Duke Football practice will be underway this afternoon and Blue Devil Nation was on hand for the opening media day where we talked with several players.  Duke is hoping to build off it's bowl season a year ago and return to one during the 2013-14 season and if they do so Jela Duncan will be a huge factor.  We caught up to the promising Duke running back -

 

Duke Football will supposedly run the ball more this year. That has to be music to your ears.

Yeah, very excited. As a running back I am very excited. It gives us a chance to do better than we did last year and we're hungry to get after it. Our coach, Requan (Boyette) had us in a meeting this morning, so we are just fired up being in camp.

You guys had a lot of success running the ball against a pretty good Cincinnati defense in the bowl game last season ...

I mean the game has it's ups and downs and the bowl game didn't go as we wanted it to go, so we just try and get better from the experience as a team.

Many consider you to be a physical downfield runner.  Is that a fair assessment?

Yeah, I consider that to be fair. I'm not so much a lateral guy, so it's fair. I'm going to mix it up this year.

How big of an impact is it for the running backs to have an experienced offensive line in front of them?

It makes a big impact to have a very experienced offensive line and we trust them as running backs which brings confidence in them to open up running lanes. We have one goal and that's the ACC Championship.