Podcast: Breaking down Wink Martindale's defensive system, more Michigan talk with analyst Steve Palazzolo
On this episode of The Wolverine Podcast, Clayton Sayfie and Anthony Broome are joined by Pro Football Focus analyst and host of the PFF NFL Podcast Steve Palazzolo to discuss Michigan Wolverines football defensive coordinator Wink Martindale, U-M rookies in the NFL, 2025 NFL Draft prospects, how Jim Harbaugh will do with the Los Angeles Chargers and more.
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Martindale spent 20 seasons as an NFL coach, including seven as a defensive coordinator, but came back to college football to coach under first-year head man Sherrone Moore at Michigan. Palazzolo shared what his reaction was to that news back in the winter and how he feels Martindale fits with the Wolverines.
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“The first thing was schematically, thinking about how Wink Martindale attacks offenses,” Palazzolo said. “He attacks aggressively. He attacks! That’s what he does. That’s what every defensive coordinator says in their opening press conference, they say, ‘We’re gonna attack, we’re gonna be aggressive!’ But Wink actually backs all that up, right? He blitzes like crazy. So that was the first thing.
“The college game is different, with the spacing and the wide hashmarks, so that’s where I’m most interested to see how aggressive he will be from a blitz perspective, because that was what he was known for at the NFL level — sending five, sending six, putting a lot of pressure on NFL quarterbacks and playing man coverage, putting a lot of pressure on basically his entire back seven to cover a lot of space but try to put that heat on the quarterback, make quick decisions and force them into some bad decisions along the way. My fist reaction was, hey, I can’t wait to see what this looks like at the college level because we’ve seen Wink Martindale have a lot of success with the Baltimore Ravens, with the New York Giants. Sometimes things didn’t go well when he didn’t have maybe the corners to hold up, but that’s the first thing.
“And then the whole aspect of recruiting and relating to the players. I don’t think about that a whole lot, but more schematically interested in seeing how that all plays out.”
