Here’s what former Hurricanes now like about Diaz: ‘It seems as though he’s not insane’
For all the lingering disappointment stemming from Manny Diaz’s first season as the Miami Hurricanes football coach, former Canes receiver Randal Hill cites one positive of Diaz’s handling of the aftermath:
“It seems as though he’s not insane,” Hill said.
We knew where Hill was going with this.
“Meaning doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome,” Hill said. “He’s trying to make positive changes. I’m discouraged about the [6-7] record of last year but encouraged that Manny is trying to make positive changes. We’ll see how it goes.”
At a UM Sports Hall of Fame event at Sunset Place in South Miami shortly before the coronavirus shutdown, several people with ties to the program expressed appreciation for Diaz’s willingness to make changes, as opposed to stubbornly clinging to what didn’t work last season.
“Obviously, there was something missing from last year’s team, not just a bad play here or bad break there,” said former UM All-American defensive end and ex-UM defensive line coach Greg Mark.
“There was obviously something that wasn’t working, and I do credit Manny [for trying to correct it]. It’s hard to step outside of yourself and make decisions like he did, to change things, to re-evaluate. I’m very impressed with his ability to do that and hope that bears the fruit we think it should. And remember, in 1997, [going 5-6] was really the catalyst that fueled our run in the late ‘90s and 2000s.”
The most obvious change, of course, was ditching a pro-style offense (something Diaz insisted was the right approach when he took the head coaching job) and moving to an up-tempo spread, which several former players advocated.
“We ran something similar to that with Dennis Erickson,” said Hill, who works as a federal agent for the U.S. government. “It’s going to put a lot of points on the board. It’s going to move the ball. But bottom line is you have to win games.”
But even beyond the spread, Mark also likes the decision to pursue another top pass rusher to pair with Greg Rousseau, so that UM won’t need to blitz as much to generate a pass rush.
With Quincy Roche (13 sacks for Temple last season) and Rousseau (15.5), the hope is to pressure the quarterback more often with a four-man rush. One Hurricanes staffer said one of Diaz’s problems last year was UM wasn’t aggressive enough on offense (that will change now) but too aggressive on defense.
“From last year’s defense, it’s going to add another dimension that we were lacking at times,” said Mark, who owns and runs Casa dei Bambini, a Montessori school on Miami Beach. “You don’t have to bring pressure; you don’t have to blitz and sell out [as much]. You don’t have to sacrifice coverage to get pressure on the quarterback. And that’s the key. You want to pressure, throw a blitz, but then it’s not an expected thing.
“The Temple kid is what we’ve been missing. A guy with his hand on the ground that can come off the line and make a play happen, erase a coverage error. It’s going to be exciting to see those two kids playing together.”
Meanwhile, former players and coaches universally praise Diaz’s decision to add new chief of staff Ed Reed to help on many different fronts.
“They needed a guy like Ed,” longtime former UM running backs coach Don Soldinger said. “He knows the tradition. He knows what it takes to build it back up. He’s easy to deal with. I know Alonzo Highsmith was involved in the thing. But Alonzo is more of a bull in a china shop. He’d want to blow everything up. Ed is more easy to talk to. I think he’ll do well.”
But in discussions with former players, one thing keeps coming up: They want to see Diaz show less tolerance for players who are immature, selfish or screw-ups and don’t go above and beyond in putting in the work.
As Hill said: “You can win championships by having players with good enough talent but with better attitudes.”
Soldinger said he would like to see Diaz become more of a disciplinarian:
“You have to go old school,” Soldinger said. “If the character is not there,... it’s not going to work. It will work if you have the right kind of kids that are willing to go to work and not [put themselves over the team]. That’s one of the biggest problems we’ve seen now and that’s the way it’s been.
“I know this: Certain things have to be adjusted. You can’t go with this entitlement thing and expect to win, where kids are here one day and gone the next. Manny knows what he’s doing; he’s been around good people. But you have to have a little chutzpah when you’re dealing with kids,” using a Yiddish word that can mean audacity.
In a conversation before coronavirus shut down much of America, Soldinger then mentioned he’s helping train the son of one of Florida’s most nationally known politicians — we’re not going to throw the young man under the bus here — and told his father recently that he has attended less than half the weight training sessions.
“How do you expect the kid to get better?” Soldinger asked his politician father. “I’m there every day and he’s not around me?
“Alonzo Highsmith, I talked to him a little bit. He said we had swagger, which meant we had 30 guys running in the sand in South Beach [to train and doing more than what’s expected]. That’s how you get swagger.”
Bottom line?
“You’ve got to give a coach at least two or three years to put in his system,” Hill said of Diaz. “I know a lot of fans are disappointed. I was highly disappointed. But you have to give the man a chance to get his philosophy in place. Give him two to three years and then make an assessment.”
This story was originally published May 14, 2020 at 1:13 PM.
