S.O.M. said:

This is a good post (as was Lance's obviously). Yes Manny did a very good job here as a DC. People dog him as a DC imo b/c they remember 2 things: 1- some poor performances down the stretch (including bowl games) where we just couldn't get stops or get off the field (vs. not even great offenses, for example Wisky twice I believe, etc.), and 2- some bad/backup QB's having great days against us. Even if that team didn't exceed their season statistical averages, we allowed a good number of those guys to complete a ridiculously high percentage of their passes, keep the chains moving and stay on the field, and keep games close when we felt we would/should dominate. I think the memory of many of those frustrating performances lingers in the minds of many of our fans.

But on the whole Manny did a very good job for us. You also bring up a point that I think is dead on. I also remember us getting off to a slow start in many games. I can remember feeling like everyone we played seemed to open the game with a TD drive (or 2). That's one of the things I felt continued on in the Baker era. **** how many times have we heard post-game how "they did something we'd never seen them do before" in the past 2 years? But Manny almost always did seem to do a good job of adjusting quickly and getting things turned around mid-game.

And yes, Manny's D's did have some trouble with mobile QB's, but who's doesn't? Believe me I'd prefer for Manny to have brought in a DC personally, but I don't get how anyone doesn't see this move as an improvement for us compared to the last 2 years.

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KWCOWBOYFAN said:

Great way to compare DC’s @Lance Roffers.

Let’s not forget that Manny made great halftime adjustments when he was a DC. And I think he mentioned that he thinks Shoop will be able to help make adjustments quicker ( another set of eyes). So hopefully we don’t dig too deep of a hole before adjustments are made. Just my 2 cents.

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PittsburghCane said:

Ed Orgeron.
Mario Cristobal.
Mike Leach.
Dave Aranda.

off top.

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cooks002 said:

How do you account if at all for the games that Manny called this year?

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Rellyrell said:

Good stuff my friend; however, I don’t think fans had a problem w/ Diaz’s **** numbers (i.e TFLs, Sacks, YPP); I would be more interested to see where Diaz’s defense ranked in T.O.P, YPG, and 3rd down efficiency compared to his peers. It felt like we bled a slow death often w/ his defense: 3 ypc, and giving up a 3rd & 4 or a 3rd & 5, keeping the defense on the field. If I’m not mistaken, that was the biggest issue.

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Rellyrell said:

Good stuff my friend; however, I don’t think fans had a problem w/ Diaz’s **** numbers (i.e TFLs, Sacks, YPP); I would be more interested to see where Diaz’s defense ranked in T.O.P, YPG, and 3rd down efficiency compared to his peers. It felt like we bled a slow death often w/ his defense: 3 ypc, and giving up a 3rd & 4 or a 3rd & 5, keeping the defense on the field. If I’m not mistaken, that was the biggest issue.

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Jedi Master Cane said:

Here's something I'd like to know.

Can anyone name a COLLEGE coordinator, who was fired as a COLLEGE coordinator, and went on to become a quality COLLEGE head coach?

Maybe an example exists, I can't think of any.

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Lance Roffers said:

With the news coming out that Manny will serve as the playcaller for the defense, returning to the de facto DC position, I wanted to dive deeper to establish whether Coach Diaz was a top-shelf DC or not.

Methodology
It started with a Twitter debate, where fans online perceived Coach Diaz as either an average DC, or even a poor one. From there, I asked for fans to identify the top-5 DC’s currently in college and received a list of various names. I settled on these names:

• Brett Venables- Clemson
• Marcus Freeman- Cincinnati (now Notre Dame)
• Dave Aranda- LSU (now HC at Baylor)
• Jim Leonhard- Wisconsin
• Jon Heacock- Iowa State
• Blake Baker- Miami

There are other worthy candidates, but this list seemed like a representative start of identifying how standout DC’s perform in their roles.

I am using a sample size of three years for each of them, except for Baker, as I am using him for a control to show how Miami fared under Baker as opposed to Manny Diaz.

The metric I am using is Yards Per Play. I chose Yards Per Play (YPP) because it is simple to calculate, readily available, and is a good catch-all for how a defense fares against an opposing offense overall.

