Upon Further Review: Manny Diaz as DC

[HurricaneHauk]

These guys get duped by numbers. They think these numbers that are based on all kinds of subjective input are the same as pure math. They see 2 plus 2 equals 4 when they see stats. When I see stats, I always think "Lies. **** lies. And statistics." Any skilled data guy can turn football numbers into anything he wants them to be by manipulating the data points.

Good stuff bro;

I commented on the ‘17 season before in another thread. Man that was one helluva ride. Cardiac kids fa sho, but I would take that in a heartbeat.

One thing that stood out was the body blows we took. Malik Rosier had an unbelievable comeback kid mentality that season, kinda like Harbaugh w/ the Colts back in that magical season that led them to the playoffs.

We fared well against QBs like the first 10 games of the season, but we took some punches keeping the def on the field.

We gave up:
-183 Rushing Yards to Duke (Duke ranked 56th in this category)

-203 Rushing Yards to FSU (FSU ranked 76th in this category)

-226 Rushing Yards to GT (this made sense, b/c GT ranked 5th in this category)

-264 Rushing Yards to Syracuse (Cuse ranked 70th in this category)

-176 Rush Yards to UNC (UNC ranked 89th in this category)

-102 to VT (Great Def Game overall!! VT ranked 54th in this category)

-109 to ND (Imo, this is still my favorite Manny Diaz moment as a DC; this and the WVU game in the RAB. ND ranked 7th in this category)

-55 to UVA (UVA ranked 127th in this category)

-152 to Pitt (Pitt ranked 85th in this category)

-77 to Clemson but 4 TDs (I won’t knock Manny on this one. Def did its job & we started to see the erosion of Richt’s mysterious playbook. Clemson ranked 35th in this category

-142 to Wisconsin (again, a solid game plan against the 23rd ranked rushing offense).

The 2017 season saw us take leads, give up leads, and look for some miracles.

In the OB, we were up 14-3, but between the offense going stagnant & the defense getting hit w/ some late body blows, couldn’t maintain it.

Against Pitt, we were up; got stagnant. Then we saw Kenny Pickett throw & run for 3 TDs, including a 22 yrd keeper. He literally won that game on his own.

Against UVA, we spotted them a two TD lead in the 2nd half, but fortunately, they never moved off that two TD lead. But Benkert (who I don’t even remember) threw for 4 TDs including an inexplicable 75 yard bomb

ND & VT were just a masterful job in domination, and I really enjoyed those games. Still watch them on YT.

UNC was a straight dog fight. We wouldn’t allow them to punch it in, even though they kept trying. Took a nice 51 yrd hook up to Herndon to capture the lead b4 half, then we held our own, even though UNC was in our territory a lot.

Syracuse was also a dog fight. We had a two TD lead against them & was “this” close to blowing that lead. Fortunately Homer had a house call to seal the game


Against GT, the defense let us down this game. Took a heroic effort from Rosier & Langham to stave off the upset in the waning moments.


Against FSU, again, another nip & tuck game as w/ any rivalry game. Up 17-13 after taking the lead, FINALLY, in the 4th; Manny’s defense allowed FSU to march down the field w/ Blackmon who connected on a 20 yrd TD to almost seal the game. Of course we know Rosier put on his Superman cape and bailed us out.

Against Duke, that was just a good ole fashion revenge *** whipping. Lol

So when ppl like @The Franchise say eye test, this is what they mean. Several times we took the lead and gave it right back on the next possession during his tenure. Several times, when we needed a stop no matter the distance, we failed.

Numbers can be deceiving; they do provide a good guideline, but can be deceiving. As an example, I believe u & I debated on the quality of Miami’s classes. #’s wise, it shows we’ve had some good classes, but when u do a deep dive, it showed those class ranks were a little skewed by the number of recruits or a handful of recruits having high rankings that carried a class w/ a bunch of lower ranked kids.

Again, Manny’s a good DC, but the 2018 season appears to be more of an anomaly vs. the norm based upon his entire body of work as a DC, period. What was really weird about ‘17 is the amount of times we couldn’t get off the field due to teams just running it down our throats; I’m talking about teams that weren’t particularly efficient in rushing. It wasn’t huge yardage, but those 3.4 - 4.5 ypc add up when u continue to allow it.

Let’s not forget how wildly inconsistent Rosier/Richt were

Rosier was terrible in that FSU game, we had zero points at half and 10 at end of the 3rd (thank you long PR Berrios)

Defense was fine against GT, we gave up 17 points...7 came on that awful onside kick, we held them to 3 points on offense in the 2nd half

I don’t think people realize how incomsistent Rosier was that season and I could care less what his stats were at the end of the season

UNC and Cuse had awful defenses and the defense gave up 19 point each in those games and we barely hung on because the offense couldn’t be consistent. Game wasn’t close because of any fault of the defense

Same with FSU, they had 3 going into the 4th, what more could you want? We score just 21 and FSU probably curls up and dies

Against Pitt we had 7 points 2 minutes left in the game where we gave up 24.

