Is Manny a Good DC??

And this is just, perhaps*, a bad/weird take from you on not being able to recognize leadership ability and ability to install the right organizational structures to support success.

Please take pity and regale of tales of all the bad/weird takes.

I'll make you famous.

*I'm was being polite--its really "most definitely"
Tf you talking about “success”? Success 2 years? And in those years he had the most athletic QB that UVA has ever had?? And they still amounted to just above average??? Bronco?? The guy who got beat by Manny in the same year we lost to FIU and LA Tech?!? That Bronco? Dude has beat our “terrible” (to most posters) coaching staff a total of 1 time in his 5 years... his predecessor did better lol
 
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Tf you talking about “success”? Success 2 years? And in those years he had the most athletic QB that UVA has ever had?? And they still amounted to just above average??? Bronco?? The guy who got beat by Manny in the same year we lost to FIU and LA Tech?!? That Bronco? Dude has beat our “terrible” (to most posters) coaching staff a total of 1 time in his 5 years... his predecessor did better lol
Do you think UVA is an environment for D1P5 football program success less than, equal to, or greater than the University of Miami?

Same question for Duke, Wake Forest, and Vanderbilt.

Now, same question for FSU, Auburn, UNC-CH?

Starting from today, does Nick Saban win a natty in a shorter timeline by taking over the Cavaliers or our Canes?

Same question for Pope Urban.

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If Mark Richt was the HC with Lashlee as his OC & Manny as his DC we’d be the 2nd best team in the ACC.

Manny is a career coordinator, we need a CEO as the HC, so yes Manny is a good (not great) DC, but the real question should be, is he a good Head Coach?

I don’t think anyone has an issue with Manny being the DC, but it highlights a glaring issue with his staff where he literally has to demote his DC & take over play calling himself in order to keep from having this season mudslide down off a hill, it speaks volumes that in year 3 of his tenure he’s having to make a last ditch effort to keep from getting burned at the stake.

It’s a Macro issue, not Micro. It’s putting a Band-aid over a leak in the levees, eventually the thing is going to break & flood.

The only thing that matters is translating it into Wins on the field, what Manny’s tenure as DC showed us was that he was good against most average teams that we had a significant talent advantage over, but whenever we played teams that had equal level talent, they usually worked us (see Wisconsin, Clemson, LSU), which is exactly where we still are now.

Looking at our schedule & not knowing what King’s health status will be come September, be honest what would you say our record will be this season? I can easily see another. 8-4/9-3 at best, if King makes a full recovery & is good to go all season I could maybe see a 10-2, but knowing what we know about how this team performs under Manny as the HC there’s a good chance we miss out on the Coastal again.

So then the question becomes, how many times we gonna keep going through this obstacle course just to end up with the same result every year? At what point do we stop trying to find a silver lining in Manny the DC but hold him accountable for his decisions as the HC?

This is going to be really unpopular, but everything about our offense looked better after King got hurt in the bowl game. Don't get me wrong, I love King and what he has brought to this program, but I wonder if he actually limits our offense either through his decision making or through Lashlee's play calling when he is in.
 
Manny is a good defensive coordinator but there’s a reason why coaches who are even better, and are some of the best defensive minds in the sport don’t even call their own defenses on game day.
This is probably the most interesting non-data driven take on this thread, and it's a really good point. Defensive minded head coaches manage to get their defense run successfully without calling plays. Manny wasn't able to do that in his first two years as a head coach. That's either a hiring or a management failure, but definitely some sort of failure.

That being said, I expect the D to take a step forward with Manny calling plays.
 
Now that the dust has settled, as much as I disagree with the moves (or lack thereof), we have to live with what we've got, so I wanted to take a harder look at Manny's performance strictly as a DC.

The sentiment here from most, as it seems to me, is that he sucks overall as a DC. I've read post after post that all have these things in common:

1. We get crushed by every good team we play
2. We make average offenses look great

So, I decided to take a look at 2016 - 2018 and see how he stacked up. Now, opponents YPP is not the best indicator in the world. No metric is. But it's a very good indicator of success. If you look, year in and year out, and the defenses people feel are the best, they are at or near the top in YPP allowed. So I took a look, and frankly, the numbers are staggering in Manny's favor. What I wanted to see is not only what the total YPP allowed was (I think we all know, for better or worse, that overall they were very good those 3 years when looking nationally), but how did we compare to the teams we played. Again, the sentiment here is we can't stop good teams, and bad teams look better when they play us. Well...…...those of you who feel that way probably aren't going to enjoy what the data shows.