To gauge how a team fared against peers, I am removing teams that are not of like-quality. I.E. a Power-5 team, I am removing all non-Power-5 teams from their results. For Cincinnati, I am removing lower tier FBS teams and all FCS teams. This helps to stabilize the talent of the teams and removes a defense beating up on the Missouri State’s of the world.

From here, I calculated the “Win Percentage” that a DC against opposing offenses. A win is holding the offense under their standard average against other peer-like teams, a loss is allowing them to outperform their YPP against that DC’s defense.

Additionally, I wanted to calculate the “Difference” between what each DC allowed on YPP and what those opponents averaged against other peer opponents.

I also calculated the standard deviations of the opponents’ offensive performance and tabulated the number of times each DC held their opponents one standard deviation under their average and two standard deviations. I calculated how often the DC allowed their opponent to outperform their average by one and two standard deviations as well.

Results
By looking at performances against peer institutions and then then weighing it against their offensive performance against other peer opponents I believe you are getting at the actual contributions of each DC and can accurately gauge the quality of coach. The results pass the “smell test” as well, with Venables being far and away the best and Blake Baker being far and away the worst.

Here are the results for % of games holding opponents under their norms (Win Percentage):

View attachment 143007

Coach Diaz fares very well here, finishing second among the group of DC’s with a win percentage of 77.4%. Venables leads the pack, as he does in every category, by holding an opponent under their norms an astonishing 86.5% of the time. Keep in mind, this is against peer institutions, so no Bethune Cookman’s propping up that number for Venables (or anyone).

Surprisingly, Blake Baker did not come in last here, as Jim Leonhard and Jon Heacock both finished lower than his 68.4% showing.

Here are the results for Yards Per Play (YPP):

View attachment 143008

Again, Venables leads the way, with Coach Diaz coming in second. Marcus Freeman is the third DC to hold opponents to under 5 YPP, but keep in mind he is doing that at Cincinnati, with a decided talent advantage against even some conference foes. Clemson may have a talent advantage over their opponents, but the revenue from the ACC to each team at least allows them to be competitive in resources. Some teams in the AAC have a wide budget gap between themselves and Cincinnati.

Blake Baker comes in last in this metric, not surprisingly. That is a gap of .58 yards per play allowed between Baker and Diaz, which is cavernous.

Finally, here are the results for how each DC fared at holding their opponents below their norms (Difference):

View attachment 143009

Venables comes in at a ludicrous -1.17 YPP against peer institutions and their offensive averages. Marcus Freeman is second, but Manny comes in third at -0.84 YPP.

Blake Baker does not finish in last place in this metric, surprisingly, Jim Leonhard does. Leonhard appears to be a bit overrated by fans currently.

Overall:
For those of you who just skip to the end, suffice to say, Coach Diaz comes in second amongst this group of DC’s over a three-year sample. Over this time, keep in mind that Coach Diaz only had Gerald Willis for one season and had three true freshmen LB’s to scheme around. Then he introduced the Striker into his defense in this sampling as well. Venables, Aranda, Leonhard, Heacock are considered among the best names in the game, so Coach Diaz is definitely an excellent DC, who will be a massive upgrade over Blake Baker.

In looking at the performances of Coach Diaz, a few things stand out:

• Coach Diaz will consistently hold an offense under their norms, but will generally not dominate an offense (over one standard deviation under their norms), as he did this in only 29% of games. Venables did this an absurd 57% of the time. Coach Diaz has only held an offense two standard deviations under their norm once (Against Virginia in 2018), while Venables has done that six times over the last three years.
• Coach Diaz’s defenses are remarkably consistent in their ability to scheme negative plays against an offense and hold their overall performance down.

I went into this exercise expecting to find Coach Diaz was outside of that elite tier of DC’s and would be solidly in the “good” tier, but the data confirms that Coach Diaz profiles in the 90th percentile of DC’s in the country and will put up a performance far better than we have seen over the past two seasons.

