3 takeaways from Penn State Football hiring Manny Diaz as defensive coordinator

Penn State Football announced Saturday morning the hiring of Manny Diaz who will serve as the teams best defensive coordinator 

Penn State Football has found its next defensive coordinator in the form of Manny Diaz, the former head coach at Miami before he was relieved of those duties last week.

Diaz will replace Brent Pry who left State College for Blacksburg when he took the head coaching job at Virginia Tech.

Pry had been with Penn State Football as the defensive coordinator since head coach James Franklin arrived on campus and, he took him with him from Vanderbilt.

Diaz brings with him no shortage of experience as he has been a coaching lifer, taking his first GA job in 1998 at the age of 22. He is now 47 and has made stops at seven different schools.

Here are three major takeaways from the hiring of Manny Diaz and what it means for Penn State Football:

3. Recruiting and the potential Florida pipeline 

Diaz served as the defensive coordinator at Miami from 2016-2018 before becoming the head coach in 2019.

He has deep ties to the state that is known for its plethora of talented high school football athletes which could bode well for Franklin and Penn State Football who have slowly been getting more and more into Florida.

In the two cycles he really had a chance to recruit as head coach of the Hurricanes he brought in the 17th and 11th best classes in the country in the past two seasons according to 247 sports.

He has also been able to develop talent and see it off to the NFL on the defensive side of the especially. Since his arrival at Miami in 2016, Miami has had 18 players drafted on that side of the ball, including two first-round draft picks in 2021, in Jaelan Phillips and Gregory Rosseau.

If Diaz can continue to help the program pluck talent from the state of Florida, that alone will make this a great hire.