Dissecting Manny Diaz postgame opening statement after Miami football loss to Duke

There is a lot to dissect following the disappointing end to a frustrating season for the Miami football team after a 27-17 loss to Duke on Saturday. That came a week after a 30-24 loss to Florida International last week.

The Miami football team concluded their worst regular season since 2014 with a 6-6 record following a discouraging 27-17 loss at Duke on Saturday afternoon. The Hurricanes will now get ready for their bowl game as the coaching staff focuses on recruiting in the short term. There is a lot to fix.

The Miami football team competed a lot better against Duke than they did against Florida International according to Miami head coach Manny Diaz in his postgame press conference on Saturday night. The excitement that Diaz created in the offseason is long gone following a .500 season.

Miami loses the heart of its defense with the graduation of four-year starters at linebacker Shaq Quarterman and Michael Pinckney. Zach McCloud will return following playing four games to redshirt this season in order to replace Quarterman as the middle LB in 2020. The offense will lose their leader wide receiver, K.J. Osborne.

Building the leadership will be critical entering the 2020 season. Offensive guard Navaughn Donaldson and running back DeeJay Dallas have the option of leaving for the NFL or returning for their senior season in 2020. Getting both players back will help the leadership on offense tremendously.

"“I’m proud of the way that we competed and I’m proud of our effort. However, our issues are obvious. It is simply our (in)ability to execute that gave us no chance to win this football game.When you look at 13 completions out of 35 pass attempts and you throw in nine sacks on top of that, our passing game—we had no chance. Duke is going to play two coverages. They are going to play man coverage, so you have to have guys run to get open and you need to step up and make throws.They have always done a good job with pressuring the quarterback. We had injuries on the offensive line and that is part of it, but how could our passing game deteriorate in a short amount of time from early November? That is as much of an issue as anything.That is something we have to analyze and that was the story of the game. The key moment of the game was when we had a turnover and a short field and we were not capable of getting more than three points. We had another short field and took a sack.We had complete control of the game in the third quarter where one more score would have put Duke in a drop back passing game, where they were unable to protect their quarterback as well. We could not do that. Through a crazy exchange of punts, they had short fields and scored touchdowns.”"

Manny Diaz has changed the culture of how the coaching staff takes responsibility for the actions of the field. For all the criticism he gets, Diaz is extremely transparent for a head coach in this era. Diaz took ownership of the loss last week against FIU and did the same on Saturday night. Miami has a lot to figure out in the offseason.

The offensive line not being able to protect the quarterback or create holes in the passing game, the inability for Miami to take advantage of the short fields or put the game away and the poor play at QB were often the story of the 2019 Miami football season. Diaz and his staff need to analyze how to change all that for 2020.

On too many occasions during the 2019 season, it seemed like the Miami football players were not competing enough and taking the opposition lightly. The great Miami teams had a killer instinct to put teams away in the majority of games. Miami has talent coming in next season but will it be enough?

A lot of the fan base is calling for another coaching change with Diaz, the coordinators or some combination therein. That is going to put the Hurricanes one step forward and two steps back. Diaz is very self-aware and has a big picture of the program in mind. Now he needs to find a way to get his players to execute on the field.