Five candidates Penn State could consider to replace defensive coordinator Manny Diaz

Penn State head coach James Franklin will have to replace a second coordinator this offseason after Manny Diaz left Thursday to become Duke’s head coach, but this move was easier to see coming.

Diaz was frequently rumored to be a candidate for head coaching jobs, and his name started to pick up steam in recent days, with regard to the Blue Devils specifically.

Now that Diaz has departed, Franklin will embark on another search for the ideal coordinator candidate. Let’s take a look at five possible options, in alphabetical order, to replace the former Miami head coach.

Tom Allen, former Indiana head coach

If Franklin is looking for a candidate with a similar profile to the one he hired in Diaz, then Tom Allen is an ideal hire. He was the head coach at Indiana for the last seven seasons, putting up a 33-49 record during that time and leading the Hoosiers to two bowl games, not including 2016 when he was the interim head coach.

Allen was originally hired by the Hoosiers as a defensive coordinator after he spent a year at South Florida in the same role. Indiana’s defense’s haven’t been great in recent years as Allen has gone back and forth from calling plays to delegating that task to his own coordinator. His success prior to being a head coach would be an important factor if he’s hired, as would his ability to be the head coach of the defense — something Franklin previously said he wants in his coordinators.

Joe Harasymiak, Rutgers defensive coordinator

It isn’t easy to make the jump from FCS to FBS, but Joe Harasymiak has done that with success in a short period of time. Harasymiak spent 2011-2018 at Maine — with the last three years as the head coach — before making the jump to the Big Ten in 2019 to be the safeties coach at Minnesota under P.J. Fleck. He became the program’s co-defensive coordinator in 2020 before heading east to Rutgers in 2022, where he’s spent the last two seasons as defensive coordinator.

The Scarlet Knights had a middling defense in his first season before taking a big step forward this year. Harasymiak’s unit ranked No. 22 this season in ESPN writer Bill Connelly’s SP+ — a tempo- and opponent-adjusted measure of college football efficiency. He’s continually ascended the ranks, and a leap to a top-15 program is a logical next step.

Anthony Poindexter, Penn State co-defensive coordinator/safeties coach

There is an obvious in-house candidate that could hasten the process. There are few names in college football more revered than Anthony Poindexter. He’s a Hall of Famer who had a prolific college career at Virginia before a short-lived NFL stint that led him to coaching.

He spent the first 11 seasons of his coaching career at UVA, before becoming the defensive coordinator at UConn from 2014-2016. That’s his only experience as the lead defensive assistant, and it came with imperfect results. The team went only 11-26 in those years, but Poindexter’s defenses weren’t a major problem until the final year when everything unraveled. In 2014, his group was 65th in SP+ before jumping to 43rd in 2015. Those rankings aren’t exemplary, but he and the rest of the staff were also dealing with a massive talent disadvantage compared to their competition. He then went on to spend three years at Purdue as the co-defensive coordinator and safeties coach and now holds the same role at Penn State.

Joe Rossi, Minnesota defensive coordinator

There are others on this list with more prestige than Joe Rossi, but he’s been on a continual ascent in his career. He began at Thiel College, where he spent six years before making the jump to Maine for five seasons. His work there is what got him into the Big Ten, getting hired as the special teams coordinator at Rutgers in 2012, where he spent two seasons before becoming the defensive coordinator. He was fired following the 2015 season after Chris Ash was brought in as a new head coach and the defense struggled in his tenure. Rossi then latched on as a quality control coach with P.J. Fleck in 2017 before he became interim defensive coordinator late in 2018 and was promoted to the job full-time at the end of the season.

His rise has continued as he led the No. 38 defense in SP+ this year, carrying a team that struggled mightily on offense. Plus, it can’t hurt that Rossi is from Pittsburgh.

Brad White, Kentucky defensive coordinator

This is more of a wild card option than the previous four, but Brad White is someone who should be considered, given his success. White joined Kentucky as outside linebackers coach in 2018 after six seasons with the Indianapolis Colts in the NFL and quickly became defensive coordinator in 2019.

He’s consistently put together quality defenses despite being at a talent deficit compared to the majority of the SEC and has proven he can put together an elite one too, like he did in 2022 when he had the fourth-best defense according to SP+. He, like Harasymiak, could be in line to make the jump to a top-15 program after proving he can do it without that level of talent.