Manny Diaz named Duke’s next coach

It’ll be another defensive-minded coach with ACC ties as Duke’s football coach.

Manny Diaz has been hired as Duke’s next coach, having previously been Miami’s coach from 2019-21 and spending six early years of his coaching career at N.C. State.

Duke announced the hire Thursday night.

Diaz, who is 49, has been Penn State’s defensive coordinator for the last two seasons and has been a semifinalist for the Broyles Award (given to college football’s top assistant coach) each year. Entering college football’s postseason, Penn State has the No. 1 overall defense (223.3 yards per game) and No. 3 scoring defense (11.4 points per game).

Duke is hiring its second coach in two years because Mike Elko left a couple of weeks ago for Texas A&M. The Blue Devils were 16-9 (9-7 ACC) in the past two seasons, winning last year’s Military Bowl and heading to the Birmingham Bowl later this month for a matchup against Troy (Dec. 23).

Trooper Taylor has been Duke's interim coach since Nov. 27; he's the only Blue Devils coach to have been on staff under David Cutcliffe and Elko.

Diaz checks a few of the same boxes as his predecessor — defensive coordinator from a powerhouse program, prior experience in the ACC, under 50 years old — with an obvious caveat that he’s been a head coach before.

Miami was 21-15 (16-9 ACC) in his three seasons. He was fired about a week after the 2021 season ended, having gone 7-5 (5-3) and won five of the last six games (including a 47-10 win at Duke that wound up being Cutcliffe’s final game with the Blue Devils).

That was amid a tumultuous time — on the same day as Diaz’s firing, Mario Cristobal was announced as the new head coach, having played for the Hurricanes and come from Oregon. Two days after Diaz’s firing, Dan Radakovich was announced as Miami’s new athletics director.

Penn State was ninth in scoring defense in Diaz’s first season and third this year. The Nittany Lions are 10-2 this season and face Mississippi in the Peach Bowl on Dec. 30.

There are existing connections within Duke’s staff to Diaz. Most notably, strength and conditioning coach David Feeley was with Diaz for all three seasons that he was the head coach in Miami — he was available for Duke to hire because Cristobal brought his own strength and conditioning coach from Oregon.

Defensive line coach Jess Simpson coached with Diaz in two separate stints at Miami — first in 2018 as defensive line coach when Diaz was defensive coordinator, and then in 2021 in the same role, just with Diaz as head coach.

Cornerbacks coach Ishmael Aristide was on Miami’s staff in 2021 as the strikers/outside linebackers coach; he’s been reported to be joining Elko at Texas A&M, though that has yet to be confirmed.

Diaz is a Florida State graduate who spent 2000-05 at N.C. State in three capacities — graduate assistant, linebackers coach and safeties/special teams coach, all under Chuck Amato. After leaving Raleigh, he spent four seasons at Middle Tennessee and one at Mississippi State.

He was defensive coordinator/linebackers coach at Texas under Mack Brown for two seasons, 2011-12, and then was fired by Brown after the second game of the 2013 season (in which BYU won 40-21 and had 550 rushing yards).

Diaz spent the following season at Louisiana Tech as defensive coordinator, and then had a second season at Mississippi State, before arriving at Miami for six seasons (three as defensive coordinator/linebackers coach, three as head coach).

He had a brief stint as Temple's coach in 2018. That was technically his first head coaching role, but he was only there for 18 days. Mark Richt's retirement led to Diaz being offered the Miami job just a few weeks after he'd left his post as its defensive coordinator.