Michigan Football’s defensive coordinator sets the record straight

The Michigan Wolverines have been very fortunate with their last two defensive coordinator hires. In 2021, Mike Macdonald (now the head coach of the Seattle Seahawks) helped turn Michigan’s defense back into one of the best defensive units in all of college football. In 2022-23, it was Jesse Minter who continued that streak during his two years as defensive coordinator. With Minter moving on to the Los Angeles Chargers along with Harbaugh, Michigan hopes to have hit the jackpot again with new defensive coordinator Wink Martindale.

Compared to his two predecessors, Martindale brings significantly more experience to his role as defensive coordinator. But with experience comes age, and Martindale is already aware that some comparisons to another former UM DC are unfair.

“There’s a narrative out there right now – and one of the things is I don’t listen to the radio and I don’t read articles or anything – but there’s a narrative out there now that some people are afraid it’s going back to the old Don Brown system,” Martindale said on the Champions Circle Leaders Series with Jake Butt. “That’s not the case at all. To me, that’s profiling. Just because I’m old and Don Brown is old, you can’t put us together.”

There’s no doubt that diehard Michigan football fans know exactly who Don Brown is, and it’s not hard to see why Martindale would want to push back on that comparison. Brown took over as defensive coordinator on Harbaugh’s staff at the start of the 2016 season, and early results looked promising. In fact, Brown had taken the Wolverines’ defense to No. 2 nationally after his first year with the program. Unfortunately, that was the high point of his time in Ann Arbor, as his defense continued to decline year after year. Michigan’s defense fell to No. 6 in 2017, No. 8 in 2018, No. 10 in 2019, and bottomed out at No. 56 in 2020 — ultimately prompting Harbaugh to make a change at the position.

To properly set up the defense, Harbaugh leaned on his brother John and a defensive philosophy that helped make the Baltimore Ravens one of the best in the NFL. That decision led to a series of new hires at the University of Michigan, all from the same coaching staff. In fact, Macdonald, Minter and Martindale were all part of the Ravens staff at the same time.

“I’m proud of the coaches that have come out of that defensive tree and worked with me and it’s stayed that way. There’s (D’Anton) Lynn at USC – he was with me. Anthony Weaver is the defensive coordinator in Miami – he was with me. Of course, you know Mike (Macdonald) went to Seattle, Jesse (Minter) is the Chargers’ defensive coordinator. Brian Duker is down in Miami. We were all there together, and there’s a lot of guys … Drew Wilkins, who’s in New England now.

“It all started with John Harbaugh, actually. Nobody who’s not in this room understands that. I mean, I have a lot of respect for the Harbaugh family – and they just want to win, no matter who they’re coaching with, wherever they’re coaching. And when John hired me as defensive coordinator, he told me, ‘Hey, I want to be more flexible in what we do.'”

From then on, Harbaugh and Martindale became central figures in developing a simplified defensive concept that takes advantage of the strengths of the personnel on the field – the same concept that Michigan has now implemented with great success over the past three seasons.

“It was names from the past, like Dean Pees, Greg Mattison, Chuck Pagano, Rex Ryan. And the defense had become a tangled kite rope where nobody could play as fast as we wanted. And John said, ‘Let’s simplify this whole thing and still make it flexible enough so you can call any front you want and have easy ways to close the front.’ We went from there to pressure, from pressure to coverage. And it’s just a series of concepts that we can execute with the personnel that we have.”

Although Martindale intends to bring his own defensive philosophy to Ann Arbor, he also made it clear that it will be a collaborative effort among the entire staff, noting that head coach Sherrone Moore has assembled a great staff of football experts.

“Even this year, Sherrone has hired a great defensive staff with the personnel we have. I have one of my guys there, Kevin Wilkins, who is an analyst – hopefully they pass it so the analysts can coach because he’s a great coach. We have LaMar, Lou and BJ as the main guys who all have experience coordinating, so obviously I’m going to rely on them heavily when I return to college from the pros.

“That’s going to be our defense. That’s Michigan’s defense. That’s Sherrone’s defense. And if you take any of those elements out next year, it’s still the same system, but there’s going to be another little personality thing. And it’s also going to depend on who’s commentating on the games. And I’m going to commentate on the games. But the defense is so flexible, and we haven’t even talked about the players yet. It’s so flexible that it shows the personality of whoever’s coaching the defense — and we coach them all. That’s a ‘we’ thing, that’s not a ‘me’ thing. We coach them all.”

– For more coverage of the Michigan Wolverines, visit Michigan Wolverines On SI –

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