Duke head coach Manny Diaz talked with media members via Zoom on Wednesday in advance of his undefeated Blue Devils' trip to take on the Yellow Jackets on Saturday night.
Here's what he had to say about the Yellow Jackets as a team and the matchup itself:
On how Georgia Tech has defended the run well this season and how his team will try to counteract that on Saturday...
"We know firsthand they're well-coached, and they do a good job with their effort, physicality, toughness and schematically they cancel run gaps and just make it tough sledding on anybody. So it's a great challenge for our group because we are getting better and better at running the football every week, and it's going to be important. You cannot go on the road in conference and just expect to throw the ball 40-50 times and expect to win the game."
On Georgia Tech's offense and not allowing a sack and how Duke will try to counter that...
"I think it's very impressive, and I think there's a lot of things that contribute to that. That can be one, the players. He's a hard guy to sack. He's got great mobility. Two, the scheme, not just in terms of what they're calling for him to protect him, but most quarterbacks get sacked on third down and long. They just don't get in third down and long very often. So they do a really nice job with their sequencing to get into at the minimum 50-50 downs on third down where you can't just pin your ears loose. And then obviously they have a lot of experienced guys on the offensive line that are doing a good job of restraining. And when you've got a quarterback that make the plays that he can, I think that sometimes the players just get a little bit extra because they know if they keep him upright with the receivers they have, he can hurt people down the field. So the way you counter that is basically all the opposite things, right. You've got to do a great job in the run, you've got to try to leverage long-yardage situations, try to create losses and get them to the point where they have to drop back and throw the ball and maybe expose the quarterback. And the way you sack any quarterback is you have to take the quarterback off the first look. If he can throw it to the first guy he wants to throw it to, whether it's man or zone, you're never going to get him. So you've got to make him hold the ball, pat the ball and someone's got to win a one-on-one."
On what he's seen from Georgia Tech's Malik Rutherford that makes him so dynamic as the third-leading receiver in the ACC in yards...
"Explosive is the word. In terms of the combination, we haven't played anybody this year that's got two guys (Rutherford and Eric Singleton) that pose the explosive threat down the field. And what makes them both scary is they can both catch...you get so concerned with the run, and they can go catch long, play-action pass touchdowns on posts and what not. But they can also take little ones and turn little plays into big plays so you have to do a great job leveraging. So you have to do a great job tackling them to catch. Sometimes if they catch it, just tackling them is a good football play against those guys."
On what makes Georgia Tech's run game go, whether it's the "eye candy," the personnel or everything combined...
"All of the above. I mean they are very well-coached. They have a good scheme. They present a lot of where you're really defending two plays against them. You're defending before the snap and the play after the snap with changing pictures so there is a lot to look at. As I mentioned they have good players that play with a toughness, and then when you add the QB run game element to it you have to defend an extra gap because the quarterback becomes an extra runner. That gives them an extra blocker in the run game so it's a big stress on your defense, and you have to decide if you do need to go all in on that then you are susceptible to some one-on-one shots down the field. So they do a nice job putting stress on you in a lot of different ways."
On the problems Haynes King presents and how much he has grown over the last couple years as a starter...
"Well, I think the thing that jumps out to everybody is the interception number. From 16 to 1...when you throw one interception and you get sacked zero times, when you're talking about what is a framework, forget about stats and things that are flashy, think about what wins games, right. Don't turn the ball over and don't take negative plays. That's right in the plan to win. So he's excelling in both those fields, and as I mentioned, you have to defend two plays, their pre-snap motions and shifts and then whatever is called, and then he actually presents a third play which is if you actually cover and take away the first look and cover what's called now his legs are a problem. And they can do that by design with some pass plays that have QB draw attached to it or just with pass protection, if he doesn't like it, he can take off and run and get a first down on a third and 7. So when you play those type of quarterbacks you always feel the tension that they can cause. You can never really be relaxed because they are always a threat to do something that defenses generally don't like."
On not having a letdown after the emotional rivalry win over UNC and if his team has moved on...
"I think they have. Yes. And we just talked about it. The standard doesn't change, and that's the great thing about there's goals and then there's standards. And we've always tried to be a standards-based football team. If our goal was just to beat Carolina, our goal was just to be 5-0, then yeah you could take a step back because you could feel a sense of accomplishment and complacency. The standard's the standard, and the Tuesday practice doesn't care whether you won or lost. It just has a Tuesday practice that needs to be fulfilled, and I do think our guys have shown maturity this week in how they've done it. Ultimately, we've got to go play like it on Saturday. The physical work is mostly done at this point, and now there's just a lot of mental sharpening and focus on a tough week here at Duke. This is midterm week. Our guys, they're not like normal student-athletes. They have to excel on both sides of campus, and I think they've got the mindset to do it."
On going up against a team like Georgia Tech coming off an idle week and if that's a concern...
"It is what it is. You know what I mean, you can't do anything about it so to worry about it doesn't help. They've had a couple weeks to get ready for us, and also not to just get ready for us but to look back at them self-scout what they've done well. So you expect to see the best version of this Georgia Tech team, not just because of their ability to study us but their ability to hone and try to improve the things that they probably want to improve on."
On challenges of the first road game for Duke in conference...
"To me it's one of the hardest things to do in sports, and if you just look at the records of most teams when you go on the road in the league, to win a league road game is very difficult to do. And usually the best teams in college football are the ones that have the best conference road record. Expect it to be a great atmosphere, playing in prime time on Saturday night. I do think even though it was a peculiar set-up going on the road and beating a team like Northwestern who won eight games last year in their place helps because we do have two road wins. I think there is only one team in the country that has three, and I think there is 12 that have two wins on the road so far this year so we've done the thing about being in a hotel away from home and traveling but we recognize we're playing a team that hasn't lost in Atlanta. So this is what conference ball is all about, four at home and four away, and we're set to get our first one on the road."
