Darian Mensah threw for a career-high 389 yards in his Duke debut, helping the Blue Devils survive a first-half scare and pull away with a 45-17 win over Elon in their season opener Thursday night in Durham, N.C.
The Tulane quarterback transfer lived up to the hype, throwing three second-half touchdowns while completing 27 of 34 passes with no turnovers.
Mensah completed passes to nine different players, with Harvard transfer Cooper Barkate leading the way with 117 receiving yards and Sahmir Hagans catching a pair of touchdowns.
The Blue Devils (1-0) scored touchdowns each of the five times they touched the ball in the second half to distance themselves from what was a 10-10 game at halftime.
Elon starting quarterback Landen Clark completed 10 of 16 passes for 101 yards, and led the Phoenix (0-1) with 61 rushing yards along with a touchdown.
Even before the offense fully woke up, Mensah got off to a strong start to his 2025 campaign. His 216 passing yards accounted for the vast majority of Duke’s 250 first-half yards.
While the Blue Devils had nearly 100 more first-half yards, the game was tied at halftime because of a dropped touchdown by Peyton Jones, a missed field goal by Todd Pelino and a red-zone fumble on a bungled handoff with under two minutes left in the half recovered by Elon’s Dillon Pardue.
After Duke squandered those first-half chances, Mensah made sure that didn’t occur once again in the second half, throwing touchdown passes in each of the team’s first three second-half possessions.
First, he connected with Hagans on a 15-yard back-shoulder throw on the opening drive of the half. Then, he delivered a dart to the middle of the end zone that was caught by Andrel Anthony for a 27-yard touchdown.
After Elon responded with a 12-play, 75-yard touchdown drive capped off by a 3-yard touchdown run by Landyn Backey, Mensah connected with Hagans again for a 6-yard touchdown that was set up by a 63-yard run by Anderson Castle.
The Duke defense, which racked up 10 tackles for loss, followed that up with a forced punt and Que’Sean Brown effectively iced the game by returning it 78 yards for a touchdown to make it 38-17 Blue Devils.
Jaquez Moore scored Duke’s first touchdown of the season on a 32-yard cutback run in the second quarter.
Jones redeemed his earlier mistake by finishing the scoring with a 5-yard touchdown run in the dwindling minutes.
