Michigan football DC Wink Martindale pushes back on criticisms

There were a lot of questions facing Michigan football going into the 2024 season. The Wolverines have a new head coach, a new starting quarterback, and almost an entirely new offense.

That doesn't even address all the turnover on the coaching staff. Most of the full-time assistants followed Jim Harbaugh to Los Angeles. Michigan football lost its defensive coordinator, secondary coach, defensive line coach, special teams coordinator, and strength coach.

Sherrone Moore was charged with building a staff for the first time and his important selection was arguably defensive coordinator. Wink Martindale who is credited for inventing the system Michigan used under Mike Macdonald and Jesse Minter, was the choice.

Is Wink being too aggressive?

But through four games, some have been disappointed in his work. One criticism is that Michigan football is blitzing too much. When you have the defensive line talent that Michigan does, you shouldn't need to blitz often and it does seem like when Wink has brought pressure, it has backfired more often than not.

Some of that isn't his fault. Makari Paige got home on a blitz and missed the tackle. But it does seem like Wink is more aggressive than Minter or Macdonald, who are in the NFL now.

Yet, Wink pushed back on people talking about his blitz percentages and essentially said those people don't know what their talking about.

“It’s one of those things everyone wants to talk about your pressure rates and everything else. The people who are keeping count don’t know the difference between pressure, simulation, or four-man rush,” Martindale said. “It would be like me reading one of your articles and saying you use bad grammar. I’m not very good at English. I don’t know the difference between a good article and a bad article, report, podcast, whatever. It’s the same thing. But it’s all part of the profession.”

The fact that Martindale is listening to the outside noise is a little worrisome. The defense does seem more aggressive but felt like it spent more time in base stuff against USC and it worked. The key is trusting the defensive line and as long as Wink does that, he'll be just fine.