Pro Football Focus' Steve Palazzolo on how Wink Martindale's system will translate to college game

Intro what was your reaction uh back in the winter when it came out that he's going back to college somewhere where he hadn't coached in in 20 years after 20 years in the NFL seven years as an NFL defensive coordinator at different points in his career uh what was your reaction to that and how do you think he fits in college as a 60-year-old going How does Wink Martindale fit in college back to school well I mean the first thing was was schematically thinking about how wik Martell attacks offenses he attacks aggressively he attacks that's what he does every defensive coordinator in their opening press conference says we're going to attack we're going to be aggressive but wink actually backs all that up right he blitzes like crazy um so that was the first thing and you know the the college game is different with the spacing and the wide hash marks so that's where I'm most interested to see how aggressive he will be from a blitz perspective um because that's what that was what he was known for at the NFL level I think you know sending five sending six putting a lot of pressure on cornerbacks in man coverage putting a lot of pressure basically on his entire back seven to be able to cover a lot of space but trying to put that heat on the quarterback make quick decisions and force them into some bad decisions along the way so my first reaction was hey I can't wait to see what this looks like at the college level um because we've seen wink Martell have a lot of success with the Baltimore Ravens with the New York Giants um sometimes things didn't go so well when he didn't maybe have the corners to hold up but you know that's the first thing then the whole aspect of recruiting and you know relating to the players I don't think about that a whole lot but more like schematically interested in seeing how that all plays What does a Wink Martindale defense look like out yeah a lot of times when you know especially Michigan's coming from Mike McDonald and Jesse M we'll talk about them in a second given that their defenses are kind of all the rage at at this level now but I think a lot of Michigan fans see a guy like Ln marale come in and say oh well he's you know he's an old school guy and he's gonna he's gonna Blitz a ton it's gonna be man coverage and those were kind of some of the things that um maybe prevented them as a program from taking that next step a few years ago under a different def defensive coordinator and Don brown but um you know from your perspective I mean when he has the talent to execute the system that he wants to run what does a wink marale defense look like when it's firing at all cylinders so it's interesting because I think at its best clearly it's going to get pressure right because you're you're you're sending five and six at an at an extraordinary rate right there were games where the Giants would Blitz 50 60% of the time and just wouldn't stop and it it was different disguises but it was mostly five and six man pressures and so at its best not only are you getting heat on the quarterback you're creating a little bit of confusion little bit of uh indecision but then you have corners on the back end that are making uh making like life difficult you know like when you go back to last year the Giants didn't really have the corners to hold up so they were getting torched by teams like the 49ers who have these incredible receivers but when you have corners that could play on an island linebackers who were smart because a lot of it is communication a lot of it is being able to handle um you know pass offs and and just making sure that everybody's covered it's not just always pure man so when you have all that those pieces in place if you take away the quarterback's first or second read there's not much time to do anything else so at its best it is causing that confusion and I would say it it's also just increasing variance you know so when you think about the 2022 Giants that was the team that made it to the playoffs and a lot of the underlying metrics for the Giants weren't necessarily all that great it's not like they had a star studded defense the offense was pretty good but again not really star studded but they found ways to win and there were these individual games you know they made a goal line stop against the Tennessee Titans they made uh a fourth quarter stop against Aaron Rogers and the Packers and it was just a it was a fourth down deflection from an unblocked Blitz Blitzer that ended the game and it's one of those if you make the if you bat it down the game's over if you don't maybe you lose right it is that high variance type of Defense but again if you're coming from a position of strength recruiting well and you've got Dexter Lawrence good corners and you have good players up front then you have a lot of success the other the other thing that stands out to me was Dexter Lawrence and his success in the Giants defense as a monster nose tackle pushing the pocket having fewer double teams to deal with I think about Kenneth Grant and Mason Graham and what they might be able to do of course Grant's more of the pure nose tackle type but their ability to just be one-on-one rushing from the interior because of all the chaos that's happening behind them I think um you know that it it bodess well for what Michigan can do from a defensive line perspective yeah no that is that that is an interesting part of it and and also wink talked recently about how when he went back and watched Michigan's season last year and what Jesse minor called there a lot of simulated pressures um you they didn't necessarily have to bring a bunch of other guys and they had probably the best defensive line in the country and you me mentioned a couple guys that are back this year that will make it near the top of the country again but they created Havoc even without bringing extra guys um I guess take us through maybe what stands out about this raven style defense where it's kind of an amoeba defense they're disguising things they're bringing guys you don't know who's coming who's not even if it's just four guys rushing if you don't know which four it is you know that can create some Havoc for the o line and the quarterback yeah I think that that pretty much sums it up I mean Blitz Rates if you just look at Blitz rates right if you were just looking in a vacuum you would say oh it's not an extremely aggressive defense but it is that confusion that it creates um I would say it also they're also going to lean a little bit more on two high Concepts you know keeping the safeties back avoiding big plays and have a a more of a blitz package where you're going to play quarters behind it or cover two behind it where most Blitz structures are single high right you're going to have that