Josh Blackwell thinks the Duke defense is confident. Part of that is the experience in the secondary, which now gets back Mark Gilbert, who has missed the last two years.
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00:00 >> I don't think it's much of a negative thing for us.
00:04 I feel like the only thing that we would lose is team cohesion a little bit,
00:07 especially on the field.
00:09 I think we all got our individual work at home to kind of keep us in it.
00:13 So I think physically we're still where we're supposed to be.
00:18 But I think the one thing that I would say that was kind of off,
00:21 especially with the COVID situation, is just the team cohesion and
00:25 kind of coming back and being a team again.
00:26 It means a lot.
00:29 Not having him for two years on the field has been detrimental, but
00:32 I mean, it's made people like me and Leonard Johnson that much better,
00:37 being leaders when he's away.
00:39 But now that we have him back, I mean, we have us and then him on top of that
00:44 to bring back that spark that we needed on the field.
00:46 He's been, even off the field, the past two seasons,
00:51 he's been huge for us mentally.
00:54 Just teaching us the ropes really to get to where we need to be with Coach Jones and
00:57 now Coach Hampton, I feel like he's been a huge part of our success here,
01:03 on and off the field.
01:04 We're confident.
01:06 We're really confident, especially because all of us were starters or
01:10 big role players last year.
01:11 We're confident against anybody we play.
01:14 As long as we play our brand of football, we have no worries.
01:19 Yeah, I'd say the past, since I've been here, my past four years at D-line
01:25 has been a huge part of our success in the back end.
01:28 We got Chris, Victor, Drew, interior, you got Congo, all those guys.
01:32 They've come together very well in the past couple of seasons and
01:36 they've grown together and figured out ways to
01:40 rush the passer successfully to help us in the back end.
01:46 Then you got our backers, you got Shaka, who's grown up and
01:50 played a huge role for us last year as a redshirt freshman.
01:52 So I think as we continue to grow and continue to practice,
01:56 we'll just keep getting better from here.