Craig Has The Scout - Duke 2025
Coming Up
Who: Duke Blue Devils
When: 11:00 am – September 6th, 2025
Where: Wallace Wade Stadium, Durham, NC
How: ESPN
Opponent Primer:
Head Coach: Manny Diaz.
Manny Diaz is well traveled with stops at NC State, Middle Tennessee, Mississippi State, Texas, Louisiana Tech, and Miami. The stops were mostly as a defensive coordinator, always as a pressure artist. He squared off with Illinois in the Heart of Dallas Bowl. From 2016 to 2018, he ran Mark Richt’s defense at Miami, then took the Temple head job for about five minutes before the Hurricanes yanked him back to lead the program. That run ended in 2021 with an unceremonious exit, but Diaz landed on his feet at Penn State, where he helped build one of the nastiest defenses in the country and capped it with a Rose Bowl win in 2022. After the 2023 season, Duke tapped him to replace Mike Elko. Now Diaz enters the year with momentum and a mission. His defenses are synonymous with aggression, and last season he overdelivered. Through sharp player development and savvy portal moves, he’s turned Duke into a legitimate ACC sleeper. The scheme is violent, the roster is fast, and Diaz is trying to show the ACC what Duke can do with intelligent roster building.
Offensive Style: High-tempo Shotgun Spread with extensive RPO Elements.
Jonathan Brewer is the OC for Diaz and brings the same offense Diaz ran at Miami. Brewer started his coaching career learning from Gus Malzahn and Rhett Lashlee at Auburn. He is a Lashlee acolyte and moved with Lashlee through stops at UConn, SMU, Miami, and back to SMU as Lashlee moved through the ranks of college football. Brewer coached under Diaz at Miami as a quality control coach but a trusted advisor to Lashlee. Lashlee was the head coach at SMU when Diaz was hired, so Manny reached out to the protégé to take over his offense at Duke.
Brewer is more pass happy than Malzahn and has shown flexibility in his approach based on his personnel. At SMU, Preston Stone threw for 3,197 yards and 28 touchdown passes in 2023 (that’s Northwestern starter Preston Stone). In his opening year at Duke, he coaxed Maalik Murphy into throwing for 2,933 yards and 26 touchdowns, which are big numbers for a QB known as a questionable passer. Brewer adapts his scheme to leverage his talent on the roster from power backs to finesse receivers.
Defensive Style: 4-2-5 shell with blitzes coming everywhere and a zone framework.