Duke participated in 147 punting plays, 140 kickoffs and 124 place kicks last season.
That’s 411 special-teams plays, an average of over 30 per game, any one of which can decide a football game.
Duke didn’t exactly lose the special-teams wars last season. But they didn’t win them either. Duke was a little better than its opponents in place-kicking, a little worse in punt returns, basically even in kickoffs. For the second year in a row Duke did not return a kick for a score, either a kickoff or punt.
Colin Wareham was a solid place-kicker and a bit of a surprise, a redshirt senior walk-on who had never played a down in college but rose to the occasion.