Completed Event: Football versus Arizona State on December 31, 2025 , Win , 42, to, 39
Football
42
vs Arizona State
39
Manny Diaz Press Conference Quotes: Middle Tennessee
9/16/2024 3:42:00 PM | Football
DURHAM, N.C. – Duke football head coach Manny Diaz, offensive coordinator Jonathan Brewer and defensive coordinator Jonathan Patke met with members of the media on Monday afternoon for the program's weekly press conference.
Duke (3-0, 0-0 ACC) hits the road for its final non-conference matchup, traveling to Middle Tennessee State (1-2, 0-0 CUSA) on Saturday, Sept. 21. Kickoff is scheduled for 4 p.m., ET and fans can watch live on ESPNU.
HEAD COACH MANNY DIAZ:
Opening Statement:
"Got back into the game week routine, game-planning for Middle Tennessee. Had a good, winning Sunday, yesterday. Guys came in, had a chance to review the film with them. Proud of the way that we finished that game. I'm proud of the way we played in the fourth quarter. All year long, we have not surrendered a touchdown in the fourth quarter. I think we're outscoring people 19-6 in the fourth, which is a testament to our strength program. I think our guys really believe that. We also have not surrendered a touchdown in the first quarter of the game. We started very well. I think we're 17-3 in the first quarter of games. But we have to find a way to be consistent over four quarters and that's been the message of 'can we sustain our attention, our focus and our level of play over the course of four quarters.' So, every week provides another challenge and another chance to do that and that's sort of the message to the guys yesterday, and we had a quick evening practice last night, and we'll get back at it tomorrow morning."
On how Duke responded to a strong third-quarter performance by Connecticut:
"I got to give a lot of credit to Connecticut. They threw the kitchen sink at us. Number one, when you have the quarterback running game, they could always throw that in there and go forward. You add a blocker in the run game and then I think they ran five or six trick plays during the course of the game. The one explosive play they got on the drive, they sort of faked the quarterback sweep and slipped the tailback out the backside. They had a couple of different double passes. They had the one down in the red zone that we defended. When you watch the tape, that was a proper examination of our guys and understanding their roles. What I am proud of, is that in the fourth quarter, we're able to pitch the shutout and kind of recalibrate and refocus. I think we kind of got knocked off our rocker a little bit on those two drives and it was good for us to see how we respond to that. That's what we didn't really get at Northwestern. Northwestern, the defense really felt like they probably had control of the majority of the game, until that drive in overtime. That's the first time somebody had kind of stung us a little bit. We had to fight back and I'm proud of how they did it."
On how to measure the mental toughness on the team:
"I think it's responding to adversity, right? So, it's hard to quantify, right? But when you see the examples of what happened to us at Northwestern, and you go out there and make sudden change stops. You see the way that we flipped it after it got away from us, and we flipped it against Connecticut. I mean, those are real things that our guys can say, 'we did that', and the ability to do hard things repeatedly. And guess what? If you're a student at Duke, you can already do hard things. If you got into Duke, you can already do hard things. So, it's kind of baked into our guys' DNA because they have to do hard things every day on this campus."
On Diaz's coaching start and time while at Middle Tennessee:
"Yeah, four years at Middle Tennessee, four great years. Not just myself, Justin Watts and Willie Simmons on our staff as well. I'm sure there will be some familiar faces that will be there, and some have already reached out. I'm excited to get back to that area, we loved living there. We had a great time there and the first four years of my defensive coordinator, it will always stand out. But I also remember beating an ACC team on the road there, we almost beat Virginia in [2007], and we beat Maryland in [2008], and then went to Maryland, beat them in [2009], back when they were in this league. So, we understand that they're a first-year staff trying to get the right mix of guys, and just like we're doing, trying to learn how to master their schemes, same way we're doing with our guys. There will be some familiar faces, and it'll be fun to get back into that Middle Tennessee area."
OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR JONATHAN BREWER
On Que'Sean Brown's performance in Saturday's game:
"He brings a different dynamic for us at receiver, out wide. He's shifty, he can accelerate, he's a smaller guy, so it's a little bit harder to tackle in that world. What's funny is what you saw the other night is the same thing we've been seeing in fall camp, right? Same thing we've seen through practice out there. It's one of those deals when you have your opportunity to show it and showcase it. It wasn't unexpected, we've seen it all camp and it was exciting for him to go out there and do it."
On the continued growth of the run game:
"I think it starts up front with the offensive line and what Coach Norrid has done with them. That was a hard week to prepare for. They gave you a lot of different defensive pictures and I thought Matt Craycraft up front, him and [Justin] Pickett, leading our guys up front and keeping everybody on the same page, that was a huge deal for us. And then the physicality, we put some guys in the dirt. We had a bunch of knockdowns. We had some guys finish runs. It's one of those deals, the first two weeks of the season, we didn't make people pay for when they gave us light boxes and were trying to defend our passing game. And I thought the [Connecticut] game, at times, we made them pay with some huge explosive runs."
DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR JONATHAN PATKE
On Aaron Hall's performance so far this season:
"I think he flashes in a big way. When he's on, he's on. I think being the first-time guy as a starter, it's just being consistent, down in, down out. This week, we told him after this game, was that he could be a dominant force, play in and play out, but he has to choose to be. Because when he chooses to go, he's a really, really good player. We're getting it out of him and again, I think it's a learning curve. A guy that hadn't been that guy in the past, to learn that you can dominate every play. But it's more mental fatigue than physical fatigue when you can play that way. He's getting there."
On the defense handling Connecticut's trick plays:
"I think it was good for our guys and Coach Diaz did a great job of mentioning it to the team as well as I did to the defense. We've got to make our layups. So when they handed the ball off and they ran stretch and they ran inside zone, we have to make those plays because those are the plays we prepared for. When they run the hard stuff, the hard stuffs hard. They might hit a couple of those. We didn't practice for those, we didn't practice for a double pass, two quarterbacks on the field, all the QB runs into the boundary. We weren't prepared for that so we've got to adjust to those situations in the game. I thought our guys understood after they hit us on a few. If you just do your job, we'll be okay, right? Nobody press and do something. Nobody has to do anything spectacular to stop a trick play. On the one double pass our corner wasn't in his third and that's just a part of doing his job. I think just making the easy ones easy, and then attacking the hard ones with just doing your job at an excellent level."
On what was preached to the team during Saturday's game:
"Yeah, I think you look at it as a whole, the first half, forcing six punts and a turnover, you go into halftime, and it was kind of the same thing, just the details, you think we'd be happy. We kind of got after our guys on defense and said, there's still some things we can clean up and we got to finish and it ain't going to be easy. All the things you tell your team. Then we come out in the third quarter, and they go back-to-back drives. [Connecticut] did a heck of a job. They threw a lot of stuff at us. They ran their quarterback, they're a well-coached team, and after that second scoring drive, I brought the whole defense in, and just calmly, looked everybody in the eyes, and just brought them back down, and just said, 'Everybody do your job. Just do your job. Play the defense, tackle well, run to the ball, and we'll be fine.' And then we bounced back. And I think the rest of the game they didn't score. What I told the defense afterward is that we needed that adversity. We really hadn't been tested. We hadn't been on our heels, really, all season. And we got hit in the mouth, and it took two drives. It took 14 points for us to get off our heels and wake up. And what the guys realized, and what they'll start to realize even more and more, is that all you have to do is play really hard, tackle really well, and do your job. No matter what's going on in the game. No matter what's happening on the other side of the ball, no matter what's happening on special teams, do your job to the best of your ability. So I think the message was clear after that, and the guys settled in, and I love how we have a resilient group. I keep saying that, and that's something special about defense, that we have so much resiliency."