-- In 2016 - 2018, we played 36 games vs FBS teams. Of those 36 games, we held our opponent under their season average in YPP on offense 30 times. That's 83% of the time. 83% of the time, when Manny was the DC, the team we played had a BELOW AVERAGE game on offense. That's not bad.

-- Of those 30 such games, 21 of them, we held our opponent to close to a FULL YARD below their season average. If you're not aware, that is a MASSIVE difference. A full yard per play is worth probably 50+ spots in the national rankings (6 YPP vs 5 YPP, etc). So in 21 of 36 games played, the defense held our opponent to almost a full yard less than their average (-0.95 and up is what I found).

-- Of the 6 games that the defense gave up MORE than the opponent's season average, only ONE of those times was it more than a full yard. 2017 vs Virginia, a game we won, but one that lives in infamy on this site. The others: 2016 VT when the whole defense was hurt (0.93 higher than avg), 2016 Notre Dame (0.06 above avg, basically a wash), 2016 Duke (0.15 above avg), 2017 FSU (0.28 above avg), and 2018 Boston College (0.07 above average). So even the games we were worse than average against that opponent, most of them were barely worse.

-- I'm not trying to skew anything here, I'm trying to project this objectively. So what about the offenses we played? That's where one could make an argument against what I've presented above. 2017, we faced a lot of good offenses. 7 of the top 41 offenses. Of those, the defense held 6 of them below their average. The only time they didn't, Notre Dame that was mentioned above, they only got 0.06 yards above their average. So we faced a Top 41 offense more than half the games, and almost every single time, they were below their average against us. 2017 and 2018, we didn't face a lot of good offenses. Only 3 in the Top 51. However, of those, we held ALL 3 to well below their averages. ND, GT, and Toledo. 2018, only 4 offenses in the Top 44. But again, all 4 were held below their season averages.

I will post the spreadsheets below, but the bottom line is, as much as you want to say the defense sucked and Manny sucks as a DC, the data is overwhelmingly against you. We do not face elite offenses week in and week out, but literally every single time except 1 that Manny faced a Top 50 offense, he held them under their season average. Again, doesn't mean the defense is lights out every week. We know we had some performances that left a lot to be desired. But for 3 years we all said "If we just had a good offense to pair with Manny's defense". Well, for better or worse, we're gonna get what we wish for.


2016 SEASON
OPPONENTYPP ALLOWEDOPP YPP AVGDIFFERENCE
FAU3.015.68-2.67
APP STATE3.656.13-2.48
GEORGIA TECH4.956.47-1.52
FLORIDA STATE5.336.48-1.15
NORTH CAROLINA5.186.3-1.12
VIRGINIA TECH6.715.780.93
NOTRE DAME6.136.070.06
PITTSBURGH5.966.94-0.98
VIRGINIA4.314.82-0.51
NC STATE4.515.72-1.21
DUKE5.25.050.15
WEST VIRGINIA3.526.29-2.77

2017 SEASON
OPPONENTYPP ALLOWEDOPP YPP AVGDIFFERENCE
TOLEDO5.056.87-1.82
DUKE3.974.79-0.82
FLORIDA STATE5.725.440.28
GEORGIA TECH4.615.74-1.13
SYRACUSE4.295.24-0.95
NORTH CAROLINA4.655.02-0.37
VIRGINIA TECH3.995.39-1.4
NOTRE DAME4.146.39-2.25
VIRGINIA6.754.91.85
PITTSBURGH4.665.43-0.77
CLEMSON4.415.46-1.05
WISCONSIN5.136.09-0.96

2018 SEASON
OPPONENTYPP ALLOWEDOPP YPP AVGDIFFERENCE
LSU4.555.47-0.92
TOLEDO5.666.08-0.42
FIU3.66-2.4
NORTH CAROLINA4.395.7-1.31
FLORIDA STATE3.085.07-1.99
VIRGINIA3.795.76-1.97
BOSTON COLLEGE5.225.150.07
DUKE4.335.41-1.08
GEORGIA TECH5.325.97-0.65
VIRGINIA TECH4.865.66-0.8
PITTSBURGH3.235.77-2.54
WISCONSIN5.886.4-0.52
I see you conveniently failed to mention the most important stat for any defense and thats 3rd and 4th down conversion against rate. Because you know, the most important job for a defense is to get off the field on 3rd or 4th down so your offense can get back on the field to score. Well not shockingly Diaz’s defense has ranked near the bottom of the power five in 3rd down conversion rate and dang near last, if not flat out last in 4th down conversion rate. So basically what that means is all those stats you listed above are meaningless when the defense fails at its most important job of getting off the ******* field for gods sake! So to answer your question in the heading of your thread “is manny a good DC?” The answer is clearly NO if we’re going by the most important stat a defense can have, which of course is getting off the field on 3rd/4th down. No need to even get started on the fact that he OWNs the two worst defensive performances at two national championships programs in miami and Texas. Smh
 
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I hope that T-Rob and Jess Simpson are able to contribute in not only player development, but also schematically, game planning and preparation, and to help hold underperforming players accountable. There are several flaws in manny’s scheme, and good teams and OCs can take (and have taken) advantage of those weaknesses. In addition, our players haven’t been properly coached or developed under CMD, and that is one reason why the transfer portal has been more critical to our success. The basics of defensive football aren’t being taught.

