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Manny Diaz Press Conference Quotes: Northwestern
9/2/2024 5:25:00 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 hits the road for the first time in the 2024 season, traveling to take on Northwestern on Friday, Sept. 6. The game, played at Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium, kicks off at 9 p.m., ET and is broadcast on FS1.
HEAD COACH MANNY DIAZ
Opening Statement:
"Right back at it for us, kind of like last week. It says Monday on the calendar, but it's a Tuesday for us, playing on a Friday night. Looking back at last Friday night in the opener, we're pleased to get an opening night victory. I think the theme was our identity showing up, really, in all three phases. We created five explosive plays on special teams, that's two tackles inside the 20, two punts of over 45 yards and we had a 14-yard punt return. We were making things happen in that phase. Offensively, you could see our desire to push the ball down the field and we showed our guys, just a matter of inches separating us from an extraordinary amount of explosive plays. But that is our identity, that's who we want to be. We want to take those shots and make those shots and then defensively, start to finish, just a dominant performance by our front with all the sacks and tackles for losses. But with all that said, in all three phases, there was a lot to clean up and there's a lot to improve upon. So, week two, you always hear coaches talk about the big improvements between week one and week two. You see the mistakes and we always talk about hearing the difference between success and excellence. You can be successful at doing something, that doesn't mean you're doing it in an excellent manner. We're just trying to play to our standard. Practice to our standard. We'll need that because now going on the road to play a Big 10 team in Northwestern, a school that our players know very well having played them in the last couple years and that I know very well having played them the last couple years at Penn State."
"When they came here last September and lost their 13th game out of 15, they left Durham and since that time, they're 8-3. We played them two weeks later at Penn State and beat them in Evanston. But since that time, they're 7-2. They've won five straight games. I think they're 6-1 in one-score games. So, the program really transformed in the fourth quarter against Minnesota with a big 21-point comeback. And since that point on, sometimes programs have to go through what it takes to learn how to win. They've learned how to win, they understand how to win in close games, including what they did in their opener against a very, very good Miami of Ohio team."
"It'll be a great challenge for us in all three phases. Having seen our players understanding who they are and having gone against them the last couple of years. It's going to be what you expect playing on the road in the Big 10. It's going to be a line-of-scrimmage game. Their defense is built to prevent explosive plays, which, as I just mentioned, is a big point of emphasis of what we want to do on offense. They do a great job making things difficult, trying to keep the score down. And then a new coordinator on offense that provides a lot of variety, a lot of looks, but does a lot of great things with the run game, trying to want to run the football. So, it's a game of controlling the line-of-scrimmage, a game-control type game, and an exciting game for a national TV audience on Friday night that we're excited to play."
On the next steps on keeping disciplined with no penalties…
"You don't know until the lights come on. I think it went hand in hand, though. I thought our substitutions were on point. We only had one issue with the play clock, we only used one time out the whole game. It just felt like a very clean performance. Now, that being said, when you watch a film, are there some things that were a little handsy in this coverage? I think the best way to limit penalties is to coach them before they happen. So, giving an example, in practice, if you went out there today, you'll see our defensive backs, they run around with oven mitts on. We're trying to prevent the holding before the holding happens on coverage because we're going to want to play tight coverage and sometimes the guys want to grab on jerseys, right? So we're trying to avoid that. Another example is coaches will coach the result of the play. The coach will be happy their guy knocked the ball down. But in reality, he might have grabbed the guy to do it, and it's not called in practice but it's going to get called in games. You've got to bury your ego enough to understand that we want to be process-oriented and not worry about the result. In practice, nobody cares and I tell the guys, listen, if you continue to grab a guy like this on crucial fourth-down slant, they're going to throw a flag for an automatic first down."
On Maalik Murphy's performance on Friday against Elon…
"I thought for his first game here, he played well. I really did. I thought his accuracy was really good, especially when you watch him spit out anything that's short and intermediate range and he's hitting guys in the face mask. It was impressive to see and some of the ones, the near-misses down the field were hitting fingertips. Those are catches that our guys believe they can make. And certainly, this is the ifs and buts, if we make those the score and the yards are gonna be dramatically different. Like any quarterback in the country, there are going to be a few decisions that he wishes he could have back. I do think our offensive line did a nice job of protecting him against almost all five-man rushes the whole game, they blitzed a lot. So I thought overall, it was a really good performance for a week one game, one for him to build off. I think, talking to Coach [Jonathan] Brewer, he was very impressed with how Maalik was on the sideline, he was very calm and very in-control. Like I said, a very good building block to start with."
