UNIVERSITY PARK — SMU’s and Duke’s coaching staffs were both filled with nostalgia ahead of the teams’ meeting Saturday night in Durham.
The Mustangs and the Blue Devils haven’t met since 1956, but there may be more familiarity between the coaching staffs than SMU has with any other team left on its schedule.
SMU head coach Rhett Lashlee served as offensive coordinator under Duke head coach Manny Diaz at Miami in the 2020 and 2021 seasons. When Lashlee left to take his first head coaching job at SMU, he brought along offensive quality control coach Jonathan Brewer and made him SMU’s quarterbacks coach. In his final season on the Hilltop, Brewer became co-offensive coordinator before departing for Duke after last season to run the offense there.
“It’s really weird,” Brewer said this week about facing his former team. “It’s weird to watch, to sit in the film room and watch them. It’s like watching yourself with a different logo on. All the kids that you recruited there on both sides of the ball.”
Both Diaz and Lashlee spoke highly about each other this week and acknowledged the unique situation of coaching against a former colleague.
Lashlee said he isn’t concerned from a competitive advantage, as both coaches have made some changes to their schemes based on their current personnel.
But his familiarity with Diaz is helping Lashlee prepare his offense to face one of the conference’s best defenses.
“Defensively, they’ve been incredible, especially in our league, really in just about every category that matters from third downs to scoring defense to pass defense to total defense,” Lashlee said. “They’re No. 1 in the country in tackles for loss, which is a calling card of Manny and his defenses.
“He wins. That’s what he does. He builds winning cultures, and things were trending in the right way at Miami. They made a decision, goes up to Penn State, and all he does is have one of the best defenses in America again. Now he’s at Duke. I’m not shocked at all that they’re 6-1 and playing with the kind of confidence they are.”
Duke hasn’t given up more than 24 points per game this season, but its offense has also only exceeded 30 points once.
As SMU gears up for one of the best defenses it’s faced, Duke and Diaz have are saying similar things about Lashlee’s offense.
“I’ve always thought Rhett does a great job manufacturing explosive plays,” Diaz said. “Whether through deceptive plays or just taking shots and how they do that. This is a very different challenge then the previous three teams that we’ve played in the league so far.”
Brewer, too, said he’s been impressed by what he’s seen from SMU, particularly quarterback Kevin Jennings, whom he coached during both of his seasons with the Mustangs.
“We were the only school to offer him beside Missouri State at SMU, and what he has developed into is everything that we saw,” Brewer said. “It’s pretty neat to see that.”
Saturday night’s game in Durham will be a reunion for both players and coaches and is set up to be a chess match between two teams in the running for a spot in the ACC championship game.
“I don’t like playing friends,” Lashlee said. “I’ve got a bunch of friends over there.”
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