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NicKane said:

I always enjoy all your articles Lance as your detail for the game is unsurpassed and everything is really well written. But on this issue I would have liked to see what I think is the most important stat for a DC which is 3rd/4th down stoppage efficiency. That to me is way more important the YPP because yards can be deceiving when the only true goal of a defense is to stop the opponent on the money downs! Obviously to get your offense back on the field to score. And all 5 years Diaz had been here (3 as DC and 2 as HC) we’ve have consistently struggled with this on defense to the point where it’s become systemic since it’s been here since the beginning of Diazs tenure here. Countless times in his three years as DC we made every backup QB making his first start look like a Heisman candidate and any team with a decent rushing attack run all over us (both wisky games and countless others.) and all these trends of course continued with Baker and even got worse but the trends started with Manny. Which is why many of us who have played the game at the college level have pointed out the holes in his scheme and the Mickey Mouse nature of it as no one else in CFB runs his undisciplined, no gap responsibility scheme that severely lacks fundamentals. It’s almost as if Diaz is trying to reinvent the wheel with his scheme and it simply doesn’t work. Because no matter how offenses/defenses evolve, there is and always will be some age old core principles/fundamentals that have to be part of a defensive scheme to make it work. And it’s Almost as if Mannys scheme lacks all those core defensive fundamentals that have been apart of the game since the beginning. That in my opinion is why Mannys scheme has eventually failed everywhere it’s been and of course why the disasters that was Texas vs BYU and Miami vs UNC happened. What are thoughts on that Lance?

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Lance Roffers said:

...

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Go Canes!! said:

Who are all these first time starters who looked like heisman candidates for an entire game? Can you post their stats?

Should be easy because the number is countless.

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Ethnicsands said:

I think this analysis is pretty generous to manny and potentially unfair to baker.

Stats lack context on their own. Plenty of things changed other than the DCs. Manny’s famed ‘18 defense had jaquan, redwine and jackson in the secondary, and shaq and pinckney at lb. All recruited by Golden/dorito, moreover. Manny’s weak recruiting as dc/lb coach left a depleted back 7 for baker to work with.

Manny also was free to be himself as DC because Richt ceded the D to him. Baker, however, was stuck trying to run ‘manny’s d’ reporting to manny, who clearly didn’t disengage and let baker be himself but hold him accountable. Manny meddled and didn’t manage, it’s pretty clear.

In any case, manny’s d philosophy really needs good LBs and DBs to cover when the DL gets caught upfield. Manny did no one any favors as DC stocking the cabinet for his successor.

I don’t know if baker would be better away from manny. My guess is he would be better, but not sure whether that means good or just okay.

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Jedi Master Cane said:

Here's something I'd like to know.

Can anyone name a COLLEGE coordinator, who was fired as a COLLEGE coordinator, and went on to become a quality COLLEGE head coach?

Maybe an example exists, I can't think of any.

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NicKane said:

Dude if you need me to remind you about the 17 and 18 seasons then it ain’t worth my breath. Try google if you want to put your “manny is the greatest DC ever” agenda to the side. Smh if you played the game at the college level, especially on defense you would be able to see the lack of fundamentals and principles in his scheme a mile away! Why do you think games like BYU/UNC happened and happened against the same scheme?

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WesStrong said:

Some of that had to do with the ineptitude of the offense toward the end of the Richt era....the D was on the field A LOT!!!

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S.O.M. said:

Yes, but I think the "bad offense" thing gets overplayed sometimes. There are times it can also work to a defense's (statistical) advantage. When the other team sees and knows you can't score, they're often not as aggressive either, knowing they don't have to put up a ton of points. For example, do you think if we had Lashlee putting up 40+ points in a game, some of those offense's in years past likely would've score more as well? Teams know they have to keep their foot on the pedal, they'll take more chances and be more aggressive, they've going to go for some 4th downs instead of playing for field position. Now obviously you don't want your D on the field all game, but I think there were teams who didn't score more against us b/c they knew they didn't have to.

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San Amaro Dr said:

Let’s see the opponents starting field position, time of possession and total possessions per game with manny at dc vs last year with a competent offense. I would imagine all were higher with Richt’s offenses.

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Go Canes!! said:

I didn’t say he was the greatest anything. I’m saying your claim of countless first time starters looking like heisman candidates is complete bull****.

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OrangeBowlMagic said:

I’ve pointed out countless times on this board that this nonsense narrative of QBs looking like Heisman winners and every offense with a pulse just bludgeoning us is just that...nonsense. Anyone who says that doesn’t watch games with a football brain, they use them to get fatter and drunk on Saturdays.

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