Penn State’s Manny Diaz to Kraft, Stubblefield: So, We Meet Again

Statement From Temple Director of Athletics Dr. Patrick Kraft

12/30/2018  10:31:00 PM | Football

This evening, head football coach Manny Diaz called to inform me that he has accepted the head coaching position back at the University of Miami. We are disappointed that he is leaving, but wish him the best as he returns home.

We have already launched a national search for a new head football coach and I confident that we will bring yet another outstanding head coach to North Broad Street. Out student-athletes deserve excellence and stability, and we are searching for the coach who can deliver on both.

We are moving forward the only way we know how: Temple Tough.

Dr. Patrick Kraft
Director of Athletics

• • •

MANNY DIAZ, PENN STATE’S NEW DEFENSIVE COORDINATOR, worked for Dr. Patrick Kraft, Penn State’s new VP for intercollegiate athletics, for 18 days. At Temple. Kraft was the Owls’ AD at the time and Diaz was the head football coach, from Dec. 12 to Dec. 30, 2018.

Diaz, who was the defensive coordinator for Miami (Fla.) under head coach Mark Richt for three seasons, left his native state of Florida to succeed Geoff Collins as Temple’s head football coach. Diaz kept one foot in Miami, helping the Hurricanes prep for a Pinstripe Bowl game against Wisconsin, which they lost 35-3 to finish 7-6.

Diaz was the creator of the Miami “Turnover Chain,” and was a hot commodity. Kraft made a smart hire. Maybe too smart. Within hours of Richt announcing his retirement, Diaz was offered the top job in Coral Gables.

He said yes, and Kraft issued the press release outlined above. What made the quick split a bit easier on Kraft’s end was the prenup, of sorts. Diaz’s Temple contract included a reported $4 million buyout.

Fast forward three years:

Despite a 16-9 record in the ACC and 21-15 overall record (as PSU went 22-13), Diaz was fired last December in a Miami changing of the guard that also cost Miami AD Blake James, who hired Diaz away from Temple, his job. In came Dan Radakovich from Clemson as the AD and Mario Cristobal from Oregon as the head coach. 

It all moved quickly: On. Nov. 30, 2021, defensive coordinator Brent Pry left Penn State for the head coach’s job at Virginia Tech. On Dec. 6, Diaz was fired by Miami. On Dec. 11, Diaz was hired by Penn State.

“You learn one thing in this profession,” Diaz said at last Saturday’s media day, as he and I talked on the Beaver Stadium turf, “and it’s always expect the unexpected, you know. To be honest, if there are jobs that one day you hope to get a chance to work at, coaching defense at Penn State would be one of them.”

Then, he said the silent part out loud.

“The fact that I’m here,” Diaz admitted, “is pretty wild.”

Talk about wild. Imagine Diaz’s surprise when four months into his new job at Penn State, that Kraft — who had since moved on to become AD at Boston College — was named Penn State’s new AD. (Irony of ironies: BC hired James as AD after Kraft left for PSU.)

“Yeah, small world, right? Yeah,” Diaz chuckled. “I’m such a big Pat Kraft fan. That’s such a giant win for Penn State. We’ve talked some. I’d love to have the chance to sit down with him and have dinner. We’ve kept in touch.”

That included when Kraft left Temple for Boston College in July 2020.

“Pat’s been awesome every step of the way,” Diaz said. “When he got to BC, I reached out to him. When the rumors first started popping that he could be in the mix here, I thought that would be something else. I’m really excited to have him lead the athletic department.”

• • •

MANNY DIAZ, IN HIS FIRST YEAR AS THE HEAD FOOTBALL COACH AT MIAMI (FLA.), was the boss of Taylor Stubblefield, who worked for Diaz for 366 days. Stubblefield was Diaz’s first wide receiver coach at Miami, from Jan. 18, 2019 to Jan. 19, 2020 — the day James Franklin hired Stubblefield to replace Gerad Parker, who left to be OC/QB coach for West Virginia.

Stubblefield was Franklin’s fourth WR coach in four seasons.

At Miami, Diaz originally brought in Stubblefield at the behest of Dan Enos, who Diaz named as his offensive coordinator and quarterback coach. Stubblefield, who was coaching at Air Force at the time, had coached with Eno at Central Michigan in 2011, when Enos was the head coach there.

Diaz, in his first stint as a head coach, gave Enos the ability to name his WR coach. Enos picked Stubblefield.

Fast forward a year: In 2019, Miami’s offense was ranked last in the FBS in third-down success, and ranked 120th in rushing offense and red zone offense. Miami was 6-7 that season, and lost 14-0 to Louisiana Tech in the Independence Bowl. Enos was gone that day.

“You know, man, it’s just a business,” Stubblefield said.

Stubblefield had nine different jobs in the dozen seasons before arriving at Miami. With Enos gone, he wondered what his own status was.

