Manny Diaz Press Conference Quotes: Georgia Tech

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 (5-0, 1-0 ACC) travels to Georgia Tech (3-2, 1-0 ACC) on Saturday, Oct. 5 for the Blue Devils' first road conference test of the 2024 season. Kickoff is scheduled for 8 p.m., ET and fans can watch live on ACC Network.

HEAD COACH MANNY DIAZ:

On Duke's efforts to help with aid and recovery in western North Carolina:

"I want to start today the same way I started Saturday night, just talking about what's going on right now in the western part of our state. Just to sort of humanize it a little bit, one of our assistant coaches heard from a high school football coach in that area and just the stories he told. First of all, it's hard to get hold of anybody, cell service is almost non-existent. WiFi the same way. To hear people are just cut off from civilization because of the roads either being impassable or flat out gone. Bridges wiped out. People who have cars, can't take them anywhere. People who can't get to their cars or are out of gas. Just the destruction and the disruption of life, it's strange how because we lose our citizen journalistic army with the cell phones being out, I don't know that we're really seeing it firsthand, and so to hear a story like that, talking about people building natural bridges with the logs that are there and then having to navigate mudslides. These are the things that you would expect in a movie and this is real life going on in our state right now. It's something that we want to be a part of helping in any way we can. We are announcing that Duke Athletics is going to partner with Two Men and a Truck to launch a relief donation drive starting later here today, collecting non-perishable food and daily necessities at the Duke Athletics ticket office, and we'll be offering discounts to football games and men and women's basketball games to encourage donations. Anybody that can play any role in helping to make people who feel isolated, physically, emotionally, to feel connected to the other parts of our state. I think it's the least we can do."

On Duke's efforts against North Carolina:

"From a football standpoint, the little thing we get to do and create a distraction that we all get to follow, over five weeks I think we've shown that we can handle adversity and overcome adversity. Now we're faced with a very different type of adversity, which is the adversity of success. We've been down. We've got three fourth-quarter quarter comebacks. Now, sitting here at 5-0 and getting patted on the back, and putting our hands on the [victory] bell for the first time in a long time, and getting told how great we are. That comes with its own adversity, and just like on Saturday how the scoreboard when it read 20-0, it's a liar. It represents what happened in the past, not what is currently going on. They don't add up all the points till the clock hits zero and when they added up all the points, we had more, and that's why we won the game. So one snapshot of 20-0 didn't really tell the story. It's very similar with 5-0. When they sit there and they say that you're 5-0, they don't add up all the wins and losses until the end of the year. Doesn't really matter where you're at right now. When we take a field on Saturday night in Atlanta we don't get to start first and five, because we're 5-0, and we're also well aware that the team we play is, by far, the most complete team we've played all year and when we were battling it out and pulling that game out on Saturday night, they were sitting on their couches watching, resting, having had two weeks to prepare for us. We've got a real challenge awaiting us in Atlanta that our guys were excited for."

On the offensive line's ability to adjust mid-game:

"Well, one, people respect our wide receivers. They respect our ability to throw the ball down the field and so we weren't getting nearly as many one-on-one matchups as we thought we would. We're getting more three-over-two coverage. What we told our offense last night, particularly our offensive line. I think that's really the story here, is that our ability to adjust, in the run game in particular, so like you practice, maybe certain run plays, and not even just the run plays, but how you identify the fronts, how you ID who the middle linebackers are so we can understand who to go block on these plays. That's been back-to-back weeks where what you practice all week, you kind of erase the board and draw it up again on Saturday on the sideline. Jeff Norrid coached our [offensive] line, and Coach Brewer and really, Willie Simmons, Justin Watts, all those guys that are connected to our run game, they deserve a lot of credit but no more credit than the players who actually have to go out there and do it. When you think about a guy like Matt Craycraft, who had a great game at center, just whatever he thought he's gonna see and point out this guy as a key to our block assignment, all of a sudden now we're going to go past him and point to him and do all this. It wouldn't matter if we knew what the adjustment is if the kids couldn't handle it, right? So, like I said, kudos to everybody involved with that, but the offensive line was the story of that game."

