Manny Diaz Talks Culture, Leadership, & Upholding Standards At Duke
"I always try to trust some big ideals," Diaz told me. "I believe in alignment. I believe alignment wins.”
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Hey friends,
On this week’s “Next Up” Podcast, I’m joined by Duke head coach Manny Diaz for an in-depth conversation about his coaching journey, leadership philosophy, and the challenges of building a winning program.
From being fired at Texas in 2013, to leading Miami, and coordinating one of the nation’s top defenses at Penn State, Diaz has seen it all throughout college football’s evolving landscape.
Now, he’s taking on a new challenge at Duke, and he’s determined to make his mark.
In this episode, Diaz shares his approach to building a strong culture, the importance of toughness in his coaching philosophy, and what it takes to recruit and retain top talent.
Whether you’re a college football fan, coach, or aspiring leader, Diaz’s testimony shows what it takes to succeed at the highest level through tenacity and persistence.
Here are my three favorite takeaways from my conversation with the second-year leader of the Blue Devils:
1️⃣ Alignment Wins
When it comes to cultivating a winning locker room, many coaches aren’t able to single out a specific element as the leading indicator toward achieving success.
For Diaz, however, that key performance indicator is crystal clear. It’s alignment.
“It is the most important thing,” Diaz told me. “Again, I always try to trust some big ideals. I believe in alignment. I believe alignment wins.”
When Diaz first put together his coaching staff after taking the Blue Devils’ head coaching gig in December 2023, he aimed to frame a group rooted in familiarity.
Less than three weeks after settling into his new role, Diaz lured offensive coordinator Jonathan Brewer away from SMU after serving as the Mustangs’ co-play caller in 2023.
In Dallas, Brewer led SMU’s offense to top-15 marks nationally in red zone offense, scoring offense, and total offense. But, Brewer had previously worked under Diaz at Miami in 2020 and 2021 as an offensive quality control assistant, making the opportunity too enticing to pass up.
Similarly, Diaz’s defensive and special teams coordinators, Jonathan Patke and Gabe Infante, worked with him at Miami and Penn State, respectively. In 2024, Patke’s defense led the ACC in tackles for loss per game, sacks per game, fumbles recovered, and turnovers gained.
Entering 2025, Duke stands as one of very few Power Four programs returning all three of its coordinators from last season — a true testament to Diaz’s culture, relationship maintenance, and top-down alignment.
“You didn't want to go through year one, and get after year one and say, ‘Oh, that's what you meant when you said that,’” Diaz said. “You want to have those conversations before the season. I thought that was a part of our success the first year because, as a staff, we were ready to rock and guys knew what we were trying to accomplish.”
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2️⃣ Be Secure In Your Identity
Aside from maintaining fruitful relationships with his staff members, Diaz has generated a culture of authenticity with his players in just over a year spent in Durham.
Only eight Duke players entered the transfer portal after the 2024 campaign, highlighted by losing just two starters.
Diaz and his staff seamlessly backfilled outgoing talent with seven carefully curated inbound transfers, including former Tulane quarterback and four-star prospect Darian Mensah, whom ESPN ranked as the top-rated player in the portal.
“I think first, you have to be authentic, which means you have to be secure in who you are,” Diaz told me. “People have a hard time, at times, being authentic because they're worried about letting the guard down and being real, because if you're real, then you have the chance to be judged. I think that's a major part of it.”
According to Diaz, individual identities often get tested the hardest during periods of adversity.
As the defensive coordinator at Penn State from 2022 to 2023, the Nittany Lions finished with the second-best total defense in the country after his second season in Happy Valley.
To Diaz, that group wouldn’t have performed up to its standard without initially facing a slew of gut punches. Specifically, Diaz cited the Nittany Lions’ 41-17 blowout loss to Michigan in 2022 as the unit’s turning point.
“The key moment of the two years at Penn State was when we got pounded by Michigan the first year, and to walk into the defensive team room and say, ‘Here's how it is, here's what went wrong, [and] here's how we're going to fix it,’” Diaz recounted. “And, really, that was the turning point in the two years there defensively, in terms of what we were able to do.”
When it comes to retaining staff members and players alike through collective buy-in, few in the business are more skilled at generating cohesion than Diaz.
“You've got to have vulnerability, and you got to have authenticity, to have relationships with anybody,” Diaz reiterated.
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3️⃣ Embrace Cultural Pillars
In today’s modernized college football landscape, coaches often struggle to find a balance in building a roster fit to “win now” via the portal, or focusing more towards the future through traditional high school recruiting.
At Duke, Diaz was forced to offset 17 departing transfers after being hired ahead of the 2024 go-around. Consequently, he landed 21 new transfers last offseason to lay an initial foundation.
That foundation won nine games, marking the second-only stretch in program history where Duke has won at least eight matchups in three straight seasons.
Since the bricks have been laid for a long-term payoff, Diaz is now running his program “The Duke Way.”
“What makes us unique and special is we have an elite education that other people at the Power Four level can't offer, [and] combined with the winning right now, we're really the only program that can give you the best of both worlds,” Diaz told. “We believe that the people this school attracts want to be here for four years, which gives us a chance to develop a roster in a way that I don't know a lot of other schools are.”
Within the most recent signing period, Diaz was able to ink 27 high school prospects, the most in Duke football history.
Moreover, Diaz told me his class — ranked 30th per 247Sports — finished the recruiting cycle ranked as “the best recruiting class in [program] history.”
“That's a statement of intent that we want to build to win at Duke,” Diaz said.
With Diaz at the helm of the Blue Devils, there’s no better fit to uphold the institutional values of Duke while sustaining success on the gridiron itself.
To watch our complete conversation, click here.
If you have any questions, comments, or feedback, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me by email at adam@brenemanmedia.com.
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Shoutout to Connor Krause for helping to write this newsletter and putting it together!
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