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Jollay wrote:I understand he's comparable or faster to Ragland in speed. Ragland is 15 pounds heavier and is way, way more of a punisher/thumper.
Turk Nowitzki wrote:Jollay wrote:I understand he's comparable or faster to Ragland in speed. Ragland is 15 pounds heavier and is way, way more of a punisher/thumper.
I would think this is a check mark in favor of Martinez when it comes to potential coverage ability, no?
Jollay wrote:Turk Nowitzki wrote:Jollay wrote:I understand he's comparable or faster to Ragland in speed. Ragland is 15 pounds heavier and is way, way more of a punisher/thumper.
I would think this is a check mark in favor of Martinez when it comes to potential coverage ability, no?
Again, I've heard conflicting things. Would I bet he's better in coverage than Ragland? Of course.
Is he a particularly good bet to be an all around average to above average NFL ILB? Meh.
Like that he seems like a hard worker/smart. Certainly couldn't of landed on a better team to get a crack.
LikeABosh wrote:
I mean I guess so. Like have you over for dinner and save you some leftovers nice
Triple 7 wrote:LikeABosh wrote:
I mean I guess so. Like have you over for dinner and save you some leftovers nice
Good straight line speed, solid tackler, good instincts, nice mom.
His ankle looked like a grapefruit before he could even remove his cleat. Four days before the Pac-12 title game, Stanford’s medical staff marched its best linebacker straight from the practice field to the X-ray room. Blake Martinez was “very doubtful” to play against USC, and that felt a little too hopeful.
This was gruesome. Gory. Scary.
“It swells up immediately when they took his shoe off to look at it,” Stanford inside linebackers coach Peter Hansen said, “and it was like, ‘Oh, well we’re not going to have Blake this week.’”
Martinez wouldn’t hear it. Busted ankle be damned. He was diagnosed with a high-ankle sprain, an injury that can keep some players out four to six weeks. Martinez was determined not to miss one.
He spent an “ungodly number of hours” in the training room that week, Hansen said. Lance Anderson, Stanford’s director of defense, said he’s never seen a kid so hell-bent to play. Martinez corresponded with professors through email and phone calls while he received treatment. He couldn’t practice all week. Coaches and teammates patiently hoped for a miracle.
When game day came, they got one.
Martinez wasn’t just on the field. He led Stanford with 11 tackles, four more than any teammate. His blindside sack of USC quarterback Cody Kessler forced a fumble returned for touchdown at the end of the third quarter. Martinez didn’t test his ankle out until pregame drills. He then played all four quarters, making the “game-clinching” play that sent Stanford to their third Rose Bowl in four seasons.
“I don’t know how he did it,” Hansen said, “but to be able to play in that game based on what his ankle looked like the Tuesday of game week, it’s an all-time story for me. An instant favorite.”
Want toughness in your linebacker? Martinez has it. Hansen called the Green Bay Packers' fourth-round pick “a coach’s dream to work with.” In two years as a starter, Hansen said, he never had a single complaint about Martinez.
Hansen knows more than toughness is required from modern NFL linebackers. Speed. Lateral quickness. An ability to cover running backs, tight ends and, yes, even receivers running routes in the open field. Martinez has that, too.
His 4.67-second, 40-yard dash at the NFL scouting combine was pedestrian, but no worse. What wasn’t pedestrian? Martinez ran a 4.20-second, 20-yard shuttle, third best among inside linebacker prospects. That, Hansen said, shows what kind of athlete Martinez can be playing in space.
“His time was a really good indicator of who he is,” Hansen said. “He was definitely a sideline-to-sideline guy. Teams would try to run away from him at times, and he would chase it down for minimal gain on the opposite side of the field. So it showed up in games, as well as the combine.”
In hindsight, it seems general manager Ted Thompson knew exactly how to target the inside linebacker position in this draft all along. From the fourth round, the Packers found a second-team all-American linebacker who led the Pac-12 with 140 tackles last season (fifth nationally).
Stanford’s second-leading tackler had 57. It took Martinez five games to reach that mark, surpassing 60 in Stanford’s win against Arizona on Oct. 3.
“He was our biggest playmaker on defense last year,” Anderson said. “You look at the stats, and it’s amazing how many more tackles he had than the next-closest guy on the team. We’re going to miss his production. He was a great leader and tremendous player for us.”
Toughness, instincts and run support always will be a linebacker’s cornerstones, but the Packers have those qualities in abundance with 2015 fourth-round pick Jake Ryan. As a rookie, Ryan became one of three linebackers to record 50 tackles since Thompson became general manager. He joined A.J. Hawk and Clay Matthews.
