Manny Diaz Has The Eyes of Texas Excited

Before the season started, Bruce Feldman wrote a great piece about Texas' new Defensive Coordinator Manny Diaz. Apparently, Manny Diaz is a coach that very much believes in digging into the numbers and trying to look at coaching defense from as many angles as possible.

Diaz, who didn't play college football, was apparently very taken with Michael Lewis' book Moneyball. Since reading the book, Diaz has tried to utilize any and all available statistics to evaluate his defenses and his approach to measuring his defenses.

If you are not familiar with the book, now a major motion picture as well, Moneyball details how Oakland A's General Manager Billy Beane was able to use statistical analysis to turn a low-budget, mid-market team that had become a cellar dweller into a perennial playoff contender. Since the book appeared in print in 2003, virtually every major league baseball franchise has started to use statistical analysis to help run their organization. Feldman goes into detail in his article about the different and unique statistics Diaz uses to help evaluate the success of his defenses. In the spirit of Moneyball and Coach Diaz' inner stat nerd, let's see how his CBTN stats look:

Coach	School	Yrs. Coached at School	CBTN Rating	CBTN Stars	WP%	WP% in Previous Five Years	Avg. Recruiting Rank
Manny Diaz	MTSU	4	46.22		47.37%	42.37%	96.80
Manny Diaz	Miss. St.	1	74.17		69.23%	38.33%	N/A - Too Few Years

For some perspective on the job Diaz has done, let's look at some numbers of his predecessors at MTSU:

Coach	School	Yrs. Coached at School	CBTN Rating	CBTN Stars	WP%	Avg. Scoring Defense
Steve Davis	MTSU	3	25.97		45.71%	28.31
Bradley Dale Paveto	MTSU	1	27.75		45.45%	24.45
Mark Criner	MTSU	1	60.92		36.36%	18.73

So, the average CBTN Rating for MTSU's Defensive Coordinator's over the previous five years to Diaz' arrival was 33.32. This compares to Diaz' CBTN Rating of 46.22 rating in his four years as DC at MTSU. In other words, Diaz had a nearly 39% positive impact on MTSU's defense. Now that week 5 is in the books for this year, let's look at how Diaz is doing at Texas thus far compared to last year:

So far so good in 2011. Texas may have indeed found a gem when they hired Diaz to replace Will Muschamp. However, looking at the schedule, some major defensive challenges await in the form of Oklahoma, Texas Tech, Texas A&M, Oklahoma St., and Baylor. We'll wait and see if this next stretch of games moves his numbers closer to Muschamp's mediocre 2010 numbers (by Texas standards), or if he can stay the current course. To see more our proprietary Defensive Coordinator Rankings for active and inactive Defensive Coordinators, please visit our CBTN Ranking's Page.