorded four more sacks, two by linebacker Bradley Gompers, and held the Tribe to 170 total yards on a 3-for-13 third-down day. An FCS offensive line tells you very little about whether that pressure survives Georgia Tech, Miami or Clemson.
What has been steady all month is Sheppard, who set Duke freshman records with 1,132 rushing yards and 11 touchdowns in 2025 and has been exactly that again, and so has the staff around him. Diaz, offensive coordinator Jonathan Brewer and defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke are all back, so the systems are intact even though most of the players running them are not. Continuity at the top and turnover everywhere else is why 4-0 feels encouraging without feeling proven. Conference play resumes at Georgia Tech, and the answers start arriving then.
Saturday without a Duke game
Duke is idle. Two ACC games still move the Blue Devils' odds of reaching the conference title game, and both are worth an hour of attention.
Boston College at SMU: root for Boston College
Boston College is a long shot here.
SMU is 21st and heavily favored at home; Boston College wins this about 10% of the time. But an SMU loss is a direct hit to one of the teams most likely to occupy a title-game spot Duke wants. If Boston College pulls it off, Duke's chance of playing in Charlotte sits around 14.8%; if SMU handles business, it's about 12.1%. Those are two versions of the same Saturday, not steps in a sequence, and the better one is a 2.6-point bump Duke probably won't get. Enjoy it if it does.
Louisville at NC State: root for NC State
This one is live. NC State is the home team and wins roughly 40% of the time, and Louisville is the conference rival whose loss helps Duke most this week. NC State winning leaves Duke around 13.9% to reach the title game; a Louisville win pushes it toward 11.4%. Same 2.5-point magnitude as the SMU game with four times the chance of happening, which makes it the one to actually turn on at 3:30 on ACC Network.
Full matchup details are in the interactive guide, and the modeling behind these numbers is explained in the methodology.