#GoDuke
Duke (3-0, 0-0 ACC) hits the road for its final non-conference matchup, traveling to Middle Tennessee State (1-2, 0-0 CUSA) on Saturday, Sept. 21. Kickoff is scheduled for 4 p.m., ET and fans can watch live on ESPNU.
HEAD COACH MANNY DIAZ:
Opening Statement:
"Got back into the game week routine, game-planning for Middle Tennessee. Had a good, winning Sunday, yesterday. Guys came in, had a chance to review the film with them. Proud of the way that we finished that game. I'm proud of the way we played in the fourth quarter. All year long, we have not surrendered a touchdown in the fourth quarter. I think we're outscoring people 19-6 in the fourth, which is a testament to our strength program. I think our guys really believe that. We also have not surrendered a touchdown in the first quarter of the game. We started very well. I think we're 17-3 in the first quarter of games. But we have to find a way to be consistent over four quarters and that's been the message of 'can we sustain our attention, our focus and our level of play over the course of four quarters.' So, every week provides another challenge and another chance to do that and that's sort of the message to the guys yesterday, and we had a quick evening practice last night, and we'll get back at it tomorrow morning."
On how Duke responded to a strong third-quarter performance by Connecticut:
"I got to give a lot of credit to Connecticut. They threw the kitchen sink at us. Number one, when you have the quarterback running game, they could always throw that in there and go forward. You add a blocker in the run game and then I think they ran five or six trick plays during the course of the game. The one explosive play they got on the drive, they sort of faked the quarterback sweep and slipped the tailback out the backside. They had a couple of different double passes. They had the one down in the red zone that we defended. When you watch the tape, that was a proper examination of our guys and understanding their roles. What I am proud of, is that in the fourth quarter, we're able to pitch the shutout and kind of recalibrate and refocus. I think we kind of got knocked off our rocker a little bit on those two drives and it was good for us to see how we respond to that. That's what we didn't really get at Northwestern. Northwestern, the defense really felt like they probably had control of the majority of the game, until that drive in overtime. That's the first time somebody had kind of stung us a little bit. We had to fight back and I'm proud of how they did it."
On how to measure the mental toughness on the team:
"I think it's responding to adversity, right? So, it's hard to quantify, right? But when you see the examples of what happened to us at Northwestern, and you go out there and make sudden change stops. You see the way that we flipped it after it got away from us, and we flipped it against Connecticut. I mean, those are real things that our guys can say, 'we did that', and the ability to do hard things repeatedly. And guess what? If you're a student at Duke, you can already do hard things. If you got into Duke, you can already do hard things. So, it's kind of baked into our guys' DNA because they have to do hard things every day on this campus."
On Diaz's coaching start and time while at Middle Tennessee:
"Yeah, four years at Middle Tennessee, four great years. Not just myself, Justin Watts and Willie Simmons on our staff as well. I'm sure there will be some familiar faces that will be there, and some have already reached out. I'm excited to get back to that area, we loved living there. We had a great time there and the first four years of my defensive coordinator, it will always stand out. But I also remember beating an ACC team on the road there, we almost beat Virginia in [2007], and we beat Maryland in [2008], and then went to Maryland, beat them in [2009], back when they were in this league. So, we understand that they're a first-year staff trying to get the right mix of guys, and just like we're doing, trying to learn how to master their schemes, same way we're doing with our guys. There will be some familiar faces, and it'll be fun to get back into that Middle Tennessee area."
OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR JONATHAN BREWER
On Que'Sean Brown's performance in Saturday's game:
"He brings a different dynamic for us at receiver, out wide. He's shifty, he can accelerate, he's a smaller guy, so it's a little bit harder to tackle in that world. What's funny is what you saw the other night is the same thing we've been seeing in fall camp, right? Same thing we've seen through practice out there. It's one of those deals when you have your opportunity to show it and showcase it. It wasn't unexpected, we've seen it all camp and it was exciting for him to go out there and do it."