On the comfort level of the players and what to expect from Northwestern…
"What the film said and what we told them in the meeting when we got back together on Sunday was that we played very hard which was very encouraging. We had very minimal missed assignments, very encouraging, and when you tag that with having very few penalties, one turnover, you make yourself hard to beat, regardless of opposition. A lot of press conferences, coaches will say 'if Johnny did the thing that we coached Johnny to do', and the good thing that makes these kids special at Duke is that they want to do what their coach wants them to do. In game one, I was very impressed because I'm learning about them the same way they were learning about me. I was very impressed at how few mistakes we made, and that if we didn't do things perfectly, if we missed a catch by fingertips, well, that's a technique that we can improve forever and ever and ever. But if the guy was running the wrong route, now we've got a fundamental problem because he wasn't in the right spot. So knowing what to do and we can do it with maximum effort, we will spend the rest of our lives coaching how to do it and no one ever masters the game, right? So now, we're just on that pathway, and that's why we're excited about the identity as one of the pathways to mastery, because once you understand, you're going to see all these routes all year long. And what you saw as an incompletion against Elon, if we continue to practice that every week. If you watch [Jordan Moore's] last one, the one that got called back at the one-yard line, it doesn't matter who you're playing against. We told the guys, the helmet sticker on the defender's head is irrelevant. That is an outstanding route with an outstanding throw placement where the defensive back goes. That guy can have any logo you want to put on there and that's what we're trying to get to. It's a mastery where the opponent really doesn't matter, if we do our stuff our way, our way works. And so we're happy that we get to play opponents that teach us where we're not quite there yet. Elon taught us some things and Northwestern will be another step in that challenge."
COACH BREWER:
On the clean effort and minimal mistakes from the team on game one…
"We've got highly intelligent kids here. There weren't a lot of [missed assignments], not a lot of busts, the effort was really high. We didn't have any penalties, we had one declined off of a TFL, but our guys played a clean game in that sense. There's just so many missed opportunities and that's kind of the takeaway from the offense. There are probably about four or five balls that were caught that probably would have blown the game wide open, and when they weren't caught, or maybe the ball's just throw a little bit off, they let the game stay a lot closer."
On recurring mindsets and themes noticed throughout the game…
"Taking things from practice that we do every day, drills we do every day, and when you're in the stadium and everybody's watching, it's time to perform and execute at that high level and to trust your training. What you guys don't see is there are some minor errors in how we teach the vertical ball. And that shows up, they magnify, right? Because it's fourth down, and we're throwing the ball to [Jeremiah Hasley] on a seam ball. And for us, when people say it's a 50/50 ball, we think of that as it's going to be completed. There are just minor errors that can be tweaked. I think the guys are seeing it. What's funny is, I was taught by Garin Justice, the offensive line coach at SMU, when I first started working with him in Miami, in times of stress, you go back to your deepest, most engrained habit. Obviously we have not built enough habits that they would go back to yet."
On concerns for Northwestern this Friday…
"Their [defensive] line is good. They're really good up front. Their two defensive ends are solid. The two inside linebackers are good. They stop the run and they don't allow explosive plays. We look at their stats and they're almost top-30 in every stat. They keep everything in front of them, so you have to earn everything you get with them. It's a style of play. They're good on offense, they execute. They run the football on offense and they force you to have to run the football all the way down the field to go score, so it's going to be a good challenge."
COACH PATKE:
On the next steps for the defensive line…
"Being consistent every down. You can't choose when to do it and when not to do it, but just the consistency of playing vertical, playing aggressive and playing on edges. Then, really playing against better opponents. I think Elon was a really, really good team but we're going to play some other teams that have a good [offensive] line and good [running] backs and I'd like to see, when we face adversity, if they're going to fall back on what they've been taught and what they've been coached to do. That's when you'll see the true next step, the graduation step is when we play really good opponents, and can we consistently do what we did last Friday night."
On facing Northwestern and the idea of changing the aggression on defense…
"We are who we are. They are good up front and they love to run the ball. So, the opportunities might not always present themselves as many times and I think our guys have to understand that. They have to play within the scheme. We talk about that all the time, DYJ - do your job. You can't force it, it's got to be ingrained. There's enough plays to go around, so when you play a team like Northwestern, they'll come to you but you can't force it."
On the in-helmet communication in game one…
"I thought it was good. I thought I could give our guys a lot of feedback pre-snap, even from the previous snap. Some checks, some stunt game, being able to talk to those guys and fix their alignments on certain plays. I thought it was good. Nothing major came up, as far as in a negative way. I thought it worked really well for us."
#GoDuke
Duke hits the road for the first time in the 2024 season, traveling to take on Northwestern on Friday, Sept. 6. The game, played at Northwestern Medicine Field at Martin Stadium, kicks off at 9 p.m., ET and is broadcast on FS1.
