He won the Broyles award at Notre Dame; literally named the best assistant coach in the country. Obviously not head coach material based on UConn, but many of your top DCs are failed head coaches, so who cares? Top programs are hiring failed head coaches all the time and pay big money for them.
Obviously the one year at Nebraska wasn't good, but it's hard to judge off one year in a lousy situation, the end of a failed head coach's tenure. His track record as an assistant is excellent other than that year in Nebraska.
The only thing I don't like about this is the possible move to a 3-4...when we are going to have a lot more depth at the 3 (the DL) than the 4 (the LB). But one key thing is, the new JuCo linebacker was a commit to Louisiana Tech, who Diaco is now leaving. And really, there isn't a great deal of difference between 3-4 and 4-3 these days. It all depends on which flavor you run. Could actually work out in our favor, because many "3-4" schemes will put the kind of players we were calling "LEOs" on one or both outside edges and move your traditional 4-3 linebackers to the inside spots...meaning where you needed 3 regular linebackers before, you now really only need 2.