DURHAM, N.C. (AP) - Andrew Luck led No. 6 Stanford to yet another strong finish. What concerned the star quarterback was a slow-starting offense that could have placed the Cardinal in deep, early trouble against a more powerful opponent.

Just not against Duke.

Luck matched a career high by throwing four touchdown passes in No. 6 Stanford's 44-14 rout of the Blue Devils on Saturday.

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He was 20 of 28 for 290 yards with touchdown passes of 60 and 3 yards to Coby Fleener, 10 yards to Chris Owusu and 3 yards to Zach Ertz. The TDs helped Stanford (2-0) overcome an uneasy start, roll up 504 total yards and pull away for its 10th straight victory dating to last season.

``We put some points on the board - we found our stride, you could say, our rhythm in the second half,' Luck said. ``But we're going to get beat if we continue to play like that offensively.'

Stanford never trailed, claimed a rare regular-season win on the East Coast and denied the Blue Devils (0-2) their first win against a ranked team since 1994.

Lee Butler returned an interception 76 yards for a touchdown to pull Duke to 10-7 late in the first half. Luck then led four straight touchdown drives to turn it into a rout before exiting one play into the fourth quarter.

``We started the second half playing our style of football,' Stanford coach David Shaw said.

Owusu finished with seven catches for 106 yards and Jeremy Stewart added a 30-yard touchdown run for the Cardinal, who were making their fifth regular-season trip east since 1997.

Stanford was 1-3 in its previous four visits East since `97, though the Cardinal did rout Virginia Tech in the Orange Bowl in January. Two years ago, they were beaten at Wake Forest in the first road start of Luck's career, a defeat that still rankles several upperclassmen.

In this one, Stanford methodically pulled away from a Duke team that was a three-touchdown underdog and was coming off another loss to a lower-division FCS team.

Even though the end result was the same, Duke barely resembled the outfit that lost to Richmond for the third time in six years.

``We have to make plays and we weren't able to do that,' safety Matt Daniels said. ``We kind of just broke down. It really didn't have anything to do with fatigue. We had a lot of missed tackles, a lot of missed assignments.'

Coach David Cutcliffe pulled out all the stops in his attempt to deliver the Blue Devils' first victory over a top 10 opponent since 1989 and first against a nonconference top 10 team since they beat then-No. 10 Stanford in 1971.

Duke faked a punt on a fourth-and-7 while trailing 10-0 midway through the second quarter. The gadget play worked - Alex King floated a swing pass to Jay Hollingsworth for 21 yards - but it only led to one in a frustrating series of missed opportunities when the outcome was still in doubt. Normally trusty Will Snyderwine missed his second field goal of the day.

Then, after Butler's pick-six pulled Duke to 10-7, Cutcliffe dialed up an onside kick that was recovered by Walt Canty at the Stanford 40 with about 2 minutes left in the half.

The game essentially swung on what happened next: Duke netted minus-14 yards on that drive, which ended with a 13-yard punt.

Then, Luck took over.

The 2010 Heisman Trophy runner-up led Stanford 59 yards in four plays and capped the drive by hitting Owusu with a catch-and-run that made it 17-7 with 39 seconds left before halftime - the first of five straight touchdown drives for the Cardinal.

``I've only been around a couple quarterbacks that see everything,' Shaw said. ``He was able to tell us exactly where the safeties were. ... I thought he managed the game very well. Early on, we had a couple of protection issues where he had to slide and throw the ball off his back foot.

``He is resilient,' Shaw added. ``He never backs down. He stands in there and takes the hits.'

Luck stretched the lead to 24-7 when Fleener beat safety August Campbell to the ball and rumbled downfield for his second score of the day.

``I guess you could say Andrew makes a lot of hard throws look easy,' Fleener said.

And after Stewart's scoring run, Luck hit Ertz with a short strike that made it a 37-7 one play into the fourth quarter.

Fleener's first touchdown catch was a short flip from Luck that capped Stanford's opening drive. The Cardinal later went up 10-0 on Jordan Williamson's 40-yard field goal early in the second quarter.

Sean Renfree finished 19 of 27 for 179 yards for Duke.