On the home field advantage of Duke and the atmosphere of the crowd:

"Oh, it was all part of the momentum swell, right? You could just feel it. I think the energy of our players, it's one of those things where it's a cycle, right? It's like a flywheel. Our guys make a play, the crowd gets into it, which gets our guys more excited to make more plays which gets the crowd more into it. There's no question that they feel it, the visiting team starts to feel the pressure and it ultimately came down to the last play of the game. The winning play of the game, on the interception by [Tre] Freeman, where you end up getting a free runner at the quarterback, and where he's got to make a quick decision and can't finish his throw, and we end up with a pick. I can't tell you what that means to our players, to have a crowd like that, to see the student section packed when we come out of the tunnel before the game. It's something I keep mentioning, it's something to build on. I've mentioned this before, but it's worth stating in this form. Our age, our memories go a lot longer, okay? And you have to think about, if you're thinking about it if you're a junior at Duke right now, and what you know about Wallace Wade Stadium, right? We talk about things because of our age, and we just remember 10 years ago, 20 years ago. These kids in college weren't born 20 years ago. So what they know is storming the field back-to-back years, they know that. They are sensing a different environment in our stadium, not to mention the win-loss record at home. That's something that's worth protecting. But it's a lot easier to shift the narrative in an 18 year old's mind than it is in a 50 year old's mind."

OFFENSIVE COORDINATOR JONATHAN BREWER

On the offensive adjustments made by the offense against North Carolina:

"At halftime, we made some adjustments in the run game to attack some of the things they were taking away from us in the pass. We had anticipated it, just not that fast, and our guys made a quick adjustment up front. And really, from the second half on, we controlled the game, and we moved the ball at will. The quarterback had easy RPO action in that world, and we were able to run the football and we controlled the game. If we just would have got to do it a little bit faster, it may have been a different score in that world. We had some opportunities in the second quarter that we didn't capitalize on. We were driving and we had a penalty. Or missed throw, mistimed throw, or something like that. We had a sack and that just knocked us back when we were right there on the cusp, and just really could've opened the floodgates for us in the first half."

On what the coaching staff has learned about the offensive line so far this season…

"They're incredibly intelligent. They can make adjustments and things that maybe we didn't prepare for. 'Hey, we're going to have to identify this stuff.' So it's one of the things I talked to the offensive unit about yesterday, was our ability up front to change things and things that we prepped all week and make slight adjustments is pretty neat. They're tough, they're gritty. They wanted to put the game on their back and say, 'Hey, this is what they're doing. They're challenging us.'. They took it and they took advantage of it."

DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR JONATHAN PATKE

On what worked well for the defense against UNC:

"I thought our guys did a good job of swarming to the ball. We honestly missed a few tackle for losses on him [Omarion Hampton] because he's such a good player. We had two guys hit him in the backfield on a third down, and we just fell off the tackle, and he ends up converting. He's a great player, and we knew he would make one or two guys miss along the way. But rallying to the ball, getting multiple hats to the ball carrier, and then tackling the way we teach to tackle. If you try to tackle that guy high, up around the waist or shoulder pads, you weren't going to get him down. I thought we did a good job. Obviously, he made an explosive play on a screen play against us. Made a couple guys miss there, and Stinson made an unbelievable effort to get him out of bounds at the two yard line. Kudos to our guys and we had a lot of respect for him as a running back."

On trusting the defensive abilities of the team:

"It was one of those deals, like I said, in the first half I thought we were on our heels. By the end of the game, our defensive guys were coming up to me saying 'Punt it. We want to finish the game. We want to be on the field.' They had that mentality about them and that's who we want to be. Our guys had complete faith, if we went back on the field, we were going to win that game. We know how close these games are every year, and our guys had faith that they could get it done and they did. We gave up some plays, and it got tight. They had a really good football kicker, and if they move it two more first downs, they're probably in range. I didn't feel the stress of our guys. I didn't feel the stress of our staff in that situation. I thought we were calm, collected. We executed what we practiced, exactly what we did, and came out with the victory."

On preparing for a team that has had an open week:

"One thing you have to fix is your problems. [Georgia Tech] had a week to look at us and the plays – you need to go back and look at our explosive plays against us, how people are trying to attack us, any bugs that we have or if our guys aren't quite understanding a certain coverage. We have to go fix us, because they've been watching us for a week. We're going to be on that and we have to fix some problems that we see in ourselves first. Usually when you fix that, those are the things they'll try to attack you with. If you fix yourself, you'll have a better chance to get your opponent, whatever they bring at you."

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Manny Diaz Press Conference Quotes: Georgia Tech

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Matt Craycraft

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Manny Diaz Press Conference Quotes: Georgia Tech

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