Q&A: Duke coach Manny Diaz
The new Blue Devils boss talks about taking over another ACC program, how Duke can stand out in this day and age of college football, his old career path, Maalik Murphy and much more.
Manny Diaz served as Miami’s head coach from 2019-21, catching the tail end of Clemson’s dominance of the ACC. Dabo Swinney made the College Football Playoff twice during that span, going a conference-best 22-3 in league play across those three years.
The coach with the second-best ACC record during Diaz’s tenure with the Hurricanes? That would be Diaz himself, whose Miami teams were 16-9 in league play.
History has a weird way of forgetting that.
It’s no surprise that Diaz is back as a head coach, especially in an ACC that he knows so well. One of his Miami pupils, Rhett Lashlee, joins the league this coming season, too, after SMU won the American Athletic Conference in 2023.
Diaz spent the past two years as defensive coordinator at Penn State, which finished with the nation’s No. 2 defense last season. In Diaz’s last year as a DC at Miami in 2018, the Canes finished fourth nationally in total defense. (Diaz is also responsible for the infamous “Turnover Chain.”)
The Inside Zone caught up with the 50-year-old Diaz this month to talk about his transition to Duke, where his youngest son Manny was already set to enroll as a freshman and where his oldest son, Colin, joined his staff as a defensive analyst. (We also asked him for his thoughts on the sports media industry, an area that Diaz, a former college newspaper editor, once seemed fast-tracked for after landing at ESPN as a 22-year-old.)
The Blue Devils completed spring ball April 20.
Why Duke? You hear your name a lot for different openings. Right now there’s kind of a, You’re either in the Big Ten or SEC or you’re not (stigma), so to speak. What were the attractions of this place for you?
I think the experience of being at Penn State and what I felt like what we had culturally in that locker room there in such a way we were built defensively the last couple of years. And then talking to David Feely, the strength coach here who was was with me at Miami and a couple of the coaches on the staff, and as they were having their success the last couple years and I was hearing from the inside of what really was going on, and you felt like there was something very similar culturally in the locker room, just the right type of kids that are in it for the right reason. And everyone's expressed how amazing it is to coach here. You don't really see it until you're on the inside. So it was just something that was very interesting to me, because I felt like I already had an idea of what was going on inside the building.
I was curious about that. This was obviously a successful program the last two years. A lot of (players) left, as is the case in this day and age with a coaching change. Wheny ou walk in to (meet) that group for the first time, what kind of reception are you feeling, juts from the sense of, You’re not taking over a broken program, but you’re taking over a program where some people might not be there the following week. What was the overall mood of the place?
All transitions are difficult. I think certainly the way that the transition happened was jarring for the guys here, and then really it was just about two weeks before I was named the head coach. So in this era, that two weeks feels like two years with that much uncertainty. But what I found is a group that’s prideful, that is proud of the success that they had the last couple of years. And really, again, they believe that what happened in that interim in that weight room is really a major reason why. So yeah, it's tough. I mean, in college football now, anytime you take over a program, it's just difficult because of the current rules. Look what happened even with Alabama and all the — it's just the new normal and it just is not quite the same as when you come in, even from my experience, just a short time ago.
I was going to say, just the lifestyle of college football coaching is different now even from when you were at Miami. And I know that situation was unique in the sense that you were already there, but how different is this? I don’t say this to make you complain about your job or anything, but how much more is on your plate taking over a program now in 2024 than there was in 2019?
Yeah, just remarkably different. Very much so. And that's why, again, the fact that David Feeley stayed was such a crucial element because you didn't have to worry about re-establishing a culture or spending a year trying to get them to understand a way. And I think that was actually also reassuring for the players, because they knew what the expectation would be there. So yeah, from the job standpoint, there's obviously a whole lot more going on, but I think it's important to recognize that the core of all of this, the job of coaching is still the same as it was when I first got into this thing in the mid-90s. And the role of the coach — as much as we try to make really everything to be a transaction — if it’s done, right, that's still not the essence of what's going on in the profession.