Film Study | What Blake Martinez Could Bring to the Giants Defense

Nick Falato breaks down what the Giants are getting in new inside linebacker Blake Martinez.

Tim Fuller-USA TODAY Sports

Late Monday night, the Giants agreed to terms with their second free agent of the class, inside linebacker Blake Martinez, formally of the Green Bay Packers.

I love how Martinez was the signal-caller for the Packers defense; he made all the adjustments and was continually rearranging fronts, communicating with the secondary, and audibling plays to the offenses’ actions.

I’m sure these leadership intangibles appealed to Dave Gettleman, as the Giants have been looking for a new leader at the second level since the release of Alec Ogletree.

And speaking of Ogletree, Martinez is an upgrade over Ogletree. Martinez has had over 100 tackles the last three seasons, with 97 solo tackles in 2019.

He also added 3 sacks and 5 tackles for a loss in 2019, while ranking 150th in overall defense, outside of the top 200 in rush defense, 70th in tackling, and 94th in coverage, among linebackers in 2018 and ranking 99th in overall defense, 136th in rush defense, 50th in tackling, and 56th in coverage, in 2019 according to Pro Football Focus.

Not good, but I believe context is deserved.

Those numbers were drastically different in Dom Capers' 3-4 Eagle front, which had Mike Daniels being a dominant beast. Mike Pettine’s defense is similar, but the utilization of Martinez, along with the declining dearth of talent in front of him, stressed the analytical statistics of the young linebacker out of Stanford.

I see a lot of divisiveness on the Twittersphere about Martinez’s lack of coverage ability. Some of those concerns are true. Martinez isn’t the “new age” linebacker type that has sideline to sideline type speed, despite the fact he played predominantly as the field linebacker for Green Bay in nickel/sub-packages.

Is it frustrating that the Giants signed Martinez to a deal that was only $1.75 million more a year, at the same number of years, than Cory Littleton? Yes, it is.

What about Martinez's deal being a half-million more than Joe Schobert’s five year deal with Jacksonville? Yes, but I would argue the flexibility, and length, of Martinez’s deal, will help the Giants in the long run.

As for Littleton, playing in front of Aaron Donald is such an advantage, especially since Green Bay lacked high-end talent on the defensive line, which does not help the second-level defenders.

I wanted to go into Martinez’s evaluation with a clear mind, so I dove into his film and came away reluctant to praise, but not devastated by the deal.

There are plenty of things to like about Martinez, No. 50 in these video clips.

Martinez does a very good job keying and diagnosing blocking schemes, and then putting himself in a position to clog his gap responsibility and execute his run fits within the box.

He has a high football IQ, and good vision assists him in the plays selected for the above clips. Martinez does a solid job working through trash, staying low, and locating the ball carrier near the line of scrimmage.

The second clip is an easy read for Martinez, who beats the center to the A-Gap and makes the tackle in the backfield.

I love what I see in the third clip. Reading the pin-pull concept, Martinez scrapes over the top of #97 Kenny Clark, who does a good job holding the point of attack.

The tight end attempts to seal Martinez away from the hole, but Martinez gets low, uses strong hands, just under 11” which is freakish, while maintaining a low center of gravity, to knock the tight end down and make the tackles at the line of scrimmage.

As I pointed out above, Martinez typically did a good job working through trash. The first clip is the excuse of a playoff game that was the NFC Championship match. 

The rep I’m showing you was a good rep by Martinez as the backside linebacker, working over the top of his line on the outside zone play. He does a good job avoiding contact and takes the right angle to the football. 

The second clip is against the Raiders, and Martinez reads the running back as he flows to the other side of the line of scrimmage. Martinez’s run fit is the B-gap, and he does a good job positioning himself in the near side A-gap hole to deter Josh Jacobs’ ability to pick a lane on the inside zone. 

I also like how Martinez doesn’t allow himself to get engulfed by #72 David Sharpe; instead, he stays low, keeps his chest clean while moving laterally, and closes the distance between the running back and himself, in the destination of the running back. 

Martinez doesn’t get credit for his ability to play “cat and mouse” with running backs on inside zone runs. He does a good job closing off options and taking away avenues for running backs.

Now I like his mental ability and feel he is a good wrap-up tackler in a vacuum, but he shows his warts against shiftier players, and his athletic vulnerabilities appear.

Above you'll see Martinez attempt to square up Tarik Cohen in space. Typically, I am okay with linebackers hitting their landmarks and allowing for underneath throws in coverage--and Martinez allowed this to happen often--but here, he struggled to bring these shiftier types of running backs down. 

The lack of lateral agility is evident in this clip in space. Sadly, the athletic limitations also are on display when Martinez takes a poor angle on outside runs. It doesn’t happen too often because he’s a smart player, but you see it against the 49ers above, and that’s not exactly encouraging. 

The Giants probably don’t view Martinez’s athletic ability as something that will keep him off the field on third down, but I didn’t see him in man coverage much on tight ends in Mike Pettine’s system, so it’ll be interesting to see how he’s deployed in coverage.

This wasn’t a common problem that was always consistent with Martinez’s film, but it showed up enough to address.

Given some of the alignments in Mike Pettine’s defense, Martinez would have to stack and shed interior offensive lineman with free releases, and that didn’t always go too well for Martinez, as it’s a hard ask.

In both clips above, you see Martinez get absorbed and sealed away from his gap assignments; this happened to him when the offensive linemen were granted free releases up to the second level.

Martinez has shown the ability to stack and shed at the second level, but against these bigger interior offensive lineman, he’s struggled, especially if he gets off to a late start diagnosing the play, or if his initial alignment was far off the line of scrimmage.

(Video clips via NFL Game Pass.)