The Packers desperately need a classic weak inside linebacker, someone who can cover in nickel and dime sub-packages and protect Ryan in pass coverage. “A four-down player,” coach Mike McCarthy described it. That’s the only way Matthews can return to outside linebacker, where he’ll once again be a full-time pass rusher off the edge.
There is no way to predict how a fourth-round linebacker will adjust to the NFL, but Martinez is ideally suited to fit the Packers’ greatest need. Stanford played only 17 percent of snaps in its base 3-4 defense last season, Hansen said. In a conference where spread offenses are the norm each week, Anderson said his defense is primarily nickel with two linebackers and five defensive backs on the field.
As for fit, Hansen believes Martinez’s familiarity playing in a de facto base nickel defense should smooth his transition to Packers defensive coordinator Dom Capers’ de facto base nickel system.
“When we had games that the base package was more part of our thought process,” Hansen said, “it’d be exciting. Like, it’s something new. Most weeks, we were expecting to be in nickel the majority of the game. He’s so used to playing in sub-packages that it’s probably more comfortable for him than base packages would be, just the way the Pac-12 is lately. He’s kind of stepping into something he’s probably more used to than expected.”
As a junior, Martinez split coverage assignments with former teammate A.J. Tarpley. The playbook dictated Martinez would most often cover running backs and tight ends, Hansen said. It’s worth noting Martinez was good enough in coverage to split responsibility with Tarpley. Though he retired after one season with the Buffalo Bills because of long-term concussion concerns, Tarpley excelled in coverage last fall with a plus-1.8 grade, according to Pro Football Focus.
Martinez’ coverage portfolio increased last season. He was a “pure cover linebacker” as a senior, Hansen said. Of his 902 snaps, Martinez lined up across a slot receiver 44 times. He played another 37 snaps in strong safety positions, including 19 snaps against Washington State coach Mike Leach’s five-wide passing attack.
“This last year,” Martinez said, “they left it all to me. Every single time we were in our nickel package and our dime package, I would basically stay in. We’d bring in another corner, and I’d go out and cover the tight ends, running backs and those types of things. I felt like this last year, I improved tremendously on that. I feel 100 percent confident to go out there and cover whoever I need to cover.”
Through production, Martinez earned Stanford’s trust on passing downs. Martinez held opposing quarterbacks to a 79.6 average NFL passer rating, according to Pro Football Focus. He was significantly better than the average 85.2 NFL passer rating FBS inside linebackers allowed in 2015.
Martinez’ plus-10.9 coverage grade was the highest of all inside linebackers in college football last season, according to Pro Football Focus.
Hansen said Stanford adjusted its defensive system to ensure Martinez was always in position to handle the tough coverage assignments. After covering running backs and tight ends as a junior, Hansen explained, Martinez was also responsible for No. 4 receivers in his senior season.
“He’s loose enough in the hips that he can cover those guys who want to change direction quickly,” Hansen said.
Anderson points to Stanford’s first game against USC last season as evidence of how well Martinez can play in coverage. The Cardinal had lost its opener at Northwestern. Clinging to a 1-1 record, it entered Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum as big underdogs to No. 6 USC.
Stanford led most of the second half, but never put USC away. With the Trojans driving in their last-ditch, two-minute drill, they spread the field. Athletic cornerback Adoree’ Jackson became their fourth receiver, an attempt to jolt USC’s offense.
This was an athletic mismatch. Not just against Martinez, but any linebacker in college football. Jackson is a potential Olympic long jumper. Forget 40-yard dashes. He runs 100 meters in 10.4 seconds.
Martinez stayed tight in coverage. Kessler never threw Jackson a pass. Eventually, Stanford pulled out a season-saving win.
“Like three or four plays in a row in man coverage,” Anderson said. “He did a tremendous job. Never threw the ball to him. It was impressive.”
Martinez will have bumps during his transition to the league. All rookies do. In college, Hansen said, Martinez played close enough coverage to persuade quarterbacks to throw elsewhere. With quarterbacks and receivers developing better timing in the NFL, Hansen knows close coverage will still result in completions.
But Martinez has no shortage of exposure to difficult coverage assignments. In practice, he would line up against Heisman Trophy finalist running back Christian McCaffery and third-round tight end Austin Hooper. He’ll get similar matchups in the NFL.
“It’ll be an adjustment for him,” Hansen said, “but he’s physical and athletic enough to handle that adjustment.”
HKPackFan wrote:Is this real?
a cock...The underneath of our D has always been a leaky sore spot
GREEN BAY, Wis. -- Blake Martinez simply signed his name on his first NFL contract Thursday. He did not add I told you so below it.
