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QUESTION: Should Miami fans already be concerned about Manny Diaz?
Our story on Miami and Manny Diaz starts with the Oklahoma Sooners. Trust me — I know what I’m doing here.
Oklahoma started the 2019 season with a sharp, focused defense. New coordinator Alex Grinch made a lot of course corrections from the previous regime under Mike Stoops and broke through on several levels. In the first half of the season, Oklahoma was stronger on defense than it had been in a number of years.
Then, in the middle of the season — with injuries playing a role yet not overwhelming the whole depth chart — Oklahoma lost the plot on defense. Kansas State scored 48. Iowa State hung 41. Baylor scored 31 in a half. In 10 quarters, Oklahoma was back to its 2017-2018 identity on defense, which is to say, it was very permeable.
Then, in the second half against Baylor, the light went on again. Oklahoma snapped into focus, shut out the Bears in the second half to create that 34-31 season-saving win, and the OU “D” hasn’t lost its winning “OU DNA” since. The Sooners’ defense stood tall in a 28-24 win over TCU. One of TCU’s touchdowns was a defensive score, so the Sooner D gave up just 17 points. Oklahoma’s defense throttled Oklahoma State, limiting the Cowboys to just 16 points.
The Oklahoma defense played 3/4 of the season extremely well. It started well. It went through a midseason rut, but instructively, it regrouped in time for the season to still be a success.
Okay, what the truck does this have to do with Miami and Manny Diaz?
The answer is surprisingly simple: If you compare Oklahoma and Miami, you can see that the Canes’ offense is the exact inverse of the Sooner defense.
Miami’s offense was lousy for the first half of the season. Then, for a few games in that same late October-early November period when Oklahoma’s defense slumped, Miami’s O made a U-turn. The U had seemingly righted the ship. Then, at the very end of the 12-game schedule, Miami regressed to its early-season form. It was the exact opposite of Oklahoma regaining its strong defensive identity formed at the beginning of the season.
Just as it is impressive when a good team goes through a bad patch but makes adjustments and corrections in time to save its season, it is discouraging when a mediocre team makes late-season improvements but then collapses before the finish line instead of carrying those improvements to the end.
We can all cut Manny Diaz and offensive coordinator Dan Enos some slack for starting the year poorly. It was a first season. Mark Richt left behind a cluttered, complicated situation which did not guarantee a quick fix. There was no shame in starting the year on rocky soil. Moreover, once the ship seemed to be turned around against Pitt, Florida State, and Louisville, it seemed that Diaz and Enos were about to chase the storm clouds away for the Hurricanes and create blue skies in South Florida.
The 6-6 regular season is not the main thing to look at here. The main problem is the end-of-season regression, a failure to maintain the early-November improvements and carry them through the schedule.
Virginia took some hits in the middle portion of this season and regrouped at the end. North Carolina scrambled to make a bowl game at the end of its successful season. (Miami’s 6-6 and UNC’s 6-6 look and feel VERY different.) Miami, like Pitt and Wake Forest, lost the plot at the end of its season, undoing the good work which had come before. That is not how The U needed to enter the bowl season and the next recruiting period.
All this having been said, the situation isn’t necessarily that dire, as long as Diaz and his staff can do one thing and one thing only: Recruit top offensive linemen. This program, one could very reasonably argue, just needs strong offensive linemen. Jarren Williams has shown that with a quality O-line, he can be the quarterback who leads The U out of the wilderness.
This was a discouraging first season, but it wasn’t free of hopeful components. If Manny Diaz and Dan Enos can learn from everything that happened, the Canes could still steer the storms toward opponents, not themselves.
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