Locked On ACC - Daily College Football & Basketball Podcast · Locked On Podcast Network, Candace Cooper, Kenton Gibbs

VICTIM NO MORE: Manny Diaz BREAKS Silence on Darian Mensah Transfer, Duke Moves FORWARD

·38 min·2 clips

Florida State has not won a true road game since November 25, 2023.

Manny Diaz is the center of the conversation. He speaks publicly for the first time since Darien Mensah left for Miami, and the hosts treat that moment as a good test of how Duke wants to frame the whole thing. Diaz’s response gets praise. The discussion then shifts to the larger football problem: Duke’s defense was so poor last season that the offense rarely got much help. Mensah is described as having had a tremendous season, but the defense did not do him many favors. Walker Egott enters as the likely next answer at quarterback. The hosts bring up his time at San Jose State and point to the 473-yard game he had against Stanford. That number matters because it shows real production. It also comes with the obvious caveat that he is stepping up from a lower level of football. The real question is whether the defense can improve enough to make up for any quarterback drop-off. They do not sound optimistic. Last year’s unit is described as probably the worst Manny Diaz has coached. The wording is blunt, and there is not much room for hope without real evidence. Duke also has to replace multiple impact players on that side of the ball. That makes a clean rebound feel thin unless you assume Diaz can fix everything on reputation alone. The hosts do not buy that shortcut. The conversation keeps circling the same pressure point: if the quarterback room slides, the defense has to get a lot better, not just a little less bad. That is a tall order. The segment is less about one transfer headline than about the standard Duke now has to meet. It ends on the idea that the program’s next step will be judged by whether the defense can finally stop dragging everything down.

As heard by us

Duke's quarterback shift lands inside a bigger question: can a defense that was last year's worst by far carry the load?

Locked On ACC spends most of the segment on Duke head coach Manny Diaz's first public comments since the Darien Mensah-to-Miami move, then widens out to what Duke can actually expect from itself.

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Why you'd press play

You want the Duke reaction to Mensah's move without the polite spin.

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