1. The men of Roof raised the, er, roof. Georgia Tech held Duke to 254 yards and two well-spaced touchdowns. (Granted, the Devils were without their starting quarterback.) But the Yellow Jackets responded to an early Duke to induce six punts and one stoppage on downs over the next seven possessions. "We went back to our basic defense," coach Paul Johnson said of defensive coordinator Ted Roof's — as we know, Roof was once Duke's head coach — in-game tactics. "We simplified our defense." As we know, the issue with previous coordinator Al Groh was that the Jackets could never manage to implement his intricate schemes.
2. A former baseball player looked like a darn good football player. DeAndre Smelter arrived at Tech on a baseball scholarship; he was a highly regarded pitching prospect whose career was compromised by a sore shoulder. He's a wide receiver now, and he caught two touchdown passes from Vad Lee in the second quarter — the first a 24-yarder, the second a 10-yarder. The first put the Jackets ahead 17-7. The second came 42 seconds before the half to make the score 24-7 and break the game open. So does this mean Dan Uggla should consider a switch to linebacker?
3. The football atmosphere at Duke isn't really a football atmosphere. Saturday's crowd was announced as 21,267 in a stadium that seats only 33,941. Some might consider Wallace Wade Stadium quaint, but to this jaded observer it's just old. There's never a hometown buzz, pun intended, when the Jackets come here. Indeed, the most noise made Saturday came from the Tech band. And this tepid display of force came after Duke had started 2-0 after a 6-7 season that culminated with the Devils' first bowl appearance since 1994. But Cameron Indoor Stadium, home of the imperial basketball Dukies, does sit a few hundred yards away, and practice starts Oct. 15.
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