Surface acoustic waves have been shown to be a power efficient technique for exciting magnetic dynamics in thin films, and such dynamics have been shown to couple efficiently to the Nitrogen-vacancy defect center in diamond. However, prior demonstrations have operated in nonlinear regimes, and are poorly modelled and understood. In this work, we show that SAW-driven dynamics can directly drive the NV-center resonance, and propose a model for the mechanism of interaction with randomly oriented NV ensembles.