Wink Martindale discusses NFL flirtation, his situation at Michigan

Michigan defensive coordinator Wink Martindale interviewed with NFL teams in the offseason, but he’s back at U-M and preparing for spring ball starting March 18. He made no apologies for flirting with the league where he’d spent 20 years, noting he’d made it clear upon taking this job it was a possibility.

Martindale is among the highest paid coordinators in college football, but the NFL is the NFL. Still, he told Jon Jansen on the In the Trenches podcast he’s thrilled to be back at Michigan for a second year. 

“I said when I came here this was an exciting time for me. It was different obviously going back from the League (NFL) back to college, but it would take a lot for me to go back to the NFL,” Martindale said. “Really, I told both Warde [Manuel] and Sherrone [Moore] when I took this job, I would listen to anyone. I think where I’m at in my career, I deserve that right to do that. 

“It was one of those things where if things weren’t perfect anywhere or anything else, I’m going to stay at Michigan, because I do love it here. That’s not recruiting; that’s not anything else. I do love it here, and I love the players here. We had a lot of fun, especially towards the end of the year, and I’m looking forward to starting that all over again.”

There were a lot of similarities and then some differences from coaching at the highest level, Martindale added.

“The similarities — football is football,” he said. “You need to play good, complementary football to play good defense and good offense, and we faced those challenges. I was really proud of a lot of things. The Northwestern game was just as fun and rewarding for me as the Ohio State game and Alabama game, seeing the guys and how they’re cheering for their teammates when they finally got into the game … some of the walk-ons. That was cool. 

“It’s a different game because it’s spacier in college than it is in the NFL. You saw we adjusted to that, and we’ve got a great coaching staff … a great coaching staff, all of them with coordinator experience. It was a work in progress with both the players and the coaches, and it was a lot of fun.”

Martindale looking forward to year two, but has great memories of OSU and more

They locked in and got more physical by the end of the year, to the point that they dominated a high-flying Ohio State offense. That was the difference in that game, he said, and he gave the players more of a say in how they wanted to approach different plays. 

The result — 10 points for the Buckeyes and a fourth straight win over their rivals, this one 13-10.

“You talk about the Ohio State game, it’s the physicality we played with,” Martindale said. “After that game, they refused to let anything affect them during the game. Situational football —we played great situational football in that game, and sudden change was part of it. It was fun for me to be a part of for the kids and watching them play. 

“It was different for me because I’m from Ohio, so I heard it when I got into the stadium. That part of it made it fun. But in those games, in those rivalry games, when you keep it about the players, that’s one of the reasons we called a timeout. We had two timeouts there and we called a timeout going into third down. I said, ‘okay – I told you Monday this was going to be your game. What do you guys want?’ They told me what they wanted, and the secondary told me what coverage they wanted through the coaches.

“I asked Mason [Graham], I asked Makari [Paige]. It was just a really cool thing to see it work out, because [OSU] could have made plays. You saw the plays they made in the playoffs. But [our guys] just not were going to be denied.”

And they weren’t. They’ll get a shot to make it five in a row this year, and Martindale will be leading the defense trying to make it happen. If Moore has his way, it will be the second of many years with the coach coordinating his defense.