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CAPITAL ONE ORANGE BOWL: MIAMI VS WISCONSINDecember 27, 2017Manny DiazMiami Gardens, Florida Q. Manny, what's the best way to sort of quantify Jaquan's growth over the last year? Here was a guy that he would admit had trouble staying on the field, and all of a sudden he has this great chance this year and makes the most of it? MANNY DIAZ: Yeah, what's neat about Jaquan's progress was he was a guy who a year ago to play a limited role, and you could see his instinct for the game. You lose two senior safeties, so could he handle that role of being the guy and being really the elder statesman in a very green secondary. The first six weeks of the season, he's playing at a very high level but making the plays maybe not to the naked eye that stand out. His tackling is phenomenal, sparing our blushes at times when we messed up in the front. And then the second half of the season was making the more spectacular plays, the more headline plays, the more game-winning plays. The plays he was making before were game winning, but the ones that really -- the turnovers and those type of things that really change games, which is what you love to see for a guy like that because he was so valuable to us the way he was playing before, but then he was really doing things to really win some big games the second half of the season. Q. He was a guy a month ago that people were talking about, hey, is he going, is he staying, what's he going to do. He's been real clear that his intent is to stay. Was that a relief to you at all, or did you have to have conversations with him at all about it? MANNY DIAZ: He probably came out and talked about it before we really had a chance to talk to him about it. That's great to hear as a coach. You want to -- I think what Coach Richt is trying to do, you want to build a program where the players want to stay, you know, where if it's in doubt that they don't -- sometimes it's not always a kid, sometimes they're better to leave. I think Jaquan loves Miami. I think he loves our program, and he loves where it's going and wants to be a part of it. Q. Coaching is all about multitasking, so this week besides preparing for Wisconsin, obviously first phase recruiting is done, but you do have three defensive players who are considering going pro. Have you spent any time with Richard, Kendrick, Michael, to try to sell them on returning? MANNY DIAZ: Yeah, you know, you don't want to shift the focus off the game, but you certainly have some time during the course of the month, and all we can do from our standpoint -- it really is advising them the same way we try to coach them for the game, which is you give them the numbers, you talk about what's real, you give them the information, you make sure that they're aware of -- because when you jump, you only have one opportunity to jump, and we see this every year as a coach, this is their one opportunity to do it, and you want to try to draw from your experiences of different stories that you've had, that you've seen, and try and give them the best information possible. Q. Are you hopeful on any of those three fronts as far as them returning or uncertain what's going to happen? MANNY DIAZ: Well, yeah, I would say we're uncertain. Maybe they're uncertain. But again, I think the big thing -- I think the most important thing is you build something where guys want to stay. They want to be a part of it. They do have the feeling or the greatest sense that we have the opportunity to do something very special here, and special is something that they can identify with because of what it means to be a Miami hurricane. Q. You mentioned a couple times that Mark (indiscernible). Big picture, what have been the keys for the success of the two years? MANNY DIAZ: I think the first key was just the player accountability. I think everything in this program starts in our off-season program, and I think we try to create a program where the guys that do right, their life gets infinitely better, and the guys that don't do right, theirs gets worse until they choose to do better. But a guy who -- I think where Mark sets the tone is he's a guy that's real, he's a guy who's mature, and the players sense that, so they know when they come in the building they're getting the same thing every day, and it's not going to fluctuate by whichever way the wind is blowing, and they take comfort in that because whether you're raising -- bringing up a team or raising a family, they want structure and they want discipline and they want to know what the parameters are, and if they're well-defined and they're set and then they're well-enforced, and I think everybody sort of thrives under that environment. Q. After a loss like Clemson's and the Pittsburgh loss, what have you seen from the defense in terms of their mood? MANNY DIAZ: The mood? Well, you know, when you're 18 to 22, you're probably more resilient than fans and coaches even are. They're certainly aware that we didn't play our best, so I do think that there's a sense to right or wrong and trying to feel like a defense, in particular, that did so many great things over the course of the year that this is our last opportunity for this group to play together and to go out and have a great performance and to play for one another and kind of show everybody what this version of the Miami defense is all about. Q. Do you think the layoff helps, having not played for nearly a month? MANNY DIAZ: Well, I know it helped us physically for sure because we were sort of limping to the finish line at the end of the year. Just the way our year went with Irma and losing the bye and then playing, there's no doubt that we paid the price for not putting teams away in October, so the fact that every week was an emotional game that came down to the end, very physical game, I think that took something out of us as we came down the stretch. So just to be able to get away for a little bit, even UM's final exams, we were still paying for I are ma because UM went an extra three days. The guys didn't get out of class until the Thursday before Christmas, which is really later than it normally is. So just that -- finally that ability to take a breath, even this past weekend, Coach Richt gave them a weekend to be home with their family, I think. They came back, you could see a different spring in their step yesterday at practice from what it was last week. Q. What memories do you have of Orange Bowls as a kid? MANNY DIAZ: A bunch. I was fortunate to be able to go to a lot of them. I just remember it being such an event down here. I remember the parade for sure, and even back when it was tied to the old Big 8 conference and you'd see these waves of people from Nebraska or Oklahoma or Colorado made it the odd year or whatever, and coming down was sort of -- but you know, but you remember the -- everybody remembers the first game in '84 and the two-point conversion and the Oklahoma game, the '91 Nebraska game, I was at that game. And then of course I went to school at Florida State, and it's funny, I had a media credential around my neck as the field goal miss of Nebraska -- when Florida State beat Nebraska for their first National Championship. So yeah, I think like all of us, I think we kind of were raised -- you remembered the halftime show, the halftime show at the Orange Bowl was always sort of special and unique. I think we were all sort of raised on the Orange Bowl. FastScripts Transcript by ASAP Sports   |
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