Duke Football HC Mike Elko Interview

You can listen to Duke Football right here on WSJS Saturday. The Blue Devils facing the Pitt Panthers at high noon. 11 a.m. pregame start with David Shoemate and the gang.

Right now we are being joined by the head Blue Devil, Mike Elko, who we always love visiting with. And coach, when we last spoke to you, you told us about winner dinners. For those who don't remember, that's when you guys have an Alaskan crab feast on Sundays at the facility the day after you win games. So I just gotta know, plain and simple, did you guys account for in the budget seven winner dinners this year?

Yeah, I think we probably overshot our figure on that one in our preseason predictions. But no, it's been great. I think anytime you overdo winning, that's certainly something you want in your program and people enjoy. But I gotta know, you didn't lessen the quality of the winner dinners. In other words, when you guys, is the bowl win winner dinner better than the week three winner dinner? So, you know, we just try to keep winning consistent in this program. And so the win in week three is the same as the win in week seven is the same as the bowl win. And you try to keep it consistent and try to keep the same standard.

But we try not to lower the quality of food just because we keep having it every Monday. Mike Elko is with us here, Duke head football coach. There are two quarterbacks in this conference that have really exceeded expectations this year. Drake May and Chapel Hill, one of those, and Riley Leonard, your quarterback, certainly one of those guys as well. Tell me about the first time you met Riley and what you were doing in spring practice and the areas he's grown and potentially even exceeded your expectations this season.

Yeah, Riley was actually one of the kids that I had reached out to when I got the job and he was actually, we FaceTimed and he was at his house in Alabama over winter break and just introduced myself. And obviously we knew he was one of the guys that was going to be involved in the quarterback competition moving forward for us. And so I just wanted to get to know him and then, you know, going out and working with him in the spring, obviously everything was new, you know, the system, how we were trying to run it, what we were trying to do on offense, how we were trying to practice, everything was just so new that it's really hard to get a full evaluation of him through spring ball. And everyone who asked me in the summer going into the year, I told him all the same thing. I said, you know, I know he's going to be a lot better when he gets back to fall camp.

I'm just not a hundred percent sure what that will look like. And then obviously he just made tremendous strides over the summer, came back to fall camp and had a much better command of what we were trying to do with the offense and it's really taken it a run with it all year. You guys could have won the Coastal Division this year. It was that close.

I was at the game in Durham where you guys went head to head with Carolina. Drake May, though, just made some plays at the end of that game that very few quarterbacks can make. When people talk about him as potentially being a Heisman candidate, what do you think? Yeah, I mean, he certainly is putting a program on his back the way a Heisman Trophy quarterback needs to. And certainly that night he made a ton of plays, not only on the final drive to win him the game, but certainly all game long. And so, you know, as much as that's a rivalry and as much as we wish that result would have been a little different, there's times where you do just have to tip your cap to a really good player on another team.

And he certainly proved to be that. You were an assistant here in Winston-Salem for Dave Claussen for such a long time and you coached with him at Bowling Green and other places, too. You're going to be, we won't be chatting with you next week, but looking ahead to Thanksgiving week, you guys face head to head. Have you begun to think what that's going to be like to be on separate sidelines, but you guys are both head coaches? No, I mean, obviously I got a tremendous amount of respect for Dave and, you know, that game will have some meaning for sure. And going out there to midfield and standing there with him as two guys leading a program, that'll be a special moment for both of us, I would think. But, you know, before we get to that, we got a really good pit team. And I think, you know, we'll spend, you know, hours next week diving into film on each other and not really spending a ton of time on the occasion. And then we'll get out there, we'll shake hands, we'll have our special moment and then kind of kick off and get ready to play. It's Pittsburgh you guys have this week at Noom, but I asked that really to talk about relationships within football, not just in coaching, but also when it comes to players, even if they're not on your team.

It was crazy to me. See, Wake's having their senior day this week and Sam Hartman's a guy that gets talked about quite a bit. He committed in July of 2016 when you were still an assistant here in Winston-Salem.

That was your last year before you left to Notre Dame. And when I look at this team, given the way that Dave runs his program and he redshirts guys upon arrival in most situations, Sam being an exception. Like Tyler Williams, Kobe Davis, they're guys who have been on this team since 2017, a really long time. Are there relationships that you built recruiting at Wake Forest, guys who are still on this football team?

There's a couple names that I know, and Kobe Davis was one kid that I obviously did have a pretty good relationship with. I think the majority of them kind of rolled out last year. There were still a lot of guys last year, Luke Madison, Treveon Red. There were a lot of guys last year that I was really close with. I think the majority of that is flushed out.

At least that part of it for me will be gone. Mike Galco is with us here. And we heard Klassen this week talking about what happened at Virginia. And he said he had to have team meetings with guys this week because given the proximity and how recruiting works and the type of player Wake Forest goes after, and I assume Duke goes after as well, it overlaps with some of these guys who ended up at Virginia. Guys on the team right now had personal relationships with Lavel Davis, according to Dave Klassen. How have you handled that with your team?

Yeah, I think very similar. Obviously such a tragic event and it impacts so many people. It obviously has a tremendous impact on the Virginia football program and that whole community. But then you go back to the high school communities to where those young men are from and how it impacts them and then how it impacts your own community because there are people who are tied in and have connections. And even if they don't know them, it just triggers things in kids. And so we wanted to let our guys know that it was okay to grieve, that it was okay to feel a certain kind of way about it, that we had support services available for them, that they should utilize whatever they felt like they needed to do.

And it's okay when things like this happen to struggle to get through them and process them because they truly are heartbreaking events and they're tragic. Getting back to your football team, what does bowl eligibility mean to Mike Elko? It's a starting point. I think everybody wants it to be this big celebration. And listen, I'm excited that we're going to a bowl. I'm excited that we get another opportunity to play. But when you're an ACC football team, that's got to be the minimum standard for what your program shoots for. And those certainly be years where we don't get it, but it means we get to play one more game. And really we've spent a lot of time around here talking about how we want to finish this season. And we were able to come out last week and put a really strong performance together against Virginia Tech. And that got us win number seven, which guaranteed us a winning season. And now we're going on the road this week and a win this week would guarantee a second place in the Coastal. And there's still a lot that we're playing for beyond just winning six games.

And so as much as it is cool to go to a bowl and get that experience, we hope to be doing that all the time. On a completely unrelated note, my producer, Will Dalton, has not seen any of the good movies. None of them. And to the point where we created a segment where every week we throw him a movie that we're just stunned he hasn't seen. Like last week was Silence of the Lambs.

The week before that was Top Gun. This week he watched Wedding Crashers last night. He hadn't seen Anchorman. If I asked you the movie that you think you've re-watched the most, like it's on I'm Sticking Around, what's the first movie that comes to Mike Elko's mind? I got two that immediately pop into my head he's going to have to watch. A Few Good Men and Tombstone. Okay, so we've already made him watch A Few Good Men. W.D., you have not seen Tombstone, right? No chance.

Of course not. Okay, that's right. Well, there you go. That's the movie that we're going to make him watch now.

Thank you, coach. You really did him a favor. I think you're doing him a service here. I think he'll enjoy that one.

I think that's one he'll want to re-watch after he sees it the first time. Duke facing Pitt this Saturday at noon. Listen to it here on WSJS. Coach Elko, I only have one thing to say to you on the way out. Well, bye. Appreciate you, Josh. Thanks for having me on.