On the continued growth of the run game:
"I think it starts up front with the offensive line and what Coach Norrid has done with them. That was a hard week to prepare for. They gave you a lot of different defensive pictures and I thought Matt Craycraft up front, him and [Justin] Pickett, leading our guys up front and keeping everybody on the same page, that was a huge deal for us. And then the physicality, we put some guys in the dirt. We had a bunch of knockdowns. We had some guys finish runs. It's one of those deals, the first two weeks of the season, we didn't make people pay for when they gave us light boxes and were trying to defend our passing game. And I thought the [Connecticut] game, at times, we made them pay with some huge explosive runs."
DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR JONATHAN PATKE
On Aaron Hall's performance so far this season:
"I think he flashes in a big way. When he's on, he's on. I think being the first-time guy as a starter, it's just being consistent, down in, down out. This week, we told him after this game, was that he could be a dominant force, play in and play out, but he has to choose to be. Because when he chooses to go, he's a really, really good player. We're getting it out of him and again, I think it's a learning curve. A guy that hadn't been that guy in the past, to learn that you can dominate every play. But it's more mental fatigue than physical fatigue when you can play that way. He's getting there."
On the defense handling Connecticut's trick plays:
"I think it was good for our guys and Coach Diaz did a great job of mentioning it to the team as well as I did to the defense. We've got to make our layups. So when they handed the ball off and they ran stretch and they ran inside zone, we have to make those plays because those are the plays we prepared for. When they run the hard stuff, the hard stuffs hard. They might hit a couple of those. We didn't practice for those, we didn't practice for a double pass, two quarterbacks on the field, all the QB runs into the boundary. We weren't prepared for that so we've got to adjust to those situations in the game. I thought our guys understood after they hit us on a few. If you just do your job, we'll be okay, right? Nobody press and do something. Nobody has to do anything spectacular to stop a trick play. On the one double pass our corner wasn't in his third and that's just a part of doing his job. I think just making the easy ones easy, and then attacking the hard ones with just doing your job at an excellent level."
On what was preached to the team during Saturday's game:
"Yeah, I think you look at it as a whole, the first half, forcing six punts and a turnover, you go into halftime, and it was kind of the same thing, just the details, you think we'd be happy. We kind of got after our guys on defense and said, there's still some things we can clean up and we got to finish and it ain't going to be easy. All the things you tell your team. Then we come out in the third quarter, and they go back-to-back drives. [Connecticut] did a heck of a job. They threw a lot of stuff at us. They ran their quarterback, they're a well-coached team, and after that second scoring drive, I brought the whole defense in, and just calmly, looked everybody in the eyes, and just brought them back down, and just said, 'Everybody do your job. Just do your job. Play the defense, tackle well, run to the ball, and we'll be fine.' And then we bounced back. And I think the rest of the game they didn't score. What I told the defense afterward is that we needed that adversity. We really hadn't been tested. We hadn't been on our heels, really, all season. And we got hit in the mouth, and it took two drives. It took 14 points for us to get off our heels and wake up. And what the guys realized, and what they'll start to realize even more and more, is that all you have to do is play really hard, tackle really well, and do your job. No matter what's going on in the game. No matter what's happening on the other side of the ball, no matter what's happening on special teams, do your job to the best of your ability. So I think the message was clear after that, and the guys settled in, and I love how we have a resilient group. I keep saying that, and that's something special about defense, that we have so much resiliency."
#GoDuke
Players Mentioned
Manny Diaz, Darian Mensah and Que'Sean Brown: Postgame Press Conference
Friday, January 02
Game Trailer: Arizona State
Wednesday, December 31
Coach Diaz Press Conference: Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl
Tuesday, December 30
Coach Brewer and Coach Patke Press Conference: Tony the Tiger Sun Bowl
Monday, December 29
