It’s spring break: Miami’s Manny Diaz on D’Eriq King, new hire, helmets minus the ‘U’
University of Miami’s fast and furious spring practices came to a halt Friday at Greentree Field, ushering in spring break and a lengthy hiatus before the Hurricanes reconvene March 17 for their fifth of 15 spring sessions.
Coach Manny Diaz addressed the media on everything from how the new offense affects the defense to new quarterback D’Eriq King to new pending offensive analyst Telly Lockette, the recent FSU tight ends coach in the midst of the UM hiring process.
Diaz, like everyone else it seems, is a believer in the speedy, talented King, a grad transfer out of Houston.
“After a week of D’Eriq King, is it everything you imagined?’’ the coach was asked.
QB D’Eriq King
“In terms of what I’ve imagined, I imagined D’Eriq being a great leader, being a great teammate. You can see what he does when he has the ball in his hands, in terms of the plays he makes with his arm and his feet, but what is equally as exciting is some of the connections he makes with the players in between series.
“We’ll break a run, and somehow the quarterback is 3 yards behind the running back running down the field. Just those type of intangible things from the quarterback position I think are so important. We had heard good things about D’Eriq in that regard, and to see it now in the first week of practice, has been very exciting.”
Telly Lockette
Diaz was also asked about recent Florida State tight ends coach Lockette, in the process of being hired. Lockette was a former Miami Central head coach and a former offensive coordinator at his alma mater Miami Northwestern. Lockett was also a former running backs coach at Oregona State and USF.
“There are still some paperwork things — you’re using the word ‘officially’— that we’re hurdling,’’ Diaz said, when queried about whether the hire was official.
In regard to Lockette’s pending role of an offensive analyst, Diaz said, “You have offensive analysts, offensive quality control coaches. They can work with a position group. They can be in meeting rooms. They can be part of film study, those types of things. They can’t be involved in, in essence, directing of the players in a coaching manner. But they can certainly have a lot of impact on our staff in terms of when they watch whether it’s opponents, whether it’s self-scouting our own team.”
Diaz concurred that Lockette will be a substantial influence in recruiting and “of course’’ will be allowed to talk with high school recruits when they’re on UM’s campus, “a major benefit to our program as well.
“We’re really excited about, like I said, when official becomes official.”
More Diaz:
First four practices
“It was a really good week. Four days out of five playing at the pace we play at... Our guys are in good shape. Our guys have competed. It’s been hard. The coaches have been relentless in terms of getting after them.
“And the encouraging thing is I think they understand the expectation now of how we’re going to play, because this is not an offensive thing. This changes everything in your program and I think they’re enjoying it.
“Today’s practice we did some live work, full tackling to the ground, we did some move-the-ball, situational stuff. I think the guys are seeing there’s a different edge about us. There’s certainly a different edge about us offensively and that will do nothing but get us better defensively.”
The ‘gas pedal’
“I’m talking to you after just watching them on the field,’’ Diaz said, “and not even having been inside and watched the film. But what I know is this: I know they’re competing and what’s happening now is in essence they have no choice. For this thing to work, the gas pedal has got to get pushed down all the way. And anyone who doesn’t have it pushed down all the way is now completely obvious not just the coaches but to the rest of their teammates.
“So, one of the great things about what we’re doing is it puts the pressure up on everybody and it’s such a high-intensity operation now [that] it’s very hard for a guy to not bring it every day. The most rewarding thing about that is no one seems to be shying away from that.”
Helmets without the ‘U’
The ‘U’ has been stripped from the Canes’ practice helmets for now. Diaz was asked about it.
“Yeah, that’s not going to make us good or not good in the fall,’’ he said. We said, ‘You know what? We’ll put the U’s on later.’ But if that’s all it took to get your team to play harder, everyone would play harder.”
Offensive line adjusting
Diaz is clearly pleased with the offensive line’s adjustment to the new, fast-paced, no-huddle offense.
“I’ve been so impressed in the way that you can take a running play that everyone runs, which is inside zone, and in four days, they look like they’ve been running it for their entire life,’’ the coach said. “To the point where I went up to one of our graduate assistants and I said, ‘I can’t believe we’ve been doing this for four days and they already looked so polished.’
“By no stretch does that mean that we’ve got it all figured out and we’re ready to take on the world, but they are making obvious improvements that showed up today because, again, in those live drills today, a bunch of those runs started spitting out when all of a sudden the defense may have been thudding a guy or tagging off of a guy when it was a full-blown tackle.
“We can run the ball, and obviously that was a very sore spot for us a year ago. It’s just the first day that we’re really in full pads, but I think they will take some confidence after their first week with [new offensive line coach] Garin Justice.”
Brevin Jordan surgery
Diaz also confirmed for the first time that top tight end Brevin Jordan, who missed the latter part of the season with an injured left foot, had surgery on the foot this offseason. Jordan is not participating in spring practice, but he was seen in a walking boot Friday after practice tossing the ball with safety Bubba Bolden, recuperating from ankle surgery.
▪ New chief of staff Ed Reed was not on campus the first week of spring ball because of previous commitments before he was hired. “When we come back from spring break for spring practice Ed will be back,’’ Diaz said.
This story was originally published March 6, 2020 at 3:47 PM.
