Manny Diaz made himself DC to fix Miami’s defense. The same-old issues are still present.
Pick pretty much any one of Kenneth Walker’s positive runs in the Michigan State Spartans’ 38-17 dismantling of the Miami Hurricanes on Saturday. Any one of them works as an example of what Manny Diaz was trying to get his group not to do.
At the end of last season, Diaz was tired of giving up monster performances to good running backs like Walker, so he stripped Blake Baker of playcalling duties and made himself the de facto defensive coordinator. It wasn’t a crazy idea — before he took over as coach in 2018, Diaz helped reignite the Hurricanes’ defense and was the catalyst for their trip to the 2017 Orange Bowl — and there were signs, for the first two weeks of the season, it was maybe working. Sure, the top-ranked Alabama Crimson Tide destroyed Miami, but that’s Alabama. Last Saturday, the Hurricanes held the Appalachian State Mountaineers to 3.3 yards per carry after they averaged 5.9 in 2020.
It all ended Saturday. Walker made sure of it by bouncing off defenders, cutting through gaping holes and powering an upset in Miami Gardens.
“It’s very disappointing from where we’ve been throughout this year,” Diaz said. “Walker, in the way that he ran and the way that they got the ball to him through the screen game, told the story.”
Walker was the focal point of the No. 24 Hurricanes’ defensive game plan and he still ran for 172 yards on 27 carries, and opened up the field for Michigan State to throw for another 261 yards and four touchdowns, including one to him.
The Spartans finished averaging 6.3 yards per play. Only Miami’s loss to the North Carolina Tar Heels, when North Carolina running backs Javonte Williams and Michael Carter set an NCAA record by combining for 544 yards, was worse last year.
The Hurricanes (1-2) have now lost 4 of 5, including 2 of 3 since Diaz effectively made himself the defensive coordinator once again, and the mistakes are as much about simple miscues as they are schematic errors.
Those missed tackles are piling up: Miami missed 21 against Alabama and 15 against Appalachian State, according to Pro Football Focus, and Diaz said this was “by far our worst performance.”
The secondary has busted at least once in every game: The Hurricanes have given up a catch of at least 40 yards in every game, including a 51-yard screen by Spartans wide receiver Tre Mosley on Saturday.
Cornerback Tyrique Stevenson dropped an interception. Defensive end Deandre Johnson and safety James Williams both committed 15-yard penalties. Michigan State (3-0) converted on third-and-7, third-and-6 and third-and-10 in the fourth quarter to ice the win.
“It’s just defense not coming together,” star safety Bubba Bolden said. “Missed tackles, missed assignments — the little things add up.”
They’re the things a coach is supposed to fix — and the things Diaz knew were plaguing the defense when he took over earlier this year.
Ever since the Tar Heels piled up 778 yards and averaged 10.4 yards per play in the final game of the regular season last year, the defense has not played up to the standard Diaz set when he was the defensive coordinator from 2016 to 2018.
Diaz believed he could fix it himself. When Diaz stripped Baker of playcalling duties, the assistant coach left to become the LSU Tigers’ linebackers coach and Diaz used the extra spot on his coaching staff to hire two coaches in the secondary. Through three games, the decision hasn’t worked.
The tackling — or, more specifically, the lack thereof — has been the most glaring issue and a microcosm of the unit’s overall struggles. In theory, it’s one of the simplest tasks on the football field, yet Diaz and his remade defensive staff haven’t been able to get the Hurricanes to execute consistently.
“We’ll have to look at everything that we do. The emphasis on tackling that we’ve done for a really long time has yielded really good results,” Diaz said. “We tackled poorly in the secondary at some positions in the Alabama game. We tackled better as a team last week against App State. This was by far our worst performance and obviously from a defensive standpoint it cost us today.”