I love that our DLs like Phillips get sacks and TFLs and raise their draft stock, but they also need to learn gap responsibility as well. Too often our DL is out of position and don’t set the edges, exposing our LBs who aren’t very good to begin with.

And the lack of good LBs is a Baker and Diaz issue because they recruited and developed all of the LBs on the roster, and they aren’t as good as they should be. This 2020 group may have been the worst canes LB group since the 1970s, and definitely one of the worst LB groups in the ACC.

I am hoping T-Rob can teach our DBs how to play smarter, to cover, to play more fundamentally sound, to make more plays and to generate some turnovers. ‘

Manny and Baker need help. I am not confident that they can make this a dominant defense without changing the ways they coach or utilizing the expertise and experience of T-Rob and Simpson
 
Manny's defense is not designed to be the 75 Steelers. In up-tempo world of college football, offenses will score by accident alot. Manny versus Blake biggest difference is forcing turnovers. If Manny can lead the country in take aways, we will be a much better team.
 
Do you think UVA is an environment for D1P5 football program success less than, equal to, or greater than the University of Miami?

Same question for Duke, Wake Forest, and Vanderbilt.

Now, same question for FSU, Auburn, UNC-CH?

Starting from today, does Nick Saban win a natty in a shorter timeline by taking over the Cavaliers or our Canes?

Same question for Pope Urban.

View attachment 141403
Do you think UVA is an environment for D1P5 football program success less than, equal to, or greater than the University of Miami?

Same question for Duke, Wake Forest, and Vanderbilt.

Now, same question for FSU, Auburn, UNC-CH?

Starting from today, does Nick Saban win a natty in a shorter timeline by taking over the Cavaliers or our Canes?

Same question for Pope Urban.

View attachment 141403
Yea Saban and urban both win at UM before they would at UVA... what was the point of the question? Those are arguably the 2 best HC in the past 20 years for college.... Manny is going into his 3rd ever year HC. Not saying he’s good or bad.. but to put Bronco over him is dumb. If bronco came here i bet he’d be run out of town or about to. You guys have such stupidly unrealistic expectations for our program now.... if you mopes were in charge we would be hiring and firing HC’s every 1-2 years because they don’t instantly go 11-1 or 12-0. Bunch of delusional *** mfers that can’t use critical thinking skills
 
Yea Saban and urban both win at UM before they would at UVA... what was the point of the question? Those are arguably the 2 best HC in the past 20 years for college.... Manny is going into his 3rd ever year HC. Not saying he’s good or bad.. but to put Bronco over him is dumb. If bronco came here i bet he’d be run out of town or about to. You guys have such stupidly unrealistic expectations for our program now.... if you mopes were in charge we would be hiring and firing HC’s every 1-2 years because they don’t instantly go 11-1 or 12-0. Bunch of delusional *** mfers that can’t use critical thinking skills
The point of my question was to highlight how limited you are in comprehension. Accomplished of course as you completely missed the central question (ok, well almost all of them)

Now, back to the actual question (not the one you made up).

Go back and read what I asked muppet.

Hysterical you mention critical thinking skills when you so profoundly failed with your answer.

Again, let us revisit what was asked prior to your derailing and insults.

You can do it sparky!
 
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The point of my question was to highlight how limited you are in comprehension. Accomplished of course as you completely missed the central question (ok, well almost all of them)

Now, back to the actual question (not the one you made up).

Go back and read what I asked muppet.

Hysterical you mention critical thinking skills when you so profoundly failed with your answer.

Again, let us revisit what was asked prior to your derailing and insults.

You can do it sparky!
I saw previous posts where you had questionable takes and then i commented specifically on the fact you said bronco is an upgrade at DC and possibly HC when there’s no way in **** lol
 
I saw previous posts where you had questionable takes and then i commented specifically on the fact you said bronco is an upgrade at DC and possibly HC when there’s no way in **** lol
Child (I'm being far too kind) stop squirming and answer the question.

