Coaching changes bring optimism, of course; there seems to be plenty of that around South Bend these days. I spoke to Bobby Diaco (here's his bio), the new defensive coordinator of the Notre Dame Fighting Irish under new head man Brian Kelly. We talked about Coach Kelly, the new approach in South Bend and how preparations for spring ball and the upcoming season have been going as the staff works to make ND a top-10 program again. The Irish have a big junior day coming up March 20 as one step in the process.
From speaking with Coach Kelly a few weeks back, he spoke of a sense of entitlement with the team before. What are the things you can get a sense of that you may not necessarily pick up from studying the game film of your players?
Diaco: I would say that, as a coach, the first thing that you see as a person as a trained evaluator is their body type when they're walking around. Who has some level of fitness, tangible qualities or tangible liabilities. That's first as you walk in the door and are presented with the player. You're getting an opinion on what's important to that player. Is he physically fit and lean and trim, and well-dressed and clean-cut? You can see a lot of other things in there: drive, passion for the task, energy. If he's overweight, out of shape, sloppy in his appearance -- things untied, things undone -- right there it correlates a lack of attention to detail in how they're living their life.
How much have you watched of last season's defense?
I've watched a pretty good amount of it.
Who jumps out at you?
I hate to single anyone out. There's no one that I'm disappointed with. There's not one player who I've seen that I'm saying can not physically do the job. And I'm not evaluating what they're doing; it's basically movement, energy, effort and intensity and contact that we're looking at.
Do you evaluate guys on film similarly to how you evaluate high school juniors and seniors?
You do, and I know that might seem odd to some. Watching the tapes from 2009 Notre Dame really has nothing to do with what they're going to be doing. Zero. I couldn't be less interested in that. It's all about the player. Take a D-lineman for instance. I want to see the "get-off" on the snap. That is unchanged. It doesn't matter whether the player has an ND logo on or a Penn State logo on or a Western Illinois logo. It doesn't matter whether the player is playing in a 4-3 stack, 4-2-5 or whatever. It's all about when the ball is snapped, how long does it take for the player to move? Then what happens after that, in terms of the effort, the energy, the contact he plays with and the strength, low-body control, ball skills, playing the ball in the air. It's all very similar to the evaluation of a high school player. Of course, you're understanding that with a 15-, 16- or 17-year-old, you're looking at it with more of an eye toward the future rather an if you're looking at a rising senior in college, where you're watching to see how much ground in that six months can be made up to prepare that player to compete at the highest level.
Last year, you come into Cincinnati with 10 new starters on defense and you guys put up some impressive numbers. How different is this transition for you?
It is a little different that way. When I ended up at Cincinnati, it was guys that I knew and had worked with before, but they didn't know the defense. The defense was not built at that point, so there was that phase of everyone getting on the same page. Now we're coming here, a couple of the support personnel and defensive assistants were with us a year ago. Half of the six already have a nice understanding of how we're going to do our business and communicating. That's been a big help.
Having worked under Al Groh (at Virginia), how much influence did that have upon you and your 3-4 scheme?
We did it in college when I played at Iowa, but we just called it Base-50. Most of the guys with white hair will remind you that whenever they hear the term "3-4" that it's just a Base-50. When I was in college Bill Brashier was the defensive coordinator, and he was just an awesome coach and an awesome guy. My first touch was in the Hayden Fry system there. Then to fast forward 13 years to meeting Coach Groh, it had elements of Base-50, but he created and built that defense with Bill Belichick and Bill Parcells. To learn it from one of the founding fathers of that structure was really awesome.
Coach Groh is really a teacher. He's a defensive teacher. For a while to shadow him and listen to every single nuance of those finite coaching points that you really need to have this defense be functional. It's as important to get those nuances of fit and block structure and key as it is to get the defense itself structurally. You need both elements. It was an honor. They call it "The Tribe." And since then I've morphed that package, because there were some things that I felt were important that they didn't facilitate. What we're going to do, you can't really put it in a "3-4" box. It's really its own entity.
Hayden Fry has so many protégés who have had such great success as head coaches. What are the similarities you see between him and a Brian Kelly?
They're both developmental guys. They're very similar. Young men are first. And when I say that, it cuts through everything: the academics, how they conduct themselves in the community, how they're communicating. It's all about how they're treated. When developing and designing schemes, that's done after we figure out what the young men can do. They're first all of the time. It's all about developing them fundamentally. That's what separates those guys and what makes Hayden Fry a Hall of Fame coach and someone I love dearly.
With so much talk about how kids are evaluated and labeled these days through the recruiting process, is the developmental part and the character side of things overlooked more now? And is that why Kelly has had such success with guys who weren't highly touted?
Absolutely. I don't want to be coy about this, but I don't want to talk too much about Coach Kelly's development system. I don't want to give out any information that he doesn't want to have out there, but it is a scientific system of evaluation in the recruiting process. There are specific categories. We don't necessarily look at the player at doing the jobs he's doing now as correlating to college. We look at the players that we believe show the tangible and intangible qualities that we want them to do. They may be at different positions. There may be tight ends who are tackles or wide receivers that are linebackers. A lot of people talk about it, but Coach really does it, and he also has the strength and conditioning system to bring that player from one to the next. You see that at Iowa with guys like [John] Alt, [Ross] Verba, [Chris] Knipper, [Robert] Gallery; those were dynamic awesome tackles that were tight ends. You see walk-ons that became great players. It's a very similar system with Coach.
You think there is a temptation with coaches now to get a little further from that because there's so much more attention paid by fans and people within the business to who a four-star is, and so-and-so ran a 4.31 at some combine, etc?
I know we all have confidence from the top -- from Coach Kelly -- that we don't have to chase talent for talent's sake. If the player can do the jobs and is a fit and is the "right kind of guy" -- the RKG that Coach talks about, we're going to try [really hard] to get him. And hopefully it correlates and he's got five stars, but if he doesn't and he can improve the team and the unit, that'll come first
