forums

Upon Further Review: Manny Diaz as DC

View as article
Advertisement
I did basically this same exact thread a couple weeks ago. Great job, Lance, you dug deeper and presented it better. But the bottom line remains, nearly 90% of the teams we played while Manny was the DC had a BELOW AVERAGE game on offense. Sometimes well below average, but almost every single week, the offense we played put up numbers below their average. It just makes no sense to me how people could have really watched 2016 - 2018 and say Manny is a ****** DC. If you think he's not elite, that's fine. But he was ABSOLUTELY a high end DC here in those 3 seasons. Thankfully data exists and it can poo-poo on nonsense opinions.
 
KWCOWBOYFAN said:
Great way to compare DC’s @Lance Roffers.

Let’s not forget that Manny made great halftime adjustments when he was a DC. And I think he mentioned that he thinks Shoop will be able to help make adjustments quicker ( another set of eyes). So hopefully we don’t dig too deep of a hole before adjustments are made. Just my 2 cents.
Click to expand...
Will Shoop be up in the box on game days.
 
Lance Roffers said:
With the news coming out that Manny will serve as the playcaller for the defense, returning to the de facto DC position, I wanted to dive deeper to establish whether Coach Diaz was a top-shelf DC or not.

Methodology
It started with a Twitter debate, where fans online perceived Coach Diaz as either an average DC, or even a poor one. From there, I asked for fans to identify the top-5 DC’s currently in college and received a list of various names. I settled on these names:

  • Brett Venables- Clemson
  • Marcus Freeman- Cincinnati (now Notre Dame)
  • Dave Aranda- LSU (now HC at Baylor)
  • Jim Leonhard- Wisconsin
  • Jon Heacock- Iowa State
  • Blake Baker- Miami
There are other worthy candidates, but this list seemed like a representative start of identifying how standout DC’s perform in their roles.

I am using a sample size of three years for each of them, except for Baker, as I am using him for a control to show how Miami fared under Baker as opposed to Manny Diaz.

The metric I am using is Yards Per Play. I chose Yards Per Play (YPP) because it is simple to calculate, readily available, and is a good catch-all for how a defense fares against an opposing offense overall.

To gauge how a team fared against peers, I am removing teams that are not of like-quality. I.E. a Power-5 team, I am removing all non-Power-5 teams from their results. For Cincinnati, I am removing lower tier FBS teams and all FCS teams. This helps to stabilize the talent of the teams and removes a defense beating up on the Missouri State’s of the world.

From here, I calculated the “Win Percentage” that a DC against opposing offenses. A win is holding the offense under their standard average against other peer-like teams, a loss is allowing them to outperform their YPP against that DC’s defense.

Additionally, I wanted to calculate the “Difference” between what each DC allowed on YPP and what those opponents averaged against other peer opponents.

I also calculated the standard deviations of the opponents’ offensive performance and tabulated the number of times each DC held their opponents one standard deviation under their average and two standard deviations. I calculated how often the DC allowed their opponent to outperform their average by one and two standard deviations as well.

Results
By looking at performances against peer institutions and then then weighing it against their offensive performance against other peer opponents I believe you are getting at the actual contributions of each DC and can accurately gauge the quality of coach. The results pass the “smell test” as well, with Venables being far and away the best and Blake Baker being far and away the worst.

Here are the results for % of games holding opponents under their norms (Win Percentage):

View attachment 143007

Coach Diaz fares very well here, finishing second among the group of DC’s with a win percentage of 77.4%. Venables leads the pack, as he does in every category, by holding an opponent under their norms an astonishing 86.5% of the time. Keep in mind, this is against peer institutions, so no Bethune Cookman’s propping up that number for Venables (or anyone).

Surprisingly, Blake Baker did not come in last here, as Jim Leonhard and Jon Heacock both finished lower than his 68.4% showing.

Here are the results for Yards Per Play (YPP):

View attachment 143008

Again, Venables leads the way, with Coach Diaz coming in second. Marcus Freeman is the third DC to hold opponents to under 5 YPP, but keep in mind he is doing that at Cincinnati, with a decided talent advantage against even some conference foes. Clemson may have a talent advantage over their opponents, but the revenue from the ACC to each team at least allows them to be competitive in resources. Some teams in the AAC have a wide budget gap between themselves and Cincinnati.

Blake Baker comes in last in this metric, not surprisingly. That is a gap of .58 yards per play allowed between Baker and Diaz, which is cavernous.

Finally, here are the results for how each DC fared at holding their opponents below their norms (Difference):

View attachment 143009

Venables comes in at a ludicrous -1.17 YPP against peer institutions and their offensive averages. Marcus Freeman is second, but Manny comes in third at -0.84 YPP.

