The Dukes arrived off a 7-5 season and a second-place finish in the Northeast Conference, with DJ Cerisier and Ness Davis back as preseason All-NEC picks and 2025 NEC Rookie of the Year winners Ryan Petras and Caleb Jones in the fold. None of it showed up against Air Force's ground game.
This was Duquesne's first crack at a Mountain West opponent since 2022 and its first true FBS road test of the year, and the gap in speed and depth was obvious from the opening series. Air Force's option backs kept finding creases, and a defense that had circled this as a get-right game before conference play never had to sweat it.
The scoring came in waves rather than one big burst — a touchdown in the first quarter, two more before half, then a stretch of ordinary football in the third before the Falcons closed it out in the fourth. Duquesne, meanwhile, never got the offense untracked at any point.
For Air Force, it's a clean start to a schedule that gets considerably harder once Mountain West play begins. For Duquesne, it's a reminder of where the ceiling sits against a program built to grind out exactly these kinds of games, and a long flight home before the Dukes turn back to the NEC schedule that's actually going to decide their season.