Mike Elko was introduced as Duke’s head football coach on December 13, 2021. He told listeners that “we’re going to win with this group as fast as we possibly can.”
Elko could have been forgiven for talking about rebuilding his talent base, rebuilding his culture, asking for time. Power Five jobs like this usually become open because of a sustained period of sub-optimal play and that certainly was the case for a Duke program coming off three consecutive losing seasons, a team that lost all eight of its ACC games last season by a combined score of 373 points to 113.