I don’t think Manny is some defensive savant who’s tears can cure cancer but his defense from ‘16-‘18 outside a handful of games were not an issue

 

[Arehel]

Wait; was he really that old for the ‘18 season??

I dont know I was ball parking I just know he was older then everyone else cause he sat out one yet, had a RS year too and played his SR year too? I follow pretty tight but I dont know the guys actually age. Might be exaggerating a little to prove a point, cause as they say age matters in the trenches.

 

[Ethnicsands]

Meh. I trust numbers and not feelings. I didn’t bother reading your post.

You may not be smart. Trusting numbers is as meaningless a concept as trusting words. You sound like Manny does when he tells how fast guys were running in the wrong direction. It’s a ridiculous number.

People who say they trust numbers over feelings are at empty in a discussion. I haven’t told you to trust anyone’s feelings, in any case. The question is whether you’re following poorly selected or misleading numbers down a rabbit hole.

 

[Lance Roffers]

How are you evaluating? If using the same metric, I don't think either is necessarily useful here since T Rob will not be calling the plays and I don't believe that T Will ever was a coordinator.

That said, I did see an article that Manny Navarro had where he compared Miami LB PFF grades to Auburn ones under T Will and even though the recruits were higher ranked for Auburn, the scores were not that much better for Auburn's LBs compared to Miami. I realize that PFF grades aren't necessarily the end all be all either.

I didn’t include them in the results. I was asked a question and answered.

 

[The Franchise]

Is this another Kenny Pick-it is amazing hot take?

I was right about that too, jealous **** face. Now wipe my poo off your nose and run along.

 

[Empirical Cane]

Then no offense, but you're a God **** fool.

I can tell you first hand I can take ANY set of data points and manipulate them to tell WHATEVER story you want to hear.

Numbers need context and ample sample size from which to draw conclusions. Gross numbers don't have feelings but they are the path to gross negligence when taken out of context.

Data + how to interpret = sustained reason and success. No other methodolgy can, or has, beaten it.

Easy to say, difficult to pull off, but not as hard as its made out to be.

 

[Pentagon Cane]

I see you failed to "Pickett-ize" your numbers. You need to take Diaz's best defensive performances and then substitute what would have happened if Kenny Pickett had been the QB, instead of say, Sam Howell or Joe Burrow. Since we can assume that Pickett would average 4 TDs and 400 yards against Diazs defense, the Pickett-ized stats would objectively prove that Diaz is the worst DC in the history of college football.

You lose me on the "Pickett-ize" comment.

 

[The Franchise]

The point is he was good against everyone, hence the reason he was drafted and is still being paid to play football professionally. But he had a sub-par game for his standards against us. As most offenses do, because Miami had one of the better defenses in the country from 2016 to 2018.

He had a subpar game based on his stats against MAC teams. Of course, a marquee P5 program should do better against him than MAC teams did. But he still played very well against us. This is why focusing on stats fails.

 

[Empirical Cane]

You may not be smart. Trusting numbers is as meaningless a concept as trusting words. You sound like Manny does when he tells how fast guys were running in the wrong direction. It’s a ridiculous number.

People who say they trust numbers over feelings are at empty in a discussion. I haven’t told you to trust anyone’s feelings, in any case. The question is whether you’re following poorly selected or misleading numbers down a rabbit hole.

Ethnic... you and I agree almost everytime, but every major successful and high performing endeavour in the human race presently is 99% numbers + 1% professional judgement.

That ratio doesn't diminish professional judgement, but it certainly doesn't discount hard and reliable data either.

 

[Ethnicsands]

Most young folks are fantasy sports people and stat guys. They think sports is stats, not what actually transpires.

Look at PFF. They trot out all kinds of goofy stats every week that leave guys who are paying attention to the games scratching their heads wondering how they arrived at their conclusions. They'll have some dude who got whipped like a mule all game rated higher than a guy who actually played well based on some goofy concoction of clunky stats.

This is correct. Fantasy football stats are like pet cemetery versions of advance analytical stats. And too many folks today can’t tell a Big Mouth Billy Bass from an actual fish.

Baseball stats have much better analytic commonality because all games are defined the same way (9 innings, 27 outs). You can do a lot with that. Because there’s no clock or downs, all offensive plays have essentially the same purpose (save a sacrifice here or there). Football is totally different. It’s defined by the clock and downs, which means different numbers of plays, different purposes to plays, and then by run or pass, which means totally different ways to play, strategies, opponent strategies, etc. Run, pass, kill time. There’s no common statistics to optimize. So outcomes matter a lot - how’d you do on the scoreboard? Beyond that, you need context and variance to have meaning. Skill levels of opponents vary wildly. Weather conditions can shape games significantly. People who think statistics reveal football are trying too hard to sound smart, imo. They are there to be discussed for folks who want to, but you have to enter the discussion with a healthy sense of their limitations and flaws to have the discussion be intelligent. Hey, my YPP > your YPP tells us little. How’s your win/loss record? Your PPG? And what of it? You can look better as a DC when your OC is awful and/or ground based, and worse when your offense scores fast and gives the ball back. It is what it is.

