What Manny Diaz had to say ahead of Duke's season opener vs. Tulane

Opening statement

Yeah, good to see everybody. It does feel like game week now. It's officially official. And for us, we're just excited to play. I think what we saw with the week zero game at some point, you got to find out who you are and what you're about. We've moved on from potential season to production season. And what a great way to test ourselves in the opener. Obviously, a program that got after us a year ago, we've got a lot of respect for. They're used to winning. And that's important thing to have. That's what we're trying to build around here, that same expectation. But it changes year to year. I mean, you look at the people that played in last year's game, it's like the laundry will be similar, but so much personnel is different on both sides. And I think that's another theme. 

If you watch the week zero games in college ball now, early season, it's going to be just about trying to get the pieces to come together and try to present as the best version of yourself because forget about trying to figure out who your opponent is. I think everyone's just trying to still figure out who they are without the ability to play an ex division game or preseason game or something like that. So that's kind of been our MO is to try to get us right, try to make us hard to beat with the things that are normally true in every football game. But I think in season openers have even a magnified performance. If you watch the games this past weekend, ball security, especially around quarterbacks, special teams, errors, mistakes there in that phase. A lot of things like that that can out determine the outcome of games, even just different mindsets of different field positions, just things that when you get to winning time that you've got to get in mid-season form and you got to figure out to do it in your openers. 

So a great test for us and we're excited, excited to be at home in front of our fans. Student body showed up. Should be a great day and we're excited to get out there and play.

What does he know about his team heading into the season?

Well, I don't know if anybody knows anything. What do we think we know more than other things? Obviously we like our backs, we like our tight ends, we like our offensive line. And so you want to try to be able to feature those, but I think everybody knows that also. The defense is going to be relatively aware of that. I know we've got a different feel on the defensive side of the ball than we did a year ago. There's a bite and an urgency about them and it reminds me more of 24 than what we saw in 25. But you got to go out there and do it. And with so many new faces, guys stepping up into different roles from what they had a year ago. 

Again, if you got a hundred guys on a team and you play 50-some odd guys in a game, there are very few of the 50 that are doing the exact same thing they did a year ago. Either everybody's role has increased or even if you were a starter last year, just by the expectation of you coming back, there's a certain expectation level that changes even personally for your expectation to play. So like I said, it's all new and what happened a year ago has no bearing on what happened this year and they're in the same boat. So I think you'll just see a lot of excitement on both sides. 

On fall camp being the most competitive so far

It has, yeah. Because they recognize that if they don't do things the right way, that it's not hard to find someone that can. Now what you ultimately want as a coach is you want many guys that can do the right thing and that way you can stay, which I think will be an important thing with 3:30 kickoff is that you can play a lot of guys and stay fresh for a game that the expectation is it'll be decided in the fourth quarter. So we have had good competition. I think the coach has done a really good job of pushing our guys through camp and we do feel like we can go way deeper than 11 on the defense side of the ball with guys that can execute for us. 

On breaking in a new starting quarterback

Well, we've done it for three straight years, right? The first part of your question, the continuity is that the players understand the expectation and then you have the visual evidence or statistical evidence that it works. And so the coaches get it, the players understand it, players can explain to other players because they've been through it and they can see Duke guys executing and having it work. When you bring in another quarterback, especially when they're a transfer, they've got their old body of knowledge of the way they used to do things. All quarterbacks are a little bit uniquely different because they all are going to have different skill sets, not in terms of the physical skill sets, the obvious arm strength, accuracy, those type of things. Certain guys just like certain types of plays better. Certain guys like play action shots or RPOs or movement plays or whatever. 

There's just different things that they feel more comfortable with. So I think what you got to do is when you bring a guy into your program, you got to find out who they are, find out what they do best. And like any other good coach would do is you build your offense around what they feel the most comfortable executing. 

On health of the team heading into season

So in training camp, a very young, promising offensive lineman, Roman Fina, suffered a lower-body injury that'll take him out for the year. It's a disappointment for him because I think he's got a great future here. Other than that, health-wise we were pretty good. We do have a couple of guys that are still bumps and bruises type thing, but there's nobody we'd rule out for the opener other than Roman. So I feel good about that.

On the team’s reaction to Walker Eget named starting QB

I think there's just a knowing, you know what I mean? So it just makes sense and it's a question answered. Again, 50 guys on offense, there might be 49 different reactions, but I think more than anything from the standpoint is we have our identity now. We know who we are, coaches know, and so now let's go build an offense wrapped up in that identity that can go win one game this week is all we can do. 

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This article originally appeared on Duke Wire: What Manny Diaz had to say ahead of Duke's season opener vs. Tulane