But he could have.
In January, the Tucson, Arizona, native and former Stanford linebacker took a break from his pre-NFL draft preparations to attend the NFC divisional playoff game between the Green Bay Packers and Arizona Cardinals at University of Phoenix Stadium in Glendale, Arizona. His agent, Dave Butz, secured pregame sideline passes that got them on the field, and that’s where the two wound up bumping into Packers vice president Russ Ball, the team’s chief contract negotiator.
“We were like, ‘Hey, we have a linebacker here for you!’ And he was just like, ‘Oh yeah, OK … We’ll see,’ just kind of shooing it off,” Martinez recounted with a smile Friday, following his first practice with the Packers at the team’s post-draft rookie orientation camp. “All of a sudden, we’re here.”
Martinez, whom the Packers took with the first of their two fourth-round picks last Saturday, said he and Ball “were both laughing” at the small-world nature of the encounter. Add that coincidence to the premonition his mother, Carissa, had that her son would end up in Green Bay, and it appears Martinez was meant to be a member of the Packers. Reality hit him when he walked into the locker room and saw his nameplate two lockers down from quarterback Aaron Rodgers’ dressing area and the No. 50 jersey with his name on it hanging on a hook.
“Chills ran down my whole body,” Martinez said. “It was just kind of that surreal moment that, ‘This is real, now it's an actual thing. Your dream is reality.’”
Martinez said he chose No. 50 out of a group of numbers the Packers offered him. He didn’t think of the previous owner, linebacker A.J. Hawk, the franchise’s all-time leading tackler who spent nine seasons in Green Bay. The Packers did not issue No. 50 last season, after Hawk was released by the team the previous February.
“They gave me like 12 options, and I was just kind of going through it and not really thinking [and picked] No. 50 like, ‘50’s a great number.’ Then all of a sudden, everybody’s like, ‘Oh, you’ve got A.J. Hawk’s number.’ I was like, ‘Ohhhh, yep, here we go,’” Martinez said. “But it’s a great number, and I’ll do everything I can to live up to his legacy and all of what he’s done.”
Meanwhile, Martinez said his father, Marc, still is working on ridding the house of the hats and T-shirts of the NFL’s other 31 teams that he bought in preparation for his son being drafted. Martinez said extended family members grabbed some of the gear for a few other teams and joked that they “burned” the Chicago Bears paraphernalia. Martinez said his dad likely will donate whatever is left.
nickel and dime ILB will see more snaps than baseRRyder823 wrote:He probably won't start over Ryan or Barrington barring injury his rookie year but I fully expect him to man the ILB spot in the dime unit next season which is what we needed most on D
DanoMac wrote:bullox wrote:That phone number was an asset to you. You had a direct line to the gm. You've squandered it.
I squandered an asset? Then Hammond taught me well.
The trash talk started early this off-season. Light barbs flying both ways. Just as you'd expect from a Cal quarterback and Stanford linebacker sharing the same locker room.
As Blake Martinez told it, Aaron Rodgers initiated the heckling after the Green Bay Packers' first practice of organized team activities. The two-time MVP quarterback bumped his rookie teammate as he passed. A heinous remark about Martinez's alma mater followed.
"I was like, 'Dude, are we going to do this Cal-Stanford thing forever?'" Martinez said, chuckling after the Packers' second of three minicamp practices. "He was like, 'Aahhh,' and started laughing."
Behind the banter, Martinez has a purpose for sticking to Rodgers like a shadow.
When he arrived in Green Bay as a fourth-round pick, Martinez admitted, there were nerves. He was star struck. Just as you'd expect from a rookie sharing his locker room with Rodgers, Clay Matthews, Julius Peppers.
"All these great players," he said.
Butterflies subsided, and Martinez saw opportunity. Learn from Rodgers, he thought. Benefit from his years of NFL experience.
So Martinez has pestered his quarterback nonstop this off-season. The inside linebacker is a kid in school, sitting in the front row with his hand raised. If Martinez looks this direction before the snap, he'll ask Rodgers, what is a quarterback thinking? If he takes two steps that direction, what then? How can a linebacker, like a seasoned poker pro, avoid any pre-snap tells revealing the Packers' defense?
Martinez knows he's running a risk of asking too many questions. He knows there are times he probably should let his quarterback be. So far, he said, Rodgers has been happy to teach.
"Little tips and cues," Martinez said, "that he has for me from things he's gone against. He told me little things he learned from playing against (former Chicago Bears linebacker Brian) Urlacher that he gave me tips on. Little coverage tips, and those types of things.
