Manny Diaz reveals his feelings on Duke's schedule, win total for 2025

The Duke Blue Devils are coming into the 2025 season looking to make some noise in the ACC. In their way is what head coach Manny Diaz knows to be a uniquely challenging schedule.

Diaz recently appeared on the College GameDay Podcast. There, he resisted the urge to emphasize Duke’s Week 1 game against Elon and shared some of his feelings on the schedule as a whole and his team’s win total for next season.

“I will say this,” Manny Diaz said. “Actually, if we looked at it last year, we would recognize what a fool’s errand that is yesterday because who would have thought this time last year that Florida State wins two? Look, they could turn around and win 10 this year just as easily. So, we are definitely in the most volatile time year-to-year in terms of what can happen.”

Duke is coming off a 9-4 season in their first year under Manny Diaz. Now, they’re entering 2025 with a win total of 7.5 games. Still, if last season’s surprisingly strong record is proof of anything it’s that preseason expectations don’t always match reality.

“Somebody sent me this last week our Vegas win-loss deal,” Diaz said. “And I was like, ‘Does anybody remember what our win-loss deal was a year ago?’ Nobody even remembers that type of stuff. I’m sure it wasn’t nine… I don’t know what it was. I know it wasn’t 8.5. Who knows? We were all learning and we were still trying to, you know, beg some offensive linemen to come join our program.”

After the Elon game, Duke has an interesting non-conference schedule in September with tough games against Illinois and Tulane. Later in the season, they’ll also have UConn. That’s before considering the uniquely challenging ACC slate.

“Yes, the first game matters,” Diaz said. “You can’t win them all without winning the first one. Illinois, I think, is going to be a big time here in Wallace-Wade, to have a team that’s going to be a top-20 team. If you look at our opening. Illinois, a 10-win team. Then, we have to go down to Tulane. That’s going to be a spicy game. That’s a 10-win team. Then, we get a local rival. We get NC State here to start off ACC play. So, a real big hill. Then, we have to go to Syracuse. Another 10-win team from last year. Then, we have the rare thing now in college football, we’ve got to go to Syracuse and then turn around and go to Cal. So, a real strange deal with that.”

The ACC schedule now has plenty of quirks in it that Manny Diaz noticed. In particular, they’re born from the newfound West Coast travel, which makes everything more challenging. It also added a unique situation with Duke’s bye weeks this season.

“Speaking of strange deals,” Diaz said. “Something I’ve almost never heard of before in my time in this profession, I think there are three teams in this league that have the same thing. We go bye, which makes sense coming back from the West Coast, Georgia Tech at home who beat us a year ago, and then another bye. So, we have one game in three weeks. It’s very, very unusual. Then, we have to go to Clemson after that, and then UConn. Again, Jim Mora has done a great job. They’re a sneaky team. So, we have some strange rhythms to our season, thanks to travel, thanks to byes, that are going to be unique.”

College football analyst Greg McElroy took the time to break down the schedule and win total for Duke. There, he pointed to six games that he sees as toss-up games, including Tulane, NC State, Syracuse, Cal, Georgia Tech, and North Carolina. However, he also noted that success in those games will come down to how well Duke plays on the road.

“Then, I know we finish our last three with Virginia home, at Chapel Hill, and then Wake [Forest] home. So, at Duke, wherever you end up at the end of the year,” Diaz said. “How you fair in those three games is what can really turn a good season into a special season and so on and so forth. It’s why coaches always say, ‘It’s November, they remember.’ So, yeah, they’re all important. We want to go, ‘Elon, Elon, Elon.’ But, in a way, I think the way the calendar sets up is a very unusual season from a pacing standpoint and we’ll have to make sure that we handle not just who we’re playing but all those sorts of oddities in terms of travel and byes and whatnot.”

For the time being, Manny Diaz and Duke will likely look to focus on Elon. Getting a win there will be big for starting out on the right foot this season.