A look at Miami’s quarantine routine. And why Manny Diaz remains cautiously optimistic
About midway through the second week of the University of Miami’s unexpectedly extended spring break last month, Manny Diaz realized his Miami Hurricanes needed to find some sort of routine.
Now nearly two months into social distancing and self-isolation because of the COVID-19 pandemic, the coach is actually surprised how well Miami has transitioned to a life of remote work and coaching.
“I’m actually kind of amazed how quickly the days go by. I can’t believe we’re already in May,” Diaz said in a Thursday radio appearance on WQAM’s “Hochman and Crowder.” “We’ve actually fallen into a pretty good routine that’s taken us through, basically, our spring semester.”
Sure, the Hurricanes are facing the same sort of challenges everyone else is: Coaches were almost entirely robbed of the opportunity to do hands-on coaching in spring practices, players have lost access to their schools’ state-of-the-art weight rooms, and recruiters lost the opportunity to evaluate and visit with prospects in person. Like everyone else, Miami is adjusting, though.
In-person practices and meetings have been replaced with a series of virtual meetings on Zoom video conferencing to start every day, either for a teamwide chat with Diaz, or with more specified meetings hosted by the offensive or defensive coordinator, or specific position coaches. Once those early meetings wrap up, strength and conditioning coach David Feeley hosts a teamwide video chat to recommend a workout routine for the day, even if it means players fill up duffel bags with water bottles to get some sort of weight training. When the athletics portion of the day is over, players attend classes online in the afternoon while coaches meet among themselves and make recruiting calls.
The new routine helps Diaz and Miami operate in a holding pattern without much certainty and has even allowed the coaches to do some different things. Diaz said the coaches have already started scouting 2020 opponents and sharing some of those scouting reports with their players.
Diaz has continually expressed optimism a season will happen, but he has learned from president Julio Frenk not to ever feel certain about the situation. Diaz called Frenk, who was previously the Secretariat of Health of Mexico, “the best president” possible to lean on in this situation because of Frenk’s expertise and the way he has communicated his expertise. Like all the best public-health experts, Frenk has been careful not to make any declarations of certainty because of the unprecedented situation.
“He’s a great leader,” Diaz said. “Gather all the data, don’t worry about making the big decisions until the big decisions need to be made, plan for all different types of variants that can come up, but I would say, again, from his standpoint that there is an optimism, but it all along it still all depends on everybody doing the right thing.
Diaz said he thinks teams would need a minimum of four weeks to prepare for the season both for schematic purposes, but also for safety purposes. Although Diaz previously expressed optimism the season could start on time, he was more focused Thursday on the idea of playing a full season, ceding to uncertainty regarding the idea of the season beginning in September as planned.
“What we do understand is the importance of playing a full season. I think that’s what the players want. For sure, I know that’s what the coaches want,” Diaz said. “We want to play a full season and obviously we want to start on time, but the people who are making the big decisions are aware of all the contingencies that we may have to adjust to make that happen.”
Part of Diaz’s schedule these days is also occupied by conference calls with other Atlantic Coast Conference coaches and ACC commissioner John Swofford.
One of the challenges with restarting college football, Diaz noted, is the sheer number of schools in the Football Bowl Subdivision. One hundred and thirty schools means 130 local governments making decisions about their communities and 130 administrations making decisions about their students and faculty. The conference commissioners are all gathering information for the NCAA so the sport’s governing body can have a variety of plans in place.
“What we are working on is different scenarios of ready to play, so if the season starts on this date and we’re allowed to report back on that date, what does our practice look like if we’ve got this many weeks, if we have that many weeks to prepare?” Diaz said. “That’s what we’re all trying to be uniform on is that everybody is starting at the same time and on a level playing field.”
Diaz’s Draft reactions and more
▪ On players using 2020 NFL Draft success stories as motivation: “Without having to say it, everybody saw that really our top culture guys were the ones that were picked first. You look at a guy like K.J. Osborn, who came in and established himself from Day 1 as one of the hardest working guys in our program, and really changed his status from a guy at Buffalo who might have been on the free agent-seventh round fence to becoming a guy picked in the fifth by Minnesota. ... The other great lesson, which our guys understand and I think we’re a little bit different group of teammates this year than they were a year ago, is everybody’s connected and when the team wins, everybody wins and if the team doesn’t win, that hurts everybody. So banding together with like-minded people who want to work hard and grind for each other, and starting to eliminate some of the guys that necessarily don’t not only helps us win in the fall, but that’s going to help our guys in April, as well, and that’s certainly what we’re working toward as a program.”
▪ On Gregory Rousseau’s lofty 2021 NFL Draft projections: “Greg knows this. Where was Jonathan Garvin this time last year on different Draft boards? No one knew that Joe Burrow would’ve been the first pick in the Draft and no one ever thought the Dolphins would’ve gotten Tua [Tagovailoa] at five this time last year. So things change, so let’s focus on what’s real. Greg knows that he did a lot of good things this past year, but there’s some big improvements that he needs to make in his game to really become the guy that we want him to be and Greg knows it. That’s the best thing about Greg is he’s a better person even than he is as a player. But we went through and we showed him some cut-ups from this year, and some different ways he can improve his game, not just to help next April, but to help the Miami Hurricanes September-January.”
▪ How playing without fans might affect games: “It would be bizarre. Look: We want to play football and obviously we want to play football with our fans, but everybody understands that, to your point, we have to consider all alternatives. It’d be strange. Just the things that you’d be able to hear, the ability for the coaches to talk to the players before a play — there would be some dramatically different things. It would change, obviously. Home field advantage would be such a different thing, but who knows? The one thing: We would all be on a level playing field and I know we all want content. I know we all want sports back and whether that’s the NBA around the corner, that’s Major League Baseball starting up, that’s European soccer leagues finishing their season — I know we all can’t wait to be able to watch sports again, but we all know that we have to do it in a way that’s safe for the participants in the sport and then it’ll go outside for the fans to get to attend from there.”
This story was originally published April 30, 2020 at 5:45 PM.
