Manny Diaz Reached Out To Florida State For Their Defensive Coordinator Opening

Last week, embattled Texas defensive coordinator Manny Diaz reached out to Florida State head coach Jimbo Fisher to inquire about the vacant Seminole defensive coordinator position.

Fisher informed him that he has another candidate in mind. However, Diaz may still be a fallback option.

My source is on the Florida State side, plugged in directly to the FSU staff, and unimpeachable.

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It's clear to me that Diaz feels the pressure at Texas. And in the professional world, it's always better to be one step ahead of the posse. This is different from Harsin's desire to leave Austin, as it's motivated more by self-preservation, but the same root causes may simply be manifesting in a different way.

Barking Carnival knocked the cover off of the ball early and often detailing the concerns with Manny's in-game tactics and poor team fundamentals starting with the opener against Wyoming, but I don't doubt that Diaz (justifiably) feels some of the larger cultural issues with the program and some of the macro-decisions made by Brown impeded his ability to field the kind of defense he wanted. And Jimbo Fisher is uniquely sympathetic to that plight given his time at FSU at the tail end of the Bowden regime.

Other interesting tidbits:

- Diaz has a better reputation nationally than he does here. Maybe that's because national reputation is a lagging indicator. Or perhaps because they see the problems in Austin as being more about Brown than Diaz.

- Florida State fans have been reading Burnt Orange Nation and Barking Carnival with interest of late and I've received a good bit of feedback on the cultural parallels between Texas since 2010 and the end of the Bowden era.

We like to think we're unique, but this stuff plays out in a predictable set of patterns as cliche as any sitcom.