Manny Diaz: Why, in detail, each of these 8 Miami Canes should be drafted by NFL team
No one knows a football player better than his coach.
So we asked University of Miami coach Manny Diaz in a phone interview Tuesday to assess each of his eight former players who were invited to the NFL Scouting Combine and explain why they should be drafted this weekend and how they could contribute to an NFL team.
Understandably, we didn’t expect negativity, so take this as a delightful smorgasbord of talented young men who each would bring something positive to a franchise. There’s plenty elsewhere about any concerns or negatives, although we did ask about some of those, too.
Can you guess who Diaz is talking about for each of the following eight excerpts?
“He’s got the speed that you can’t coach.’’
“Great playmaking ability and great toughness.’’
Great spirit, great passion for the game.’’
“All about instincts. He’s got a great knowledge of the game, great football IQ. He’s a quick thinker...’’
“Very dependable...The real X-factor was that he showed he provided value in special teams.’’
“I don’t know what football team wouldn’t want [fill in the blank] in their locker room.’’
“He’s got great ability to bend.’’
“Dynamic... tough, high-motor player.’’
Without further adieu, here are Diaz’s full comments to the Miami Herald on each of the eight UM players, in alphabetical order, who could be drafted:
Cornerback Trajan Bandy
“We’ve seen over the years that Trajan has great playmaking ability and he’s got a great toughness to him. He’s a guy that could have a lot of value as a nickel, as a slot corner in the NFL, which has become a three-receiver league, so you’ve got to have guys that can line up on the inside and play slot with a lot of short-area quickness and then also he has a great knack for coming off the edge on blitzes. He’s had some big sacks in his career as well.”
Running back DeeJay Dallas
“Great spirit, great passion for the game. He’ll be one of the hardest-working guys on the team. And I think he’s a running back that can play all three downs. You saw he had some huge plays on some screens on third down. He can protect the passer and he can run. It was his first full year of being our featured running back, and he obviously showed some outstanding moments.”
Defensive end Jonathan Garvin
The NFL “always has value for pass rushers and Garvin has always been a guy who can create a lot of havoc off the edge with his length. He’s got great ability to bend, and there’s still a lot more upside to come with a guy like Garvin. Jonathan is a very quiet young men off the field, but he’s very serious about the game. Like all of our guys, he’s still got some room to improve. But he can do some things rushing the passer that make him unique.”
Defensive end Trevon Hill
“Trevon is another guy who is dynamic off the edge, a tough, high-motor player, and a really good guy to have in your locker room. He’s a guy that really has an understanding of making the guys around him feel like they’re important. Trevon is a guy that a bunch of teams would be excited to have.
“He’s very mature. Without being there I can’t say exactly what happened at the old school,’’ Diaz said regarding Hill’s dismissal from Virginia Tech in September 2018 after he had an argument with a staff member on the sideline at halftime of a game, “but he became a guy that during the course of the year was a captain of our football team. And with a new guy, that’s not easy to do.”
Receiver K.J. Osborn
“K.J. is a very dependable player. He will be the first one in the building, the last one to leave guy. He made big catches in big games, obviously the game winners against Pitt. I think the real X-factor for K.J. was that he showed he provided value in special teams. He changed us when he became our full-time punt returner and I think that really helped him create value for himself at the next level. If they all were like K.J., coaches would have a lot less headaches. He was in a lot of ways a coach’s dream because he did work so hard in practice every day and wanted to do things the right way. He was also a good teammate because he was interested in helping those around him get better.”
Linebacker Michael Pinckney
“With Michael it’s all about instincts. He’s got a great knowledge of the game, great football IQ. He’s a quick thinker on the field and uses that with his speed and quickness to be able to make plays. That’s always been his thing since his freshman year. He has a great understanding for how to play the game and has been a very productive guy because of it. He loves football and he’s just a special guy to be around.”
Linebacker Shaq Quarterman
“I don’t know what football team wouldn’t want Shaq Quarterman in their locker room. He’s been the consummate pro for his entire college career already. He’s all business, doesn’t want to ever get outworked. He gives everything he has for the game. And great toughness, a guy that wanted to be on special teams, even his senior year. He’s the guy you want on your team. He’s going to find a team that is going to love him, and they’re going to use him the best way. And when he gets on any roster they’re going to find out that they’re really, really happy to have picked him.
“People are always going to say what they want,” Diaz said, regarding analysts saying Quarterman was not good at open-field tackling, “but he had such value for us getting after the quarterback and spent a lot of his time doing that. As we know, once someone calls your name out it doesn’t really matter what anybody said about you. It’s about what you do next. Some team is going to be really happy to call out Shaq Quarterman’s name.”
Receiver Jeff Thomas
“Obviously with Jeff, he’s got the speed that you can’t coach. He’s got a chance to blow past the coverage and make things happen. He has made plays in the return game throughout his career. You know the NFL is always looking for explosive players. And explosive plays correlate to wins and losses. The NFL is a league with so much parity, that’s why they’ll always have a value for a guy like Jeff, because he is a guy that can create an explosive play. And there have been similar comparisons to other guys who have made similar transitions from college to the pros, and that will certainly be Jeff’s goal to do the same.”
When asked about Thomas’ many off-the-field, character issues and how that could come into play in the draft, Diaz said this:
“Well, there are 32 teams. They make those decisions. That’s the key. No one really knows. But the main thing we tell all our guys is once you get on a team, what you can control is what you do next. I don’t know what that means for where Jeff lands, but he’ll have an opportunity in a camp and what he does next will be the most important thing.”
Diaz was asked if he believes the four former underclassmen — Bandy, Dallas, Garvin and Thomas — should have stayed in school another year.
“That’s an impossible question to answer,’’ the coach said. “They made their choices and I can’t sit here and say…. The one thing, again, we always tell our guys is, ‘Whatever choice you make, you have to make your decision right, because once you jump, you don’t get to rejump.’ So, wherever they land, wherever they get picked, we hope we’ve done enough to prepare them in terms of how they practice and the type of resiliency and competitiveness it’s going to take to make a team out there in the real world.
“We’ll be rooting them all on, for sure.”
This story was originally published April 22, 2020 at 11:32 AM.