HEAD COACH MANNY DIAZ
Opening Statement:
"Right back at it for us, kind of like last week. It says Monday on the calendar, but it's a Tuesday for us, playing on a Friday night. Looking back at last Friday night in the opener, we're pleased to get an opening night victory. I think the theme was our identity showing up, really, in all three phases. We created five explosive plays on special teams, that's two tackles inside the 20, two punts of over 45 yards and we had a 14-yard punt return. We were making things happen in that phase. Offensively, you could see our desire to push the ball down the field and we showed our guys, just a matter of inches separating us from an extraordinary amount of explosive plays. But that is our identity, that's who we want to be. We want to take those shots and make those shots and then defensively, start to finish, just a dominant performance by our front with all the sacks and tackles for losses. But with all that said, in all three phases, there was a lot to clean up and there's a lot to improve upon. So, week two, you always hear coaches talk about the big improvements between week one and week two. You see the mistakes and we always talk about hearing the difference between success and excellence. You can be successful at doing something, that doesn't mean you're doing it in an excellent manner. We're just trying to play to our standard. Practice to our standard. We'll need that because now going on the road to play a Big 10 team in Northwestern, a school that our players know very well having played them in the last couple years and that I know very well having played them the last couple years at Penn State."
"When they came here last September and lost their 13th game out of 15, they left Durham and since that time, they're 8-3. We played them two weeks later at Penn State and beat them in Evanston. But since that time, they're 7-2. They've won five straight games. I think they're 6-1 in one-score games. So, the program really transformed in the fourth quarter against Minnesota with a big 21-point comeback. And since that point on, sometimes programs have to go through what it takes to learn how to win. They've learned how to win, they understand how to win in close games, including what they did in their opener against a very, very good Miami of Ohio team."
"It'll be a great challenge for us in all three phases. Having seen our players understanding who they are and having gone against them the last couple of years. It's going to be what you expect playing on the road in the Big 10. It's going to be a line-of-scrimmage game. Their defense is built to prevent explosive plays, which, as I just mentioned, is a big point of emphasis of what we want to do on offense. They do a great job making things difficult, trying to keep the score down. And then a new coordinator on offense that provides a lot of variety, a lot of looks, but does a lot of great things with the run game, trying to want to run the football. So, it's a game of controlling the line-of-scrimmage, a game-control type game, and an exciting game for a national TV audience on Friday night that we're excited to play."
On the next steps on keeping disciplined with no penalties…
"You don't know until the lights come on. I think it went hand in hand, though. I thought our substitutions were on point. We only had one issue with the play clock, we only used one time out the whole game. It just felt like a very clean performance. Now, that being said, when you watch a film, are there some things that were a little handsy in this coverage? I think the best way to limit penalties is to coach them before they happen. So, giving an example, in practice, if you went out there today, you'll see our defensive backs, they run around with oven mitts on. We're trying to prevent the holding before the holding happens on coverage because we're going to want to play tight coverage and sometimes the guys want to grab on jerseys, right? So we're trying to avoid that. Another example is coaches will coach the result of the play. The coach will be happy their guy knocked the ball down. But in reality, he might have grabbed the guy to do it, and it's not called in practice but it's going to get called in games. You've got to bury your ego enough to understand that we want to be process-oriented and not worry about the result. In practice, nobody cares and I tell the guys, listen, if you continue to grab a guy like this on crucial fourth-down slant, they're going to throw a flag for an automatic first down."
On Maalik Murphy's performance on Friday against Elon…
"I thought for his first game here, he played well. I really did. I thought his accuracy was really good, especially when you watch him spit out anything that's short and intermediate range and he's hitting guys in the face mask. It was impressive to see and some of the ones, the near-misses down the field were hitting fingertips. Those are catches that our guys believe they can make. And certainly, this is the ifs and buts, if we make those the score and the yards are gonna be dramatically different. Like any quarterback in the country, there are going to be a few decisions that he wishes he could have back. I do think our offensive line did a nice job of protecting him against almost all five-man rushes the whole game, they blitzed a lot. So I thought overall, it was a really good performance for a week one game, one for him to build off. I think, talking to Coach [Jonathan] Brewer, he was very impressed with how Maalik was on the sideline, he was very calm and very in-control. Like I said, a very good building block to start with."
