Radio sideline reporter Jed Drenning provides periodic commentary on the Mountaineer football program for WVUsports.com. Be sure to follow him on Twitter @TheSignalCaller.
ORLANDO - Diaz and Kool. No, that’s not a cop show from the 1970s, but if it was I probably would’ve watched it.
Instead, they’re the two men that have most directly shaped the 2016 Miami Hurricanes defense: coordinator Manny Diaz and defensive line coach Craig Kuligowski.
Diaz has described the essentials to a successful defense as “unbelievable effort and unwavering violence” while coach Kool showcases a Twitter handle that perfectly suits the intensity of his job description: @LetsMeetatTheQB. As such, it’s probably not all that surprising that, working together, they’ve assembled a Hurricanes defense that is nothing short of relentless.
That tenacity has gone a long way toward repairing the hot mess that the Miami defense had become. A year after finishing 12th in the ACC in scoring defense at 28.2 points per game allowed, the Canes have shaved 10 points per contest off that total to trail only CFP participant Clemson among league teams in that category.
Sure, it’s easy to get caught up in the bright and shiny exploits of a Miami offense that’s been equal parts explosive and efficient. After all, the Hurricanes are the only Power 5 Conference team this season to average 6.5 yards per play while committing 10 or fewer turnovers.
In addition to featuring the school’s all-time leading passer -- QB Brad Kaaya (10 TDs, one interception in the last four games) -- Miami’s offensive roster includes a pair of 1,000-yard rushers (Mark Walton with 1,065 this season and Joseph Yearby with 1,002 in 2015); a dependable veteran at one receiver spot in senior Stacy Coley (163 career catches – just 10 behind Reggie Wayne’s school record of 173); an ESPN True Freshman All-American dynamo at another (Ahmmon Richards, 18.8 yards per catch) and a playmaker at tight end (David Njoku, seven TD catches) who has been referred to as “a poor man’s Shannon Sharpe.”
That said, the most compelling aspect of this football team is, nevertheless, its defense -- if only for the incredible transformation it has undergone since struggling so mightily a year ago.
To dyed-in-the wool fans of The U, the worst part of last season wasn’t the blown assignments or the missed tackles or even the eroded technique. For a program that boasts as proud a defensive heritage as any – a program that has forged bone-jarring All-Americans like Warren Sapp, Ray Lewis, Jerome Brown, Ed Reed and Sean Taylor – the worst part was that last year’s defense looked … soft.
The Hurricanes allowed 25 touchdowns on the ground while getting gashed at an alarming clip of 5.3 yards per rush, the most by an ACC team since 2009. Things bottomed out in a midseason home loss to Clemson. The Tigers sliced through the Hurricanes to the tune of 416 rushing yards, handing Miami the worst defeat in its 90-year history … a 58-0 beating the likes of which might be illegal in some states.
But that was then. This is now.
In the span of one offseason the Hurricanes went from soft to salty. The numbers reflect a return to the program’s dominance at the point of attack as Miami has yielded just 3.5 yards per rush this fall while allowing a mere eight rushing touchdowns (only six FBS teams have allowed fewer).
The improved production doesn’t stop there. The Hurricanes have also enjoyed a quantum leap in sacks and tackles for loss, jumping from a total of 26/66 a year ago to 33/99 this season. All told, more than one-in-six (17 percent) of Miami’s defensive snaps have resulted in a sack, a TFL or a turnover. That figure is good enough to rank No. 16 nationally (knowhuddle.com).
When Diaz and coach Kool arrived in Coral Gables as part of coach Mark Richt’s first-year staff this past spring, they extracted the best of their very diverse defensive backgrounds then tossed those elements into a pot and stirred like hell. As the above-mentioned numbers suggest, the results have been impossible to dispute.
And the problems presented by Miami’s new defensive braintrust are flashing brightly on Dana Holgorsen’s radar.
“He (Diaz) plays a lot of odd front, likes to blitz, has guys coming from everywhere, coupled with Big Kool (Kuligowski), their defensive line coach who came from Missouri. He was at Missouri for a long time,” Holgorsen said. “I have known Kool forever. He is considered probably the best d-line coach in the country.”
While Diaz has a long history of dialing up pressure from every angle, Kuligowski made his name during those 15 years in Missouri as the maestro of an even front defensive line that would smack you in the mouth with dynamic NFL first-round draft picks in the making like Shane Ray, Sheldon Richardson, Aldon Smith and Ziggy Hood.
Holgorsen faced those disruptive Missouri defensive lines while an assistant at Texas Tech where the Red Raiders posted a 1-3 mark against Kuligowski and the Tigers.
“They were a four-down front,” Holgorsen said of those Missouri defenses, “so (at Miami) they kind of merged the two, which is an interesting dynamic to watch, but they have been very successful at it.”
Successful indeed. Diaz has blended those even and odd fronts to great effect, offering up enough of each to maximize the talent of Miami’s personnel and keep opposing offenses off balance.
It’s a luxury Diaz wasn’t blessed with at some of his previous coaching stops. For instance, in 2015 as the D-coordinator at Mississippi State only 42 percent of the sacks the Bulldogs generated were made by their defensive line, meaning that the other 58 percent had to come from second- and third-level defenders as the result of blitz packages. Compare that to this year’s Miami defense, which has seen 68 percent of its sacks recorded by defensive linemen and you see a stark difference.
