We’re also reporting breaking news about Eli Manning, quarterback of the defending Super Bowl champion
Both quarterbacks played for Duke head coach David Cutcliffe, Peyton when Cutcliffe was offensive coordinator at the University of Tennessee, and Eli when Cutcliffe was head coach at Ole Miss.
Cutcliffe has remained an honorary member of football’s first family as the boys went on to NFL stardom. It’s safe to say that the Mannings are more closely associated with the Duke football program than most former Blue Devils players.
Peyton and Eli are both mentioned in the first two dozen words of Cutcliffe’s media guide bio, and each gets five mentions before the end. Overall, Peyton’s name appears nine times in Duke’s media guide, and Eli is mentioned 27 times.
Both quarterbacks are quoted in the guide, praising Cutcliffe, as is father Archie Manning.
The association clearly benefits Duke’s recruiting efforts. The team has upgraded its facilities in recent years, always an area of focus in the recruiting arms race.
But don’t let the coaches and current players tell you how good the facilities are—just look at where Eli chose to work out when the NFL was locked out last summer. Or watch the bootleg footage of Peyton testing his neck while working his way back into football shape on the Duke practice field early this offseason.
Peyton attended Duke’s basketball showdown against North Carolina in Cameron Indoor Stadium, sitting courtside, with Cutcliffe beside him. A handful of recruits from the class of 2013, including cornerback Evrett Edwards, were on-hand to witness the scene. Edwards has given a verbal commitment to the Devils.
At this year’s signing day press conference on February 1, Cutcliffe praised several members of the incoming freshman class. He saved some of his most effusive praise for the end of his half-hour with the media, however.
“What he does better than anything else is focus on the task at hand. You cannot distract him,” Cutcliffe said. He was talking about Eli, who was in Indianapolis for Super Bowl week.
“He is really working hard, every day,” Cutcliffe said, referring to Peyton’s recovery.
The Manning have also had an impact on the current Duke players, who got to watch the NFL’s elite prepare on their own.
“To watch him training by himself, and being able to see him work, going 100% every rep was eye opening -- a veteran like him, still working that hard after all these years,” All-ACC wide receiver Conner Vernon said.
Entering his fifth year at the helm, Cutcliffe is 15-33 as Duke’s head coach, and Cutcliffe is waiting for his improvements to the program’s infrastructure to show up in on-field results.
The team had a season-crushing loss to Richmond in last year’s opener, then finished with a seven-game losing streak. The team fell just short, losing a pair of games by less than a field goal and two more by less than a touchdown, missing bowl eligibility by 14 points. The previous season, they were 15 points shy of a bowl berth.
As the team gets close, he seems to be leaning more heavily on his relationship with the two quarterbacks. That’s not an accident.
“Our recruiting has gotten better every year that we’ve been at Duke,” Cutcliffe said this week. “You see coaches come in, recruit well, and then you watch them fade. We’ve purposefully avoided that. We’ve been conscious of that as a staff.”
With no Mannings left to recruit for at least 15 years, when Peyton’s twins will be old enough to consider college, Cutcliffe will have to go outside the family to get Duke over the hump.
For more up-to-the-minute news and analysis from ACC bloggers Shawn Krest and Sean Bielawski, follow @CBSSportsACC
