OUTBURST: Nate Sheppard's MONSTER Performance PROPELS Duke Football Over Tulane in Opener

SPEAKER_1 (0:01)

This is the Locked On Podcast Network, celebrating 10 years of your team every day.

Isaac Shade (0:10)

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JJ Jackson (0:47)

We will be repeating this statement over and over all season long. Nate Sheppard is really good at football.

SPEAKER_4 (1:00)

You are Locked On Blue Devils, your daily podcast on the Duke Blue Devils. Part of the Locked On Podcast Network, your team every day.

JJ Jackson (1:09)

Hello, everybody. Welcome into another episode of the Locked On Blue Devils podcast. My name is JJ Jackson. So great to have you here with us today on this Thursday, September 10th, 2026 Locked On Blue Devils is your one stop shop where we discuss everything going on inside the life of Duke Athletics. On today's show, Conor O'Neill from Devils Illustrated here with us to talk about the Duke Football victory over Tulane to open up the season, turning our attention to Saturday's contest on the road at Illinois and a whole lot of Nate Sheppard talk and rightfully so as the Blue Devils star running back was the star player on Saturday in the win. Let's bring on Conor O'Neill who's kind enough to join us here now as we move away from Labor Day weekend and get closer to week two of this college football season. Excited to see a second game for the Blue Devils, but what an opening statement this victory was for them.

Conor O'Neill (2:02)

Yeah, you want to dial up 38 more touches for Nate this weekend and see how much he can handle.

JJ Jackson (2:08)

Yeah.

Conor O'Neill (2:09)

No, it was an opening statement and there was an opening statement to the opening statement, right? Like they won the coin toss and I was, you know, so much is going on in the press box. You got all kinds of stuff. You're trying to juggle right up to kick off. And, you know, I heard Tulane call heads, so I couldn't make my reference of Tales Never Fails or Tales Didn't Fail.

And then Duke took the ball. And that is kind of a rarity these days in college. Like coaches always want to start the second half with the ball and they want to end the first half with the ball and a two minute offense. So it was strange. And you're trying to get it confirmed. And yeah, they took the ball and they wanted to prove that this is the new Duke offense. This is the offense that wants to run the ball down your throat with multi-tight end sets and behind a huge and powerful offensive line. And that's exactly what they did. I mean, they converted a third and 12 with a 12 yard run. I don't know how many more times we're going to see that this year, but that's some pretty smash mouth football in your face to get going.

JJ Jackson (3:12)

Yeah, and not thrown off at all by the delay that started the day, right? That kickoff was pushed back. And I love the kind of footage that Duke released after the fact where a couple of weeks ago, apparently Manny Diaz and Fall Camp is saying, hey, imagine a scenario where there's going to be a delay and you've just got to stay mentally sharp and whatnot. And that played out. I mean, that happened to open up the year. And they did stay mentally sharp because, as you said, they wanted the football and they took it right down the field and went to score.

Conor O'Neill (3:40)

Yeah, as Manny is keen on telling us, like, you know, they are students at Duke. And I know this both from covering Duke and from covering Wake. They're similarly aligned with the academic side of things. And it's like, you can use it to your advantage that you have smart kids for the most part. Like you have guys that can do the coursework at these places.

But you have some people that are intelligent on your football team. It's not just a bunch of... This is a term that I've kind of started to use in coordination with some other people. But like, you don't have a bunch of Cardale Joneses running around saying, I'm not here to play school.