Duke returns to the field after its bye week as the Blue Devils travel to Atlanta for an ACC showdown against Georgia Tech on Saturday.
Here is everything Manny Diaz had to say on Monday about the matchup:
Opening statement
Good to be back in game week. Having a chance to step away, watch some games this weekend. The buzzword to me that comes through in college ball right now is consistency. I think everyone's having a really hard time figuring out who's good and who's not good, and how can this team be good on this week and then all of a sudden turn around the next week and look terrible and whatever. I think what you see is there's just a lot of good teams, and the hardest part is to be the same team every week. The hardest part is to be consistent,
to be consistently good. And I think that's what every coach in the country is striving to get their team to find a way to be the same version of themselves every week. It's extraordinarily difficult because people can make you look inconsistent by their play.
The talent disparity right now in college football gives you a chance to get beat any given week. And when I look at our matchup this week against Georgia Tech, they're a good team without a good record. And the name is consistency. It's hard to be consistent when you've had as many guys out of the lineup as they've had. You talk about being down four starters in the offensive line. They get the midnight game at Stanford last week, and I mean almost half their defensive two-deep is not available. So, a team that we believe has extraordinary talent, we know they have a great coaching staff. I think Brent's one of the top head coaches in our league. He's got a great staff. So in our mind, this is a good football team that's looking for consistency the same way that we are. We did our annual bi-week self-scout review this morning where we game plan as if we were going to play ourselves on each side of the ball and come together and share what we see.
And there's plenty of things that again, that have contributed to us winning our first four games, but there's also plenty of things that could contribute to us meeting defeat. So we're trying to get those things fixed before somebody fixes them for us. And that's been the main focus right now as our bye week in addition to getting ready to go play in Atlanta.
Possible pitfalls coming off a bye week
Well, historically, it's game sharpness in a bye week. It's almost again like an opener, just your timing and your passing game, tackling on defense, special teams execution, all those type of things. Of course, with both teams on a bye this week, we're all sort of coming off the same thing. But we don't decide when they happen in the schedule. You have to take advantage of them, especially now with us playing eight straight in the league to finish up the season. So I think everybody's taking a deep breath, and away we go.
What did the team focus on during bye week?
Well, you want to continue to develop, really the way that the William and Mary game ended, we have seen some different guys start to contribute to the football team in all three phases. And so really last week you're still trying to develop that side of your roster where we can count on more guys to play more snaps. I think the guys that got a taste in the game and their confidence that can grow because of that. But also we really wanted to feel like we were ready to play Georgia Tech last weekend, really how we prepare for openers and bowl games. We actually played a mock game on Thursday in the stadium with our developmental squad guys pretending to be Georgia Tech. So that gave us a chance as a coaching staff to evaluate what we called, what we liked, what we didn't like, what we could handle in that short.
We could try to create an urgency in a bye week where guys don't feel like we're sort of hanging out. Could we get ready to play in a one week turnaround, and now we have a chance to refine the plan this week, get back on the field tomorrow, the Tuesday practice. And it's not the first time seeing it, but then the expectation is our level of execution should be higher than our normal Thursday because we've already done all these things, and we could go.
On retaining the edge during bye week
Well, I think our leadership understands. We don't have anybody in that building that's ever beaten Georgia Tech. And so they get it, and they understand that we went down there two years ago, I think we were five and 0 that year. I think they came here last year. We had won three straight in the league. So they understand, and again, they have a healthy respect for that program and for what they do. So it's hard not to have an edge when you've got that. And I keep mentioning this team has a strong desire to do things that last year's team couldn't do. So they're well aware this would be one of those things.
This article originally appeared on Duke Wire: Everything Duke HC Manny Diaz said previewing Georgia Tech
