If you look at Manny Diaz from the outside, he seems like a fairly conservative man. He appears to be sober, in the cultural sense, serious, and an upstanding sort of a guy.
And truthfully, he’s all those things. However, underneath that, there beats the cuthroat heart of a riverboat gambler.
After having seen him at Miami, and more closely at Duke, Diaz, clearly, is not scared to take chances, and he encourages his players to do so as well. Remember the turnover chain he introduced at Miami? That thing drove his defensive players crazy trying to get it around their neck. It was also a national sensation.
And, again, it encouraged risk-taking.
So it didn’t totally surprise us that Duke opened up against Stanford with a bit of a swashbuckling play: if you missed it, Duke’s first kickoff was an onsides kick.
It seemed like something of a stunt, but actually, Duke studied Stanford’s lineup on kickoffs and knew that it had a solid chance of working, and it did.
It’s the kind of swagger that surprises about Diaz. He comes across as a bit quiet and conventional, but underneath, he’s ready to, if not bet the farm, at least gamble the lower 40 acres on something interesting.
We’d love it if someone would dust off the archives and show him the legendary shoestring play from 1969. It would be harder to pull off today, but maybe it would provide some inspiration for an equally audacious stunt.
