Duke vs. Miami Showdown: Manny Diaz's Strategic Return

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00:00Duke and Miami down at Hard Rock in Miami Gardens as Manny Diaz goes back to see his

00:08old friends that no one likes him anyway down there.

00:12As the Canes, still unbeaten, number five in the country, unbeaten in the ACC, do they

00:17handle the big piece against the tough 6-2 Duke team?

00:21Yeah, again, another one I'm not sure the winner is in question, but this is really

00:26Cam Ward versus Manny Diaz.

00:29He was at Miami.

00:31He's a defensive coordinator, and he only knows one thing, and that's attack, penetrate,

00:35go after the quarterback.

00:36You know, he was a G.A., he's cut his teeth under my father at Florida State and the great

00:41defensive coordinator, Mickey Andrews, and he came out of that, so his only answer to

00:44Cam Ward is to blitz him, pressure him, hopefully that'll stop the run as they pressure him,

00:51and don't give him time to make a lot of decisions.

00:53If you sit back with him, he'll be patient.

00:56He'll wait for somebody to come open, so I think you've got to make something happen,

00:59good or bad, and I think that's the only thing Manny Diaz knows, so you've got a game where

01:03I think Miami's quarterback is going to be put in a situation where he'll have to react

01:08and react quickly, at least they will go with that for Duke.

01:13Do you think that his coaching at Florida State, at Miami, at Penn State, as the D.C.

01:22made him a better coach of who he is today at Duke?

01:26Well, you know, the one thing that I'll say is I think any time you go through a situation

01:31like Miami, you know, he's from Miami.

01:33His dad was the mayor of Miami.

01:35He loved that program, and so that's got to leave kind of a bitter taste in his mouth,

01:39and that gives you the incentive, but you can only get better with the years.

01:44I know the 28 years that I've been coaching, I began to make the same, never made the same

01:49mistake twice.

01:50Eventually, you run out of some of those mistakes, but I think Manny has always been a defensive

01:54coach.

01:55I think that's where I'm talking about his involvement.

01:57Like Nick Saban's involvement with that team, if on the field is a defensive involvement,

02:01Manny is the same way, but I do think he learns, and he's done a great job at Duke of learning

02:06from the mistakes he made at Miami and correcting that at Duke, and they win with their type

02:11of kids, but they win with the defense that he knows, the defense he knows how to operate,

02:16and that's that penetration, upfield, pressure type of defense.