Riley Leonard dazzles for Duke football as defense dominates in 30-0 win over Temple
Riley Leonard started practice a month ago not knowing if he’d be a starter, and walked out of Wallace Wade Stadium on Friday night a rousing success.
The sophomore quarterback ushered in Mike Elko’s coaching era at Duke by completing his first 15 passes while leading the Blue Devils to a 30-0 season-opening win over Temple.
In their first game under Elko, hired last December to replace David Cutcliffe, the Blue Devils ended an eight-game losing streak with a performance that overwhelmed the Owls.
Texas A&M’s defensive coordinator prior to joining Duke, Elko oversaw the program’s first shutout since a 55-0 win over N.C. Central in 2015.
More impressively, it was Duke’s first shutout over an FBS level team since a 41-0 win at North Carolina in 1989. The last time Duke shut out an FBS team at home? Wake Forest in 1978.
On offense, Leonard led the way as Duke built a 24-0 halftime lead.
The sophomore battled Jordan Moore for the starting quarterback job during August practices. Leonard won the job, becoming Duke’s fifth opening-night starting quarterback in the past five seasons.
But that doesn’t mean Moore isn’t a huge factor in the potent offense that Elko hopes Duke continues to show as the season progresses.
Leonard completed 24 of 30 passes, including two touchdown tosses, for 328 yards. Most importantly, for a Duke team that threw 28 interceptions over the past two seasons, none of Leonard’s throws were caught by the opposition.
“We felt like we had some things that we could we could do in the passing game,” Elko said. “There were a lot of different looks that I felt like we were able to throw at him. He was really confident in what we were trying to do.”
One of Leonard’s touchdown throws went to Moore, who moved to wide receiver midway through August as Elko sought to add as many playmakers to the offense as possible.
Moore’s elusiveness and speed intrigued Elko. On Friday night, those talents and sure hands allowed Moore to catch six passes for 77 yards, including a 4-yard touchdown pass in the second quarter.
What kind of shiftiness does Moore possess? Of his 77 receiving yards, 51 of them came after he made the catch.
“Being able to put him at receiver and him excel the way he does,” Leonard said, “it’s so it’s so nice for me to know that I got a guy like that to run routes and know exactly what I’m thinking pre snap.”
Moore’s first display of the season in that area set up Duke’s first score.
On first-and-10 from the Duke 47, Leonard lofted a pass that Moore caught near the right sideline at the Temple 40. He cut back to elude one defender, then ran between two more while breaking a tackle and sprinting to the 1. Jaylin Coleman scored Duke’s first touchdown, and the first of his career, two plays later.
Moore’s touchdown catch in the second quarter, which put Duke up 17-0, was part of Leonard’s streak of consecutive completed passes that reached 15, one shy of the school record shared by D. Bryant and Sean Renfree.
Leonard’s second touchdown pass went to sophomore Sahmir Hagans, who caught a perfectly thrown ball down the right sidelines and sprinted without breaking stride to the end zone on a 39-yard play.
All that offense was plenty for the suddenly stingy Duke defense. The same group that allowed 517 yards and 39.7 points per game on average last season gave up just 179 yards in the shutout.
“Defensively,” Elko said, “you always worry about how you’re going to tackle in an opener. I thought, for the most part, we tackled really well for it being a first game. For those guys, for everything that they’ve been through, to come out here tonight and pitch a shutout in the opener. I mean, that was pretty special.”
This story was originally published September 2, 2022 at 10:34 PM with the headline "Riley Leonard dazzles for Duke football as defense dominates in 30-0 win over Temple."