UM’s Diaz: Blake Baker, D’Eriq King’s future and what players told coach on sideline
The overriding theme Monday in Miami Hurricanes coach Manny Diaz’s first Zoom appearance with the media since immediately after UM’s 62-26 destruction Saturday by North Carolina: the abhorrent defense and Blake Baker, the man in chart of it; quarterback D’Eriq King’s future and how the Hurricanes are emotionally handling their collapse.
Diaz was asked about his confidence level in defensive coordinator Baker “after a historically bad defensive performance’’— specifically allowing 778 total yards, the most ever gained by a UM opponent, with 554 of those yards rushing (also the most ever by an opponent) and 544 ground yards by Michael Carter (308) and Javonte Williams (236) that marked the most ever by teammates in a single game in FBS history.
“I’ll answer the question about staff the same way I did a year ago,’’ Diaz said. “My feeling is you wait for a season to end, you evaluate the season in its entirety and then you do what’s best to improve the football team. It obviously worked for us a year ago. My job is to get away from the emotion of results either in the super positive or in the super negative. We had a really bad result last weekend and it doesn’t hurt anybody more than it hurts Blake. And really it’s not just Blake it’s really the entire defensive staff. It hurts me because defense is something I’ve always taken pride in and I’ve never seen a day like this past Saturday.
“So, right now the focus is we have to rebuild it for the bowl game. Remember, just seven days ago it was the exact opposite [with a 48-0 pounding of Duke]. Seven days ago it might have been our best defensive performance of the year. Our opposition certainly had something to say in that. But the extremes of how well we played one weekend and how poorly we played the other weekend....
“My responsibility is to get it back on track as the head coach and Blake and our defensive staff right along in line to make sure that’s an outlier that we never see again.”
Diaz said he has “a very tight staff” of defensive coaches “who have been together a long time.’’
“We all game plan together throughout the course of the week. I’m in every defensive meeting. Blake as defensive coordinator organizes all the practices and I’m on the defensive field the entire time during practices. And Blake calls the defenses on game day. That’s been our MO for a couple years.”
COVID hit defensive staff
The coach also acknowledged, when prompted, that UM had a “severe disruption” with its defensive staff “over the last couple weeks” because of coaches battling COVID-19. “In terms of trying to figure out that impact on performance I can’t measure that,’’ Diaz said. “I don’t want to get into that. There’s no excuse for how we played defensively. But is it ideal to have coaches missing from the game, coaches not being around our players?
“Look, nothing can point to a performance like what we did Saturday. Everybody including myself has to take full ownership of it. What matters really is what happens going forward. We have a chance to go fix it and take a look at where we are at the end of the year, which is ultimately my job.”
King’s future
There’s no denying that UM’s 2021 outlook would improve significantly if fifth-year senior quarterback D’Eriq King returns next season, as permitted by the NCAA because of the pandemic.
Diaz agreed that if King should return it would “absolutely’’ help develop his skills in preparing for what he dreams will be an NFL career.
“I don’t think D’Eriq has ever been in the same offensive system two years in a row,’’ Diaz said. “Just to be able to come back and have the continuity of staff and the players around him would be an immense benefit.
“Really, all you have to do is look at North Carolina on offense: Year Two in a system that’s not really dissimilar to ours in some ways. Just look at their numbers from last year to this year. They’re different. Just the repetition and getting comfortable doing it and the chemistry and all the things we missed out on by losing half of March, April, May and June and not even being able to throw seven-on-seven in the summer. There’s more to be accomplished by our offensive personnel and I think they feel that.’’
Canes’ feelings still ‘raw’
Diaz said the Hurricanes met in “small groups” since the loss to vent their feelings and that he and his staff would meet later Monday “and kind of debrief some of what was said.’’
“Right now it’s raw. It’s still so raw and guys are sensitive on how it played out. You want to be able to create a stage and a platform that if somebody wanted to if they had something to say that they could speak up.’’
Diaz said the feedback he got from “multiple players’’— I even got this in the fourth quarter on the sideline of the game,’’ was that “when the end of the season became close we just lost our focus. It’s very hard for me to explain because it doesn’t make any sense and yet there it is... I’m certain there’s still some hurt feelings because to have a loss that heavy, nobody wants to feel as if they’re responsible.”
If UM falls in its bowl game, it will have ended three of the last four seasons with a losing streak.
“...Everybody had a hand in it. Both sides of the ball. Look, let’s not get into the ‘You could have done this better, I could have done this better.’ Everybody could have done something better starting with me. Let’s stop worrying about who’s at fault and let’s start figuring out how to fix it.”
▪ The Canes will learn their bowl destination Sunday, and so far, Diaz said, no one has told him they will opt out.