“When I was hired, it was a unique situation,” Stubblefield recalled last week. “Coach Diaz had a lot of input from the offensive coordinator (Enos) on the two positions that the offensive coordinator had a lot of input on who to hire. I was one of those who Coach Enos knew.

“When Coach Enos left, Coach Diaz very easily could have said to me, ‘All right, hey, you’re done as well.’ He allowed the new offensive coordinator, Coach (Rhett) Lashlee to be around me for a week to see if I was going to stay. Coach Diaz said that if (Lashlee) did not want me to be there, he would have let me go. But Coach Diaz gave me an opportunity to stay moving forward.

“During that time, Coach Franklin had spoken to me and then things kind of moved forward here. Just with the stability here, the opportunity to be back in the Big Ten, at a place like Penn State. I think Coach Diaz understood and he was supportive.”

Stubblefield and Diaz stayed in touch over the next couple of years. “We talked throughout the last two years when we had a big win or they did,” said Stubblefield, who noted that he knew Diaz was in the mix as DC at Penn State when Pry left. “I think that they were in talks. Coach Diaz called me and we talked briefly for, you know, 10-15 minutes.”

And you said good things? I asked Stubblefield.

“Of course,” he smiled.

5 QUESTIONS WITH MANNY

At Penn State’s media day last Saturday, when the players and assistant coaches hit the field for individual and small group interviews, I made a beeline for Diaz. I was fortunate to get 10 minutes for a one-on-one interview. He’s smart, very engaging and fairly forthright. Here’s part of that conversation:

1. What was your experience at ESPN like and does it help you today?

DIAZ: “I interned there in college and I went back to be able to be a PA (production assistant) for two years. Actually, my last day at ESPN was the day that Tiger won his first Masters at Augusta (April 13, 1997). I was at Florida State in ’97 as a volunteer and then ’98 was my first real job. I have a son (Colin) born in July of 97. He just turned 25. This will be my 25th season in college football. (Colin is a defensive GA at Rice; Diaz and his wife Stephanie also are parents of sons Gavin and Manny.)

“My first year at ESPN I worked on SportsCenter. And my second year there I was on their NFL shows and that was awesome. It exposed me to a lot of former NFL players; it was different in the ’90s; there weren’t as many people around. The ability to get around really high-level football people kind of sort of stoked my fire to take the jump and get into coaching.

Coming from that background, “I hope I understand the questions better because of that. That helps you answer what the questioner wants. Obviously, there are coaches that are less comfortable in front of the camera. But we speak in front of people for a living, so we should have some level of comfort. I do I think I understand what you as a journalist are trying to do, what your job is, who you serve, who you work for, and most of those things — even though it was a long time ago, and it is getting to be a smaller and smaller piece of the pie of what I’ve done. When you’re young, you’re obviously very impressionable. So, I remember those years very fondly.”

2. Is a Manny Diaz defense a Penn State defense?

DIAZ: “I think part of it is, because stylistically and philosophically, I am very aligned with what was here in the past. Certainly, though, it’s like a different chef at a restaurant. Everyone’s going to add their own little nuance to the recipe. But we didn’t go from serving Italian to Chinese food. I think that was important for our players. There are some standards and some different ways we go about doing some things. But I think the overall structure of it is pretty similar.”

3. One of your Penn State players was quoted this summer about your style as a teacher — that is very direct, very understandable. How would you characterize yourself as a teacher?

DIAZ: “Same thing, you know? You have to teach them in a way that they have to learn. We’re educators. The difference between us is that our test is given on Saturdays and we’re not the ones that give them the questions on the test. We bring in another team. And they do it in front of 107,000 people and on TV. So we have to prepare them for that. We have to prepare them for what we think the questions that they will be asked on game day.

“The longer you do this, the more you realize people learn in different ways. It’s my job to connect. Communication is connecting, so I try to connect in a way where they can understand. We use every method at our disposal.”

4.) Did you visit Bill Belichick and the Patriots over the summer?

DIAZ: “Yeah, it was my second time being up there. They don’t like publicizing it very much when people visit, so I don’t like to talk about it a lot. But they’ve been very hospitable the two times that I’ve been there.”

5.) This is an obvious question, which I’m sure you’ve gotten a lot, but I need to ask you: When you are 21-15 and successful as a head coach, that still has to be your goal — to get back into it as a head coach.

DIAZ: “Here’s the way I look at it: I didn’t get to become the defense coordinator of Penn State by saying on my first day at Middle Tennessee (in 2006) that I want to leave to go to Penn State. I just said I’m going to do a great job and see what happens. We tell our players the same thing in terms of their role.

“The way I got in this profession was as a volunteer at Florida State and saying I will do whatever job they want me to. People don’t generally give you other jobs if you are not doing your current one very well. So, I’m blessed that I’m in a place where I can coach defense like I can at Penn State, with the players that we can recruit who want to come to a school with this kind of tradition. I didn’t get this far by worrying about ‘the next thing.’ I’m not worried about the next thing. I’m just happy to be here.”