"It's been a lot of help just being out there and, all of a sudden, if I make one step to the left, he's like, 'It's coverage!' and he's yelling it out loud, and we're like, 'Oh, crap!' The next time, I'm like, 'Now I need to show something else to him to make sure that he doesn't see that defense.'
"I might get to the point where he's like, 'OK, stop talking to me,' but I'm at least going to take that risk and go at it, take it to the breaking point in asking questions and doing those things."
This is Martinez's personality. He went to Stanford, you know. The Harvard of the West has no shortage of highly intellectual students. Martinez was no different.
Strategy, Martinez suggested, might be his favorite hobby. Video games. Board games. Computer games. Anything that requires tactical acumen.
He's an avid "Settlers of Catan" player. He always has time for "Risk." Most days, his preference is "Dota." And if you don't know what "Dota" is, well, Martinez is happy to tell you.
There's "a Super Bowl for it," Martinez said of the multiplayer online battle arena game. He attended last year with some college buddies. They jammed themselves inside KeyArena in downtown Seattle. The prize pool was $18 million, he remembers. This year, the cash prize increased to $20 million.
Enough dough to tempt anyone, even a professional football player.
"I'll go watch it," Martinez said, "but, yeah, I'm sticking to football for now."
He carries his love for stratagem to the football field.
No wonder Packers coach Mike McCarthy already has been impressed with his new linebacker. McCarthy often is reserved in his praise for rookies.
For Martinez, he made an exception.
"He looks very comfortable," McCarthy said. "I think he's done a really nice job transitioning from the base defense to the sub defense, his command, the echoing of the calls. He's very bright. Quick. And he definitely is a very instinctive player. He's off to a very good start."
It's how quickly Martinez recognizes plays that has impressed McCarthy the most, the coach said.
Quick recognition doesn't come by accident. Especially for a rookie. Martinez said he always has a study partner. In Green Bay, third-round pick Kyler Fackrell, an outside linebacker, fills that role.
They study two, three hours each night. The cycle is continuous. Martinez will jot notes from practice, then carry his notebook into the film room. On film, he'll verify coaching tips from previous reps. Then he'll implement any corrections the next day.
Martinez vowed his study habits won't diminish after this week's minicamp. Vacation? No, he said. Martinez expects "this whole first year" to be a continuous grind.
So while teammates take it easy over the next five weeks leading up to training camp, Martinez will work.
He already has informed his father, Marc, of an important job he'll fill this summer. At home, Martinez needs a study partner.
While Marc isn't a football coach — "he said he didn't have enough patience," Martinez said — he'll do just fine in a temporary role. He's already told Dad to have a whiteboard.
"He's going to have fun with it," Martinez said. "He wants to learn all about it. It will be cool."
Martinez said he wants the 30,000-foot view of his new defense. At the kitchen table, in the backyard, he and Dad will examine every personnel package. Every position. Over and over.
His approach will be like a quarterback studying the offense, which is fitting. In defensive coordinator Dom Capers' system, linebackers are signal callers. They're responsible for pre-snap communication, checking into new plays.
It's a lot for rookies to digest. Which is why they rarely play early in Capers' defense. Any chance of immediate playing time requires complete knowledge of the playbook, Martinez knows.
"Every single play," he said, "I'm trying to figure out, 'OK, what is the D-line doing? What are they doing on certain stunts, certain things like that? What the corner's doing on certain plays. Do I know if I have help out there?' And all those little things that are going to help me that much more, where I can see everything and I don't have to look backwards and see, 'OK, is the safety there?' I know he's going to be there on this play."
Maybe Martinez will be the exception.
The Packers need him to handle coverage assignments in nickel and dime, sub-package defenses that consume approximately 75% of snaps. Martinez said there are few differences between the Packers' dime package and how Stanford played with six defensive backs, which explains why McCarthy has been impressed with Martinez's quick transition to the sub-package.
Martinez also has benefited from almost exclusively taking first-team reps in practice, something that wouldn't happen without fellow inside linebacker Sam Barrington recovering from the foot injury that forced him to miss 15 games last fall. He may be a rookie, but the Packers didn't hesitate before giving Martinez a heavy workload this off-season.
"It's kind of one of those things that I was actually happy about," Martinez said of his first-team reps. "You kind of at first go, 'Oh.' Like, you're in there with the ones. I was like, 'All right, works for me,' and I'm kind of using it to my advantage."
A healthy portion of first-team reps this off-season should only help Martinez's transition as a rookie. So should his mind for strategy.
Any questions, he can always ask his MVP quarterback two lockers away.