single High free safety and pretty much everyone else is either on an island or or zoning it out in a uh Zone Blitz you know traditional Zone Blitz type of look a three under three deep type of look so I think I think what Minter and McDonald and that whole scheme what they have done is is as you mentioned I think creat some indecision uh we saw how much they they destroyed Alabama's pass protection and all of their rules uh in the Rose Bowl so they create indecision without sacrificing too much on the back end from a coverage perspective and then if you read what Ted win wrote this summer uh on the athletic just talking about the stuff that you don't necessarily see which is the Simplicity and the ability to be multiple without being confusing right because we all we always see the play call right we watch the game we see the play call but the stuff that goes on behind the scenes um the ability to adjust play calls the ability to adjust to an offense on the Fly the ability to send one person and drop another person into coverage and basically take the same call and and make one little tweak to it those are different and rare and more of a Mike McDonald Jesse Mint or that scheme uh unique to that scheme we'll say um so those are the types of things that they've done a really good job of it's different from I think when Seattle's defense you know took the league by storm and you said they're going to play this one thing cover three and you need this type of corner on the left side and this type of corner on the right and this type of hammer for strong safety and this type of Earl thus free safety I think it's less formulaic as far as the Personnel goes but it's actually just more flexible and you know the overriding you know Trend there is the ability to uh make life difficult on the pass protection while also keeping being enough players back in coverage that you're not going to get burnt by the blitz you know there's an interesting ju toos here with you know obviously uh the way the way things ended with wink marale and Baltimore and then you go to Mike McDonald and um you know Michigan replaces Mike McDonald with Jesse Min to kind of run that same system and now it's kind of flipped where both those guys are now in the NFL wink marale is back in college so I think the question I would have and not necessarily is it better or worse but you know how is what wink likes to do defensively different than what Mike McDonald and Jesse Miner like to run and you know why why are their systems right now kind of the new hotness in the NFL I I think it's because if if you were oversimplifying defense Through The Years you would say are you a blitz heavy defense or are you a rush with four type of Defense right we used to oversimplify that and say um you're going to get pressure with the front four the old school you know Tampa 2 in the you know Tampa bucks era where it was like hey it's Warren Sap and Simeon rice and we're just going to rush with four or say the Giants on their Super Bowl runs against the Patriots hey they were able to get pressure with four so some schemes simply wanted to do that and then other schemes said no we don't maybe have the horses we're going to Blitz we're GNA you know get a little crazy and send five or six far more often than everyone else because we have to get pressure I think the the hybrid of that is what we've seen with M and McDonald's the hybrid of that is more often than not they're going to Rush four but you still might get the benefit of the indecision that you create from the from the blitz scheme or from crowding the line of scrimmage or or the indecision of not knowing where the rush is coming from so there's almost like these old school three four type of principles the old school Steelers 3 four where they had three down linemen those two outside backers they could you know Rush one drop the other and it created those were pure pass rushers but it created just enough indecision on the on the offense that's when the Zone Blitz you know came in to vog in the in the 90s created a little bit of indecision and basically uh caused issues with how offenses solve you know facing five and six man pressures so I think that's why it's become in Vogue right it's it's it's not choosing one or the other are you gonna be Blitz happy are you going to be or you're going to trust your front four you could almost do both and and kind of play in The Best of Both Worlds and I think that's the hybrid that um that new scheme has really has created for the Ravens for Michigan and now you know all across the NFL really more of a an open-ended or or bigger picture question offense defense special teams but also in the context of Michigan bringing back an NFL defensive coordinator but also having you know coaches in the past that have been in the NFL like Jim Harbaugh is there more overlap right now between the college game and the NFL game than ever or how do you kind of see that I know it's a it evolves and there es and flows to it as the years go on no I I think there is I think there's way more stealing from college so to speak at the NFL level I mean that was that was the only holdup right College was always always had to be more Innovative because you've got 130 plus teams versus 32 in the NFL um the NFL is really homogenized right it's really similar across the board and if you were um if you were putting a score on schemes say uh offensive or defenses and saying you know the higher the number the the the more unique you know the different it is you'd only have two or three outliers right you'd have a team like the Ravens that's crazy run heavy or a team like the Titans that was crazy run heavy or or like wink who's Crazy Blitz heavy right so you'd only have a few outliers and everyone else would be really clustered whereas college is just really wide but I do think in recent years because of practice time or less practice time at the NFL level and maybe the urgency to win right away more than ever and not being able to develop players I think the NFL has to adjust to college they have to adjust to what quarterbacks do well they have to steal play calls I mean I was just talking to an offensive coordinator who you know drafted a drafted a quarterback in this draft and I said hey did you were you checking out his scheme in college did you steal anything he said oh yeah we stole at least a concept and maybe more you know coming up this summer because um you always want to play to the strengths of your players and I think the NFL's caught on to that more than ever so um there'll always be differences right it's a different game there's different rules the the hash spk difference makes it it is a it is a massive difference right in um NFL versus college but I do think we're seeing more than ever the NFL taking from college uh yeah more than ever before