forums

Is Manny a Good DC??

Advertisement
We are rinsing and repeating the last 15+ years all over again. The sooner everyone realizes 10 wins is forever our ceiling the happier everyone will be.
 
Dwinstitles said:
We will find out week 1
Click to expand...
I agree. You will get down votes for that comment and Alabama is in a league of their own comments blah blah blah. But if Your going to call Manny a great DC, which I don’t, you don’t get free passes against great teams. That is when your SUPPOSED to step up and get **** done.

We shall see.
 
Advertisement
manny is undeniably a good DC. people on this forum have the memory of a **** goldfish. however, the question is whether he can balance playcalling with the duties of being a HC, which is a different task entirely.
 
Liberty City El said:
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?
Click to expand...
I agree with this and think he’s slightly above average DC. He’s been been a below average coach (some offseason moves boast his D avg to a C or C-).

However he’s not just a DC this year. He’s gotta be a head coach too... so that means he’ll be distracted and most likely a below avg defensive play caller.
I don’t know if anyone knows the answer, but it’s been mentioned that he called plays in 2nd half of NC State game and after. Not sure if he called plays all those games or not, but if he’s responsible for calling plays in the UNC game then I think everyone should realize that we are in big trouble!

The lack of defensive coach firings two years in a row is a fireable offense. FIU was a fireable offense. Hopefully strike three u are out!
 
Sincere question, how did he do as the years went by?

Typically new coordinators find success the first year. They do the same thing the next year, but the other team is prepared better for what they'll face. Year three rolls along and it's a crap shoot and you generally find out who is the better chess player of the two opponents.

Obviously personnel can effect this, but my guess is he had a steady decline as more coaches figured out how to combat his defense.

Most coordinators think they're the smartest guy in the stadium. They stick to certain tendencies and few adapt much. Even when they go to another school.

I'm curious if you see any trend or saw one when you did all of this. You may not have even been looking for one or maybe I missed it.
 
Advertisement
JayCane20 said:
Yes my bad 2 in the 4 game losing streak. That VT game we had Standish Dobard and Terry McCray playing DE iirc. Won 3 of the 6 games. The other we lost but the spread was irrelevant.

People always went back to getting blown out by Clemson and Wisconsin as why the D was bad in 2017 but those games were just gifted by turnovers from Rosier. I also expected the 2018 Wisconsin game to be the worst of the 3 years before I looked. That one surprised me because I remember the D getting gashed but I guess it was just Jonathan Taylor because they did nothing in the passing game.

Also glad you looked at YPP instead of points or even total yards because our offense and STs had been atrocious through most of that time. That’s where a lot of stats got skewed but you can’t fault YPP.
Click to expand...

It's bizarre that they keep using Wisconsin and Clemson as their definitive proof that Diaz sucks. Wisconsin was averaging 34 ppg. They scored 34. It's not great but allowing a team to score their season average isn't some massive failure. On the flip side, Miami didn't manage to reach its scoring average. And yet the D shoulders most of the blame for that loss?




Then the Clemson game. 38-3. This one is interesting as it is being used as the example of how utterly inept the D is. Let's do a quick recap.

1st quarter-
Clemson drives down and scores a TD. Bad start for D.

Then Miami offense gets ball, stalls, punts, ST forces a fumble and Miami recovers at the Clemson 37. Missed Miami FG.

Clemson gets the ball, 2nd down Redwine punches out the ball around the 50 yard line, Clemson recovers and runs with it almost into scoring position. Forced fumble at the 50 that ends up being a huge gain for Clemson and basically puts them in the red zone? That's terrible luck. Clemson scores a TD.

Ok now down 14-0. So far one really bad D series, then terrible luck. We need offense. What happens? 3 and out THEN A 16 YARD PUNT. Clemson gets the ball at the Miami 41. (Thanks offense and ST, really helping the D).

2nd quarter:

Short field after 16 yard punt, Clemson scores. 21-0.

Now we really need an answer and the D to settle or its game over. Still 12 min left to go in the 2nd quarter. Could go into the half down 35-0 if it keeps going this way.

Miami D then forces 2 punts and turnover on downs. Looks like the D adjusted. Meanwhile another 2 punts for the offense. Miami still has zero points going into half.

3rd quarter:
Come on boys, we need to make a statement. We made a statement all right. The statement is the offense and special teams suck.

Opening drive leads to 39 yard punt, 19 yard return, and 15 yard face mask. So the ball moved a net of 5 yards and Clemson now has the ball at the Miami 39. Clemson scores a FG. That's a win for the D as Clemson basically got the ball in FG range and kept them out of the end zone.

24-0. Miami gets the ball back. Fumble. Clemson gets the ball at the Miami 46. Miami forces a punt. HUGE. D looks like it has settled down.

Next Miami series: interception. Clemson has the ball at the Miami 43. Clemson scores a TD. Three straight series where Clemson got the ball on the Miami side of the field. Now don't you think it's a little unfair to criticize the D for giving up 10 points when Clemson got the ball around the Miami 45 for 3 consecutive series? 31-0.

It's not looking good. Miami needs to salvage some dignity. Nope, Miami pees on itself. Next series is another interception. Clemson gets the ball at the Miami 13. TD. 38-0.

