He had three freshmen linebackers starting and had Shaq Quarterman on a couple all-acc teams and still couldn’t recruit linebackers (or any other position) to come to the U.
He literally did not sign a single linebacker in the class of 2018. How sway??? Waymon Steed was our best LB signee in 2017 & he missed his junior and senior years with injuries lmao. Deandre Wilder was Mike Smith redux where we take a great HS pass rusher who is severely undersized without the skillset to translate to LB; Manny signed him anyways because he couldn’t and didn’t care to recruit anybody else..
These two reoccurrences are fireable offenses on their own; but we won 19 games in two years after winning 14 the previous two so Diaz snaked the pressure because Richt is a nice guy.
Diaz took Sam Brooks Jr in ‘19 who again was a pass-rusher he tried to make a linebacker. Two years later, He AGAIN pulled this

with Thomas Davis before getting fired. Back to ‘19, he paired SB w/ Avery Huff who finished his career with 8 solo tackles; 7 of the solo tackles came his last year at FIU.
Deshaun Troutman = trash. Then he took two legacy recruits in Chase Smith and Tyler Johnson (Jaquan’s younger bro). Thank goodness Chase is getting some good coaching & is healthy now. I don’t even think Tyler played football again after hitting the portal.
For all Golden’s and Dorito’s faults; that infamous recruiting video of Hurlie/Dorito arguing, at least shows they care! Ironically, the kid Dorito was advocating wasn't even a safety in college but he actually had a good career as a OLB then transferred up from Delaware to Iowa State & had a good last year of his career.
All of Manny’s signees transferred down & out.
Darian Mensah and Cooper B were a fair deal for the trauma & fraud that unfolded. He is a BIG reason why Franklin got fired because he was so trash at talent acquisition.
If he didn’t have Elko’s foundation and Duke’s NIL $$$$ from excess basketball revenue, he’d already be cooked. In fact, the start of him being cooked will likely be this season. We’ll see if he can claw himself backup like Golden did.