 

[Ethnicsands]

Ethnic... you and I agree almost everytime, but every major successful and high performing endeavour in the human race presently is 99% numbers + 1% professional judgement.

That ration doesn't diminish professional judgement, but it certainly doesn't discount hard and reliable data either.

I haven’t said numbers don’t matter, so you may misunderstand. The issue is which numbers, why, what context and what are you trying to learn or conclude. And what do you understand about them and their context. Those are analytic topics. I understand numbers well enough to recognize that ‘YPP’ doesn’t tell you all that much. Neither does a sales target if the pricing and margin weren’t set properly.

 

[Ethnicsands]

These guys get duped by numbers. They think these numbers that are based on all kinds of subjective input are the same as pure math. They see 2 plus 2 equals 4 when they see stats. When I see stats, I always think "Lies. **** lies. And statistics." Any skilled data guy can turn football numbers into anything he wants them to be by manipulating the data points.

The people who say they trust numbers don’t even understand them. It’s that simple. The symbol 2 isn’t anything by itself. Numbers are symbols. Graphics that represents an idea. 2+2=4 isn’t significant, it’s just definitionally true. Math is a language. A scoring and relating system. But what matters is what you’re trying to keep track of, calculate, estimate, compare or predict. YPP isn’t math. It’s a number. But what does it mean? That depends. And if someone doesn’t grasp that, they really don’t understand math or numbers. How they feel about emotions is irrelevant.

 

[Ethnicsands]

The point is he was good against everyone, hence the reason he was drafted and is still being paid to play football professionally. But he had a sub-par game for his standards against us. As most offenses do, because Miami had one of the better defenses in the country from 2016 to 2018.

It’s not that simple. An aggressive upfield D against an overmatched team athletically could certainly make a QB look relatively bad. That doesn’t tell us much about the DC, though. Because Miami has maybe 3 games a year against comparable teams athletically/physically, but the scheme doesn’t change every game. Table stakes for a DC is win the easy match-ups, but that’s not where you should look. The job of the DC is to design and implement a system that wins the tough match-ups. How does Manny’s approach work against talented, well-coached, prepared teams? If the answer is not ‘great,’ then Houston, we have a problem.

 

[Shogungts]

I didn’t include them in the results. I was asked a question and answered.

Sorry - that wasn't meant as a dig, I was just curious how you determined their results are not good as especially in T Will's situation since he was not a DC. Did you run Auburn's numbers as a whole while he was there as the LB coach? Again, not attacking you, the methodology or the results, I am just trying to understand how the comparison was done.

 

[OrangeBowlMagic]

It’s not that simple. An aggressive upfield D against an overmatched team athletically could certainly make a QB look relatively bad. That doesn’t tell us much about the DC, though. Because Miami has maybe 3 games a year against comparable teams athletically/physically, but the scheme doesn’t change every game. Table stakes for a DC is win the easy match-ups, but that’s not where you should look. The job of the DC is to design and implement a system that wins the tough match-ups. How does Manny’s approach work against talented, well-coached, prepared teams? If the answer is not ‘great,’ then Houston, we have a problem.

It’s plenty good enough, when paired with an equivalent offense and the talent of other championship contenders, to win anything we want to here. I just don’t understand why we get so hung up on this around here. There are about 100 reasons why Miami is where they are and are not where we want them to be. Manny Diaz’s ability to coach a defense is probably 99th.

 

[Ethnicsands]

The problem with all of this effort to compare DCs is it’s got a fundamental denominator error. The measuring stick for a DC isn’t all plays or all games. It’s how’d you do in games against tough opponents, and particularly, in critical instances in those games. Did you game-plan and play-call well. This whole scheme concept is over-rated for comparative purposes - Miami may prefer a 4-3 but plenty of coaches do fine with a 3-4. And you can run a painfully conservative 4-3 Shannon style and fans will pull their hair out. How’d we do setting the tone in big games, then making adjustments? Did we counter-adjust when the opponent’s OC adjusted to us? Did we anticipate what we were going to see or were we reactive? Did we win the guessing games on first and third downs and redzones? That’s how you measure a DC.

 

[Ethnicsands]

It’s plenty good enough, when paired with an equivalent offense and the talent of other championship contenders, to win anything we want to here. I just don’t understand why we get so hung up on this around here. There are about 100 reasons why Miami is where they are and are not where we want them to be. Manny Diaz’s ability to coach a defense is probably 99th.