Then 3 punts for Clemson, 3 punts for Miami, and we get a FG. End of game.

When you actually watch the game, only complete idiot who doesn't understand football would say, "Wow, the defense really blew that game."
 
Last edited:
OrangeBowlMagic said:
LOL. Stop. You are the king of trolling, and I mean that in a good way. You're elite. But the only thing we're gonna find out Week 1 is how far behind Alabama we are. And the answer is probably considerably behind. We're going to find out how good he is and how good the team can be when paired with a good offense over the 11 weeks after that one.
Click to expand...

yep.

not relevant to use that game as a measuring stick. they are at least 4 TD's better than UM. So, if we lose 42-6, what does that tell you? not much.
 
Genghis Cane said:
You can’t use Bama as the barometer. They can name their score against anyone in the country.
Click to expand...
You can’t use Bama as a barometer for the same reason you can’t use the worst team on the schedule as a barometer. The best offenses will make any defense look bad and the worst offenses will make any defense look good. You can point at the 2020 defense and say “they gave up 60 to UNC” or “they shut out Duke”. It’s why you have to weigh the whole schedule.
 
Liberty City El said:
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?
Click to expand...
"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?"
"The only thing that matters is translating it into Wins on the field,"


You Sir, outperform yourself as a poster and excel the more you post.
 
Advertisement
KWCOWBOYFAN said:
Did you account for the offensive woes that we had when he was DC? I remember our defense being out there for a lot more minutes then the offense.

Not defending Manny, just pointing out that if we can improve on our offensive agencies. 3rd down conversion and time of possession, it can only help us moving forward.
Click to expand...
I think that’s why yards per play is the best barometer. Nothing is perfect and if your defense is constantly on the field because your offense is horrible, the opponent is naturally going to be able to run more plays. More plays almost always equals more yards. So total defense can be drastically altered. Yards per play isn’t as effected by outside forces.
 
I think he's an above average DC (when he's the actual coordinator) whose scheme needs to be altered regardless. He had made some adjustments when he was DC. I had hoped they'd continue when he didn't have a disruptive DT and cerebral Safety any longer. Instead, he brought in a proxy and we actually went backward. His current attempt to take over the defense is a high stakes game of whack a mole.
 
Advertisement
The 2018 d was one of the most impressive things I’ve seen in awhile. One of the worst offenses in the country , literally a three and out machine. Then mix in a walking shank machine in Feagles. Yet they were really good. They lead the nation in worst starting field position by a defense. They stayed on the field all game and came on the field with their back against the wall.

Manny is a good dc , but his scheme needs tweaked or he’ll end up the defensive Chip Kelly.
 
I would say the results that Diaz got from his defense were right in line with the talent levels of his players. Now maybe a great coach manages to squeeze a little extra out of the players he has but the general results were pretty much in line with or maybe even a little bit better than the talent on hand. Not one defensive player was a first or second round draft pick. There was one third round pick (Chad Thomas) and every other stalwart defender was a 4th rounder or later. Now you can blame the staff for not developing those guys but it’s hard to make that argument since none of those guys has really gotten better under NFL coaching either. Like I said, maybe a GREAT coach squeezes a bit better results out of the players available but Diaz has gotten generally solid results from generally solid players.
 
Liberty City El said:
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?
Click to expand...

I think the roller coaster (at least with Diaz) ends one year from now one way or another. He had an opportunity to make big changes, and his big change was "I'm going to do it myself." This put the spotlight on his decision making. No hiding now.

I'm not going to say he blinked, because maybe he honestly thinks this is the way it should be. We know he initially hired Baker to run his defense, not to think for himself. This offseason he might have had one or two DC candidates where he thought, "Ok, this guy is smarter than me so I'm willing to let him take care of my baby." You and others might have thought and identified hundreds of qualified candidates, but Diaz didn't. He had a miniscule list of DCs he respected, those guys said no, and Diaz didn't give a second thought about going to a "lesser" candidate. He obviously wasn't happy with how Baker ran his defense. He also knows he doesn't have a long leash. So rather than bringing in yet another lesser DC to run his defense who also might do it differently than he wants and mess it up, he's going to have it exactly how he likes it. I'm sure he told T-Rob the plan too and since T-Rob signed up, he obviously agreed with the direction.

It's a bold bet- now I think it's going to be a disaster, but I'm glad he did it because it's either going to be a huge success or huge failure. Clear answers are good. One thing for sure is that we won't be sitting here next year wondering if the problem was with Diaz's scheme or how Baker was implementing Diaz's scheme.
 
OrangeBowlMagic said:
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
Click to expand...

I appreciate the work and data that went into this thread, OP. Definitely suggests teams we play are having a harder time moving the ball against Manny's D than others they face during the same year.

My one question: did you include our opponents' games against non-FBS schools in calculating their average YPP? That could potentially skew the results a bit by inflating our opponents' average YPP (at least, I expect, for the P5 schools). For instance, that 2018 GT team put up 7.51 YPP against Alcorn State, inflating their own YPP a bit and exaggerating the strength of its offense.

Even if you included those games I'm not sure how much removing them would change the numbers, since it looks like in several of these games UM did much better than our opponents' average, but something to think about.
 
Advertisement
Back
Top