Maybe nap time? You get so cranky when you struggle.
 
Great post. I remember seeing similar to this in someone else’s breakdown of just the 2018 season. Pretty crazy that 3 of the 6 games came in the losing streak in year 1 when we had a ton of injuries. 2 were basically a wash and 1 that we won.

Can we do this analysis for Blake Baker the last 2 years?

I took a look at 2019-2020 as well, per your request, sir. Here's what I found:

In 2019, we allowed 3 offenses to beat their season average in YPP. In 2020, it happened another 3 times. So, that's 6 times in 23 games under Baker. Earlier I posted that it happened 6 times in 3 years under Manny. 6 out of 36 times. Certainly not as good the last 2 years, which I believe the eye test would prove.

I went a little further with both sets of data....I decided to look at anything +/- 0.50 YPP and get some answers there. My thinking is, there were several games where we were pretty close to giving up what the opposing offense averaged. I was more interested in how often we were really good (giving up less than a half a yard per play vs what they averaged), and how often we were really bad (giving up more than half a yard per play vs what they averaged). Here's what I found:

2016 - 2018: There were 18 instances where we allowed a half yard or better than what the offense averaged. Meaning, 18 games our defense was significantly better compared to what the opposing offense averaged. There were only 2 games where the opposing offense got more than a half a yard above their average against our defense. VT 2016 with the injury riddled front 7, and UVA 2017 when we made Benkert look like an All-American for a half. So, 2 games in 3 years where you can say we really got gashed.

2019 - 2020: There were 13 instances where we allowed a half yard or better than what the offense averaged. Out of 23 total games. But the problem was, there were four games in the past 2 years where we allowed the opposing offense to gain a half yard or more per play above their season average. GT and Louisville last year, NC State and UNC this year. So after this only happening 2 times in 3 years under Manny, it's happened 4 times in 2 years under Baker.

The competition was a little better this year, however. Could play into the narrative that we struggle with good offenses. That was not really true under Manny, but has been the past 2 years. This season, we faced 4 offenses in the Top 15.
2019 SEASON
OPPONENTYPP ALLOWEDOPP YPP AVGDIFFERENCE
FLORIDA5.536.34-0.81
NORTH CAROLINA6.386.230.15
CENTRAL MICHIGAN3.186.06-2.88
VIRGINIA TECH5.355.56-0.21
VIRGINIA4.475.54-1.07
GEORGIA TECH5.394.670.72
PITTSBURGH4.355.13-0.78
FLORIDA STATE2.945.61-2.67
LOUISVILLE7.756.491.26
FIU5.035.54-0.51
DUKE3.934.32-0.39
LOUISIANA TECH4.966.1-1.14

2020 SEASON
OPPONENTYPP ALLOWEDOPP YPP AVGDIFFERENCE
UAB4.675.98-1.31
LOUISVILLE6.076.65-0.58
FLORIDA STATE4.525.41-0.89
CLEMSON6.256.69-0.44
PITTSBURGH4.114.95-0.84
VIRGINIA5.465.440.02
NC STATE6.515.540.97
VIRGINIA TECH5.16.67-1.57
DUKE2.775.03-2.26
NORTH CAROLINA10.377.552.82
OKLAHOMA STATE5.045.53-0.49
 
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I see you conveniently failed to mention the most important stat for any defense and thats 3rd and 4th down conversion against rate. Because you know, the most important job for a defense is to get off the field on 3rd or 4th down so your offense can get back on the field to score. Well not shockingly Diaz’s defense has ranked near the bottom of the power five in 3rd down conversion rate and dang near last, if not flat out last in 4th down conversion rate. So basically what that means is all those stats you listed above are meaningless when the defense fails at its most important job of getting off the ******* field for gods sake! So to answer your question in the heading of your thread “is manny a good DC?” The answer is clearly NO if we’re going by the most important stat a defense can have, which of course is getting off the field on 3rd/4th down. No need to even get started on the fact that he OWNs the two worst defensive performances at two national championships programs in miami and Texas. Smh

In 2018, Manny’s last year as DC we were #1 in the country in 3rd down %
 
This is going to be really unpopular, but everything about our offense looked better after King got hurt in the bowl game. Don't get me wrong, I love King and what he has brought to this program, but I wonder if he actually limits our offense either through his decision making or through Lashlee's play calling when he is in.
Everything but our receivers, lol. I thought about this too honestly. But I think it may have just been Kings lack of confidence in our receivers versus Perry's overconfidence in them. King probably held on to a lot of balls thinking this mfer ain't gon catch it if I throw it to him, let me just run.
 
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