You claim to be talking numbers but you sound like you‘re responding emotionally to what you imagine other posters to think or feel.

I was told for 20 years we couldn’t discuss evaluations because our coaching was the ’real issue.’ Now people finally seem to realize evals matter, too. We can discuss manny’s pros and cons as a DC without it having to be the no.1 issue on everyone’s list. At least, I can. If you think it’s wasted discussion, just sit it out.

i am interested to see if manny can be effective in big games as a dc. I see him as a somewhat arrogant, careless and underprepared puncher who makes a living against over-matched opponents, but can be undressed by an experienced boxer with defensive and counter-punch skills. Our inability to adjust against UNC was inexplicable. We have a board full of folks who proclaim our talent is as good as anyone’s other than a couple schools, but then we underperform our talent when we play top schools. And we have a penchant for showing up weakly against clearly over-matched schools. Manny managed to lose to two FCS teams in the same season. It’s not all him - we only gave up 14 points to LA Tech, and he was HC not DC, sort of, but I ain’t going that far down that limb. Butch gave him the Angry Pirate, and Mack Brown gave him a Donkey Punch then held on for a mew world record.

 

[RVACane]

You claim to be talking numbers but you sound like you‘re responding emotionally to what you imagine other posters to think or feel.

I was told for 20 years we couldn’t discuss evaluations because our coaching was the ’real issue.’ Now people finally seem to realize evals matter, too. We can discuss manny’s pros and cons as a DC without it having to be the no.1 issue on everyone’s list. At least, I can. If you think it’s wasted discussion, just sit it out.

i am interested to see if manny can be effective in big games as a dc. I see him as a somewhat arrogant, careless and underprepared puncher who makes a living against over-matched opponents, but can be undressed by an experienced boxer with defensive and counter-punch skills. Our inability to adjust against UNC was inexplicable. We have a board full of folks who proclaim our talent is as good as anyone’s other than a couple schools, but then we underperform our talent when we play top schools. And we have a penchant for showing up weakly against clearly over-matched schools. Manny managed to lose to two FCS teams in the same season. It’s not all him - we only gave up 14 points to LA Tech, and he was HC not DC, sort of, but I ain’t going that far down that limb. Butch gave him the Angry Pirate, and Mack Brown gave him a Donkey Punch then held on for a mew world record.

Bad coaching and some players who aren’t that good and haven’t been developed.

Stroud’s guys just get up field with no gap integrity. I think Kul was also focused on the pass rush so I’m happy to see Simpson back.

The LB’s were subpar and looked lost. CBs aren’t that good and not well coached, the Safeties - whatever. The play calling was terrible. We had no answers for good opponents.

It was awful to me all around. I think Manny was lucky to have some of Golden’s players previously under Richt. The coaching wasn’t perfect but it was better and the players were better.

I hardly know football and I can see these problems. All I have to do is watch teams with similar or lesser talent per the talent rankings but have good coaching. I’m glad he made the hires he did. My concern is him doing the DC and HC job at once. We’ll see.

 

[OriginalCanesCanesCanes]

So wait, what is being said here? Just scanning through this laborious word salad, that OP’s analysis is inherently flawed and Manny was not a very good DC from 2016-2018? Based on the “eye test”

Or am I misinterpreting my cursory scan?

 

[Ethnicsands]

Bad coaching and some players who aren’t that good and haven’t been developed.

Stroud’s guys just get up field with no gap integrity. I think Kul was also focused on the pass rush so I’m happy to see Simpson back.

The LB’s were subpar and looked lost. CBs aren’t that good and not well coached, the Safeties - whatever. The play calling was terrible. We had no answers for good opponents.

It was awful to me all around. I think Manny was lucky to have some of Golden’s players previously under Richt. The coaching wasn’t perfect but it was better and the players were better.

I hardly know football and I can see these problems. All I have to do is watch teams with similar or lesser talent per the talent rankings but have good coaching. I’m glad he made the hires he did. My concern is him doing the DC and HC job at once. We’ll see.

Agree completely. When you see the consistency of poor game planning, play calling and execution that this program has, you know it’s not just one thing or one coach. It’s an overall cultural issue. I wouldn’t underestimate the consequence of lack of effective roster talent on the overall situation, either. I’ve been saying for years the discussion of a few marginal nfl players masks the glaring issues in the middle and bottom of our roster. We haven’t had close to a full 85 for most of the last ever, amd we’ve had some position group problems that really undermine effectiveness. We get forced to play true frosh who should redshirt, then lose them early if they’re good, and get way too few senior seasons from top kids. We have way too little competitive depth. Lack of competition has many impacts, but one is we may not even practice properly because the staff can’t afford to lose kids to injuries. Amd in any case guys don’t fear enough for their spots.