First broken by Sam Webb, Michigan intends to hire Don "Wink" Martindale to replace Jesse Minter as defensive coordinator.

Wink was the defensive coordinator of the Ravens from 2018-'22, meaning he's the DC who developed the "Ravens" defense that Michigan's been running, and was the coordinator Mike Macdonald and Jesse Minter were reporting to before leaving for college jobs. Mac replaced Martindale in 2022, and Wink coached the New York Giants defense for the last two years.

If you're looking for a reason Michigan could pull a guy like Martindale out of the NFL now, the Ravens clearly chose to move on to Macdonald after 2021, and the Giants were 23rd and 30th in DVOA in the two seasons since, so the shine's come off. But he also checks the boxes that Sherrone Moore wanted for his DC hire, namely continuity, experience, and a big enough deal that the big deals on the roster don't get lured away by big deals in the portal.

If your goal for this hire was to get whomever Jesse Minter suggests, it's hard to do better than Minter's mentor. But of course we're Michigan fans flush from winning a national championship on the strength of the defense, so let's address the nits.

[After THE JUMP: Analysis.]

Can he coach a Ravens defense?

Well yeah it's his defense; Martindale was the Ravens defensive coordinator when they committed to running this stuff in 2018. Both Jesse Minter (analyst 2018, DBs 2019-'20) and Mike Macdonald (LBs 2018-'20, Wink's analyst before that) were assistants under Martindale, with Mac succeeding Martindale as both Ravens LBs coach and defensive coordinator. John Harbaugh and Martindale "mutually parted ways" after the 2021 season, and Wink went on to two rough years with the New York Giants that also ended mutually this offseason.

The Giants are so dysfunctional I can't contextualize anything that happened there, but you have to wonder if Wink was The Amoeba Guy why the Ravens were willing to lose him in 2022. The stated reason was Wink wanted to be a head coach.

Considering his replacement would succeed Pete Carroll in two years, that seems like spin. Baltimore fell from 6th to 20th in DVOA the year Martindale lost Macdonald, and returned to 5th their first year under Mac; they were 1st this season. Clearly Macdonald himself was a major part of the Ravens' success under Martindale, but the '21 Ravens were wracked by injuries, particularly in the secondary. It's pretty clear that Wink was due for a big new contract, and John Harbaugh realized he could get the same or better out of Macdonald for much less.

On the other hand, this is the guy who was the coordinator who came up with the system Michigan rode to a national championship with a pair of his assistants, one of whom is now an NFL head coach and another a coordinator. New Ravens DC Zach Orr was an undrafted free agent who played for