Manny Diaz on prep for Alabama and new offensive coordinator

The Miami Hurricanes and head coach Manny Diaz enter their Week 1 matchup against Alabama facing a lot of unknown, as the Tide have a lot of new faces on the offensive side of the ball.

Diaz spoke with media recently on entering the unknown against new Alabama offensive coordinator Bill O’Brien

“In an opening game there’s always going to be a bit of an unknown,” Diaz said via InsideTheU. “I think it’s been said out of their shop a bunch of times that they have an ‘Alabama offense’, they’ve had a run of offensive coordinators come through. Everyone has sort of flavored the offense slightly differently but who they are and their identity and those type of things aren’t going to change that dramatically. Obviously the ‘who they are’ in terms of their personnel has changed so there’s a little bit of an unknown of that as well in terms of they had a run of guys that left the team this past year.”

Despite facing a new scheme, and new faces, Manny Diaz says the game will be decided by fundamentals.

“But season openers I don’t think normally are dominated by scheme,” he said. “It’s going to be about tackling, it’s going to be about protecting the football and turnovers because of the limited times that we’re allowed to scrimmage — A college team can only scrimmage twice in training camp now — special teams, conditioning levels. These things historically decide season openers.”

This offseason Alabama not only lost former offensive coordinator Steve Sarkisian, who is now the head coach at Texas. The Tide lost almost all of their offensive production. Quarterback Mac Jones, running back Najee Harris and wide receivers Devonta Smith and Jaylen Waddle were all first-round draft picks in the 2021 NFL Draft. On the line, offensive linemen Alex Leatherwood, Deonte Brown and Landon Dickerson all declared for the NFL as well.

The Tide do return John Metchie III at wide receiver, who projects to be one of the top receivers in college football this season. At quarterback, former five-star Bryce Young steps in as the starter in his second year with the program.

For Miami, the Hurricanes return quarterback D’Eriq King and added a new weapon in former Oklahoma wide receiver Charleston Rambo. In the backfield, King will be joined by the promising running back rotation of Cam’Ron Harris, Jaylan Knighton and Donald Chaney. On the defensive side of the ball, replacing Jaelan Phillips and Quincy Roche could prove to be a tall task, but as Manny Diaz said, in the season opener against Alabama, fundamentals will be key.

If there’s a time to catch Alabama off guard, the season opener is the perfect time.