AD James confident in Diaz adding DC duties; hoping for full stadiums
Miami Hurricanes athletic director Blake James touched on a number of issues around his football program in a web conference with reporters Tuesday ahead of the UM baseball season opener on Friday night at top-ranked Florida.
“The season didn’t end the way we would’ve liked it to,” said James of the 8-3 football season that ended with a 62-26 loss to North Carolina and ensuing bowl defeat to Oklahoma State.
“Overall, I think it was a real step forward from the previous year in [coach] Manny [Diaz]’s first year as head coach. I don’t want to take away from the fact that as a program we took a step forward.”
James addressed Diaz’s decision to go without a true defensive coordinator on his staff and handle those duties himself. Diaz, going into his third season as head coach at Miami, was previously defensive coordinator under former coach Mark Richt.
“He’ll be calling the defense, [but] I think there will be a lot of defensive coordinator-type support from the staff that he has surrounded himself with,” James said. “We did talk about the balance of being a head coach versus being a coordinator — good, open
conversation back and forth. Manny feels very confident in what his role will be and really in the support that he’ll receive from the staff that’s around him to have us ready to go on game day.
“A lot of conversations [were] about what his thoughts were after the season was over on what we need to look at doing differently, how we would do that and who would help him in doing that. I don’t think I would call it a stamp of approval [I give him]; I would call it good, open dialogue in understanding what our expectations are of our football program. And there’s not a person that understands it more clearly than Manny.”
James admires how Diaz
immediately addresses issues when he sees them. He points to how punting issues in 2018 and kicking issues in 2019 led him to quickly land Lou Hedley and Jose Borregales, respectively. After the offense struggled in 2019, Diaz made a change at offensive coordinator with Rhett Lashlee and got quarterback D’Eriq King. Defensive issues last season were addressed with changes on the coaching staff.
“I think he’s as good as any coach at evaluating what needs to get better and what changes need to take place in order for us to get better,” James said. “I think he’s got — already, just in a short window — a track record of showing that he’s willing to make changes.
“So far the changes that he’s made, have really worked out well.”
The Hurricanes are hopeful they can fill Hard Rock Stadium for this fall’s football season after capacity was limited to 20% (or 13,000 fans) in 2020 amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m encouraged that with the further distribution of the vaccine and people taking the steps that need to be taken, that we’ll be able to open up in Atlanta [versus Alabama on Sept. 4] with — I’m going to hope for — a full crowd and that’s the same opportunity that we’ll have back here in Miami,” James said.
“I think it’s too early on to make any predictions as to what that exactly will look like. … We’re still so far off. At this point last year, we didn’t even realize what impacts of COVID would be, so to try to guess what it’ll look like in September I don’t think is fair.”
Even with the limited capacity last fall, as coronavirus cases in America continued to rise, Miami home games did not sell out.
The closest was 12,806 when UM hosted Florida State in September. The December regular-season finale against North Carolina drew 12,092 fans, but others did not surpass 10,000 in attendance with the opener against UAB bringing in 8,153 fans.