That’s a big advantage for a defensive play caller.
It’s a lot easier to play defense when you can rely on your big men with their hand in the dirt to pressure the passer instead of being forced to compromise numbers in coverage by dropping safeties down or blitzing your linebackers. As such, a disruptive defensive line gives you considerable flexibility when trying to offer up multiple coverage looks.
Skyler Howard has recognized this when studying the Miami defense.
“They fly around. They look good. They recruit well, big bodies, and they move fast,” Howard said. “They do a bunch of different stuff in the back end also. They keep the safeties back, a lot of help over the top.”
Don’t take this to mean that Manny Diaz has grown averse to lighting you up with pressure. He still can and he still will. The difference for Diaz now is that, with a dynamic defensive line anchoring things up front, those blitz packages are a luxury instead of a necessity.
All of this is old hat for Kuligowski. Coach Kool’s pass rushers were the spark plugs behind Missouri’s run to consecutive SEC Eastern Division titles in 2013-14 (the Tigers posted a league-best 83 sacks during that span). And now – just 12 games into his new post in Miami -- you can already see Kuligowski’s fingerprints all over the play of the Hurricanes’ young but immensely talented defensive line.
Step into the film room and the evidence is clear.
Early in the second quarter against Florida State, Miami ran a twist with the Seminoles facing a third and 4. Hurricanes’ nose guard Courtel Jenkins crashed down hard across the face of the center, occupying him and the left guard. This created an open lane for Miami sophomore defensive tackle Gerald Willis (the biggest contributor among the seven Hurricanes denied the opportunity to make the bowl trip due to internal reasons) to loop in behind Jenkins and race cleanly into the FSU backfield. As if that didn’t stir up enough trouble for Noles’ quarterback Sean Maguire, Canes’ freshman defensive end Joe Jackson exploded on the snap to beat Florida State’s two-time All-ACC left tackle Roderick Johnson upfield. Maguire didn’t have a chance. The two Hurricanes collapsed the pocket and met at the QB for a 10-yard sack.
In the game of football, you can win on a given snap with tactics or with talent. This play demonstrated Miami can beat you with both – and that’s scary. It showcased two of the Canes’ greatest strengths defensively: a well-coached, well-executed scheme and the unpredictable benefits of raw athleticism.
The twist up front created a big enough headache, sending Willis crashing into the backfield nearly uncontested. But even if you accounted for that, another problem arrived in the form of Jackson beating your talented, blindside pass protector off the edge. This kind of chaos from all directions is nightmare fuel for a quarterback. Imagine someone tossing you a running chainsaw as you’re busy trying to put out a grease fire.
More game tape provides additional proof of the strides the Miami defense has taken this season. Sometimes it’s as clear as watching sophomore defensive tackle R.J. McIntosh relentlessly battle through a double-team to record a TFL. Other times the evidence of good coaching is subtle, like sophomore DT Kendrick Norton getting under the pads of Virginia Tech center Eric Gallo, standing him upright and waiting on Hokies’ QB Jerod Evans to step up in the pocket and commit in one direction or the other before releasing from Gallo and then pouncing on Evans for the sack.
From a personnel standpoint, if you want to cut the tethers off your defensive line and liberate it to attack gaps and make plays, you better be outfitted with a group of linebackers capable of flying sideline-to-sideline and cleaning up the mess left behind.
Miami has a trio who can do that very thing.
“Their three linebackers, all three of those dudes are all true freshmen, I don’t know if I have ever seen that,” Holgorsen said.
“They’re big, 6-2, 230-240 (pounds), run, hit and they’re true freshmen. I would hate to play against those guys here in a couple of years.”
Middle linebacker Shaquille Quarterman, strong side linebacker Zach McCloud and weak side linebacker Michael Pinckney have combined for 167 tackles. All three players were early enrollees in the spring. Typically, when you have so many true freshmen playing such a prominent role in one segment of your team, the learning curve with that group is a major concern. But that hasn’t been the case this season.
McCloud has been consistently productive while Quarterman and Pinckney were impressive enough to garner ESPN True Freshman All-American honors. The three youngsters avoided many of the pitfalls you might expect from freshmen linebackers. Outside of a manageable list of exceptions, you didn’t often see them over-pursue, react too impulsively to play-action fakes or let one bad play cast a mental spell on them into the next. The three of them have looked like veterans all year and now – with a regular season’s worth of starting experience under their belts – they actually are.
Miami enters the 2016 Russell Athletic Bowl riding the crest of a four-game winning streak, but it might not be the hottest team on the field. Only three FBS programs (Alabama, Clemson and Ohio State) have compiled a better record over the last 18 games than the 15-3 mark posted by Dana Holgorsen’s Mountaineers.
WVU will need to muster all the might and will that helped it achieve that record to overcome an incredibly talented Miami team led by one of the most successful bowl veterans in college football. Mark Richt is an established postseason coach with nine bowl victories to his credit. The only head coach West Virginia has ever squared off against in a bowl match-up who boasted more was Richt’s former mentor, Bobby Bowden.
The last time a Richt team traded blows with the Mountaineers was, of course, in the 2006 Sugar Bowl. West Virginia shut the door on the Georgia Bulldogs that night 11 years ago by running the football, forcing a few key turnovers and making a critical play on special teams.
That same formula would serve the underdog Mountaineers well against Richt this time around as well.
I’ll see you at the 50.