Blake Baker does not finish in last place in this metric, surprisingly, Jim Leonhard does. Leonhard appears to be a bit overrated by fans currently.

Overall:
For those of you who just skip to the end, suffice to say, Coach Diaz comes in second amongst this group of DC’s over a three-year sample. Over this time, keep in mind that Coach Diaz only had Gerald Willis for one season and had three true freshmen LB’s to scheme around. Then he introduced the Striker into his defense in this sampling as well. Venables, Aranda, Leonhard, Heacock are considered among the best names in the game, so Coach Diaz is definitely an excellent DC, who will be a massive upgrade over Blake Baker.

In looking at the performances of Coach Diaz, a few things stand out:

  • Coach Diaz will consistently hold an offense under their norms, but will generally not dominate an offense (over one standard deviation under their norms), as he did this in only 29% of games. Venables did this an absurd 57% of the time. Coach Diaz has only held an offense two standard deviations under their norm once (Against Virginia in 2018), while Venables has done that six times over the last three years.
  • Coach Diaz’s defenses are remarkably consistent in their ability to scheme negative plays against an offense and hold their overall performance down.
I went into this exercise expecting to find Coach Diaz was outside of that elite tier of DC’s and would be solidly in the “good” tier, but the data confirms that Coach Diaz profiles in the 90th percentile of DC’s in the country and will put up a performance far better than we have seen over the past two seasons.
Click to expand...
Excellent statistical analysis Lance! Thanks for the review. I appreciate your work and effort. BTW, Factor Analysis could have also helped you with the evaluation.
 
Advertisement
OrangeBowlMagic said:
I did basically this same exact thread a couple weeks ago. Great job, Lance, you dug deeper and presented it better. But the bottom line remains, nearly 90% of the teams we played while Manny was the DC had a BELOW AVERAGE game on offense. Sometimes well below average, but almost every single week, the offense we played put up numbers below their average. It just makes no sense to me how people could have really watched 2016 - 2018 and say Manny is a ****** DC. If you think he's not elite, that's fine. But he was ABSOLUTELY a high end DC here in those 3 seasons. Thankfully data exists and it can poo-poo on nonsense opinions.
Click to expand...
It's because they're looking only at the opponents we play, which is really not getting it.
A few years back, I ran the numbers on the 2018 season. We held our opponents to 100 yards per game, on the average, below their average game yardage total.

That being said...
That same 2018 year, we gave up double digit points in the 1st qtr to half of our p5 opponents.
Close to 40% of our ppg allowed to p5 teams, was allowed in the 1st qtr.

@Lance Roffers , you're the stat freak. I know first drive, first qtr scoring % are high due to scripted plays, but are they typically this disproportionate?

I'm not disputing Manny's overall DC results.
I do question:
1. his ability to HC/DC
2. slow starts on D
3. his D vs mobile QB's who will take the underneath stuff

!!!!!GO!!!!!
!!CANES!!
 
Last edited:
Most mopes here on the board root for our players and coaches to fail.

I specifically remember the many threads of when manny first got hired going back and forth with most of the usual clowns about how I thought he proved at Mississippi State he was a good dc and nobody wanted to hear it. Fast forward two to three years and we have our best defense in almost twenty years and our program finally wins ten games (solely Due to the defense btw)

Manny gets hired to temple and all of a sudden it's the end of the world on the board since he's gone. The second he's given the HC job people lose absolute all common sense and just always want something new and now manny sucks because idiots wanted mario and butch lmao. Anyone with any idea of football should be thrilled about manny calling plays because nobody better than manny was AVAILABLE . oh by better there's Don brown and venables that's it
 
Jedi Master Cane said:
Here's something I'd like to know.

Can anyone name a COLLEGE coordinator, who was fired as a COLLEGE coordinator, and went on to become a quality COLLEGE head coach?

Maybe an example exists, I can't think of any.
Click to expand...
Again..That Texas situation was a scapegoat situation. A year after having the conferences top D you get fired 2 games in. Even at the time ppl knew. Mac was canned a year later I bely
 
Advertisement
Canes Legacy said:
I don’t know if there’s a way to quantify this but Manny was also dealing with Richt’s offensive ineptitude.
Click to expand...
I don’t think this can be understated. Not defending Manny, but we all saw week in and week out the offense - or lack thereof - continually put the defense in short fields or other precarious situations.
 
Last edited:
Advertisement
Not sure why you'd answer to people calling Manny an "average or even poor" DC. As a DC, he was above average and it's hard to argue anything beneath that level.

Currently, despite the fact he's not our DC, but rather our HC/DC, the real debate seems to be around whether he is above average or elite, and how that relates to the execution of his defensive philosophy. And, for that, I think you'll need more than YPP.