On the comfort level of the players and what to expect from Northwestern…
"What the film said and what we told them in the meeting when we got back together on Sunday was that we played very hard which was very encouraging. We had very minimal missed assignments, very encouraging, and when you tag that with having very few penalties, one turnover, you make yourself hard to beat, regardless of opposition. A lot of press conferences, coaches will say 'if Johnny did the thing that we coached Johnny to do', and the good thing that makes these kids special at Duke is that they want to do what their coach wants them to do. In game one, I was very impressed because I'm learning about them the same way they were learning about me. I was very impressed at how few mistakes we made, and that if we didn't do things perfectly, if we missed a catch by fingertips, well, that's a technique that we can improve forever and ever and ever. But if the guy was running the wrong route, now we've got a fundamental problem because he wasn't in the right spot. So knowing what to do and we can do it with maximum effort, we will spend the rest of our lives coaching how to do it and no one ever masters the game, right? So now, we're just on that pathway, and that's why we're excited about the identity as one of the pathways to mastery, because once you understand, you're going to see all these routes all year long. And what you saw as an incompletion against Elon, if we continue to practice that every week. If you watch [Jordan Moore's] last one, the one that got called back at the one-yard line, it doesn't matter who you're playing against. We told the guys, the helmet sticker on the defender's head is irrelevant. That is an outstanding route with an outstanding throw placement where the defensive back goes. That guy can have any logo you want to put on there and that's what we're trying to get to. It's a mastery where the opponent really doesn't matter, if we do our stuff our way, our way works. And so we're happy that we get to play opponents that teach us where we're not quite there yet. Elon taught us some things and Northwestern will be another step in that challenge."
COACH BREWER:
On the clean effort and minimal mistakes from the team on game one…
"We've got highly intelligent kids here. There weren't a lot of [missed assignments], not a lot of busts, the effort was really high. We didn't have any penalties, we had one declined off of a TFL, but our guys played a clean game in that sense. There's just so many missed opportunities and that's kind of the takeaway from the offense. There are probably about four or five balls that were caught that probably would have blown the game wide open, and when they weren't caught, or maybe the ball's just throw a little bit off, they let the game stay a lot closer."
On recurring mindsets and themes noticed throughout the game…
"Taking things from practice that we do every day, drills we do every day, and when you're in the stadium and everybody's watching, it's time to perform and execute at that high level and to trust your training. What you guys don't see is there are some minor errors in how we teach the vertical ball. And that shows up, they magnify, right? Because it's fourth down, and we're throwing the ball to [Jeremiah Hasley] on a seam ball. And for us, when people say it's a 50/50 ball, we think of that as it's going to be completed. There are just minor errors that can be tweaked. I think the guys are seeing it. What's funny is, I was taught by Garin Justice, the offensive line coach at SMU, when I first started working with him in Miami, in times of stress, you go back to your deepest, most engrained habit. Obviously we have not built enough habits that they would go back to yet."
On concerns for Northwestern this Friday…
"Their [defensive] line is good. They're really good up front. Their two defensive ends are solid. The two inside linebackers are good. They stop the run and they don't allow explosive plays. We look at their stats and they're almost top-30 in every stat. They keep everything in front of them, so you have to earn everything you get with them. It's a style of play. They're good on offense, they execute. They run the football on offense and they force you to have to run the football all the way down the field to go score, so it's going to be a good challenge."
COACH PATKE:
On the next steps for the defensive line…
"Being consistent every down. You can't choose when to do it and when not to do it, but just the consistency of playing vertical, playing aggressive and playing on edges. Then, really playing against better opponents. I think Elon was a really, really good team but we're going to play some other teams that have a good [offensive] line and good [running] backs and I'd like to see, when we face adversity, if they're going to fall back on what they've been taught and what they've been coached to do. That's when you'll see the true next step, the graduation step is when we play really good opponents, and can we consistently do what we did last Friday night."
On facing Northwestern and the idea of changing the aggression on defense…
"We are who we are. They are good up front and they love to run the ball. So, the opportunities might not always present themselves as many times and I think our guys have to understand that. They have to play within the scheme. We talk about that all the time, DYJ - do your job. You can't force it, it's got to be ingrained. There's enough plays to go around, so when you play a team like Northwestern, they'll come to you but you can't force it."
On the in-helmet communication in game one…
"I thought it was good. I thought I could give our guys a lot of feedback pre-snap, even from the previous snap. Some checks, some stunt game, being able to talk to those guys and fix their alignments on certain plays. I thought it was good. Nothing major came up, as far as in a negative way. I thought it worked really well for us."
#GoDuke
Players Mentioned
Bruno Fina Media Availability: Cal
Tuesday, September 30
Tre Freeman Media Availability: Cal
Tuesday, September 30
Coach Brewer Press Conference: Cal
Monday, September 29
Coach Diaz Press Conference: Cal
Monday, September 29