I don't question your conclusion based on the narrow scope you selected. But, the methodology tells me there may be a separate discussion/analysis to have. See, part of the problem we've watched unfold is Diaz's philosophy is designed to be good in that YPP metric (btw, I think it's a good indicator, too, but often needs more context).

He coordinates for negative plays to get an offense off schedule. Those negative plays come at a risk, which as a DC he often did a good job of mitigating. The result is a nice YPP metric. However, the philosophy is vulnerable, as we saw in multiple instances or when he (or Baker) is missing a piece. That said, his most impressive year was when he combined a strong YPP with elite 3rd down %. I thought he was on his way to really evolving his defense at that point, and then we saw a disjointed philosophy the last two years. Sure, it was "Baker," but it was Manny's defense and he said himself he was in on everything.

I think the more important question is if his philosophy, when executed as it has been in the past, is solid enough for us to win bigger games consistently. I would be curious to see an analysis of how he performed in "big games" (however way you want to define that) vs how other coordinators/philosophies performed in "big games." Say, Top 25 teams. If there are common Top 25 opponents, all the better.

All of the above is moot if he tinkers with his philosophy and allows Jess Simpson, Shoop, and T-Rob to offer different perspectives to come up with a more controlled version of the negative play madness, and one that has the appropriate coverage behind it. For instance, we played a ton more zone behind the madness these past two years under Baker, resulting in obvious vulnerabilities.
 
423Hurricane said:
I don’t think this can understated. Not defending Manny, but we all saw week in and week out the offense - or lack thereof - continually put the defense in short fields or other precarious situations.
Click to expand...
Let’s see the opponents starting field position, time of possession and total possessions per game with manny at dc vs last year with a competent offense. I would imagine all were higher with Richt’s offenses.
 
NJshoreCane said:
It's because they're looking only at the opponents we play, which is really not getting it.
A few years back, I ran the numbers on the 2018 season. We held our opponents to 100 yards per game, on the average, below their average game yardage total.

That being said...
That same 2018 year, we gave up double digit points in the 1st qtr to half of our p5 opponents.
Close to 40% of our ppg allowed to p5 teams, was allowed in the 1st qtr.

@Lance Roffers , you're the stat freak. I know first drive, first qtr scoring % are high due to scripted plays, but are they typically this disproportionate?

I'm not disputing Manny's overall DC results.
I do question:
1. his ability to HC/DC
2. slow starts on D
3. his D vs mobile QB's who will take the underneath stuff

!!!!!GO!!!!!
!!CANES!!
Click to expand...
This is a good post (as was Lance's obviously). Yes Manny did a very good job here as a DC. People dog him as a DC imo b/c they remember 2 things: 1- some poor performances down the stretch (including bowl games) where we just couldn't get stops or get off the field (vs. not even great offenses, for example Wisky twice I believe, etc.), and 2- some bad/backup QB's having great days against us. Even if that team didn't exceed their season statistical averages, we allowed a good number of those guys to complete a ridiculously high percentage of their passes, keep the chains moving and stay on the field, and keep games close when we felt we would/should dominate. I think the memory of many of those frustrating performances lingers in the minds of many of our fans.

But on the whole Manny did a very good job for us. You also bring up a point that I think is dead on. I also remember us getting off to a slow start in many games. I can remember feeling like everyone we played seemed to open the game with a TD drive (or 2). That's one of the things I felt continued on in the Baker era. **** how many times have we heard post-game how "they did something we'd never seen them do before" in the past 2 years? But Manny almost always did seem to do a good job of adjusting quickly and getting things turned around mid-game.

And yes, Manny's D's did have some trouble with mobile QB's, but who's doesn't? Believe me I'd prefer for Manny to have brought in a DC personally, but I don't get how anyone doesn't see this move as an improvement for us compared to the last 2 years.
 
Advertisement
Canes Legacy said:
I don’t know if there’s a way to quantify this but Manny was also dealing with Richt’s offensive ineptitude.
Click to expand...
There is bro. My liver is in a worse situation because of it. Along with the worse punting situation in CFB. That D was put in so manny bad situations it was ridiculous. But ultimately it’s about scoring points in cfb today. In big games you’ve gotta score
 
Rellyrell said:
Yep; u’re right. The 2018 defense was indeed elite. The only minor flaw was we were a little loose against the run, but everything else was top 5-10 that yr for the most part.
Click to expand...
Yeah, a big dawg in the middle as NT or DT changes a defense one step up (i.e., bad to average, above average to elite, etc.) that's what Gerald Willis did that year. Weird that he's been a no show in the NFL.
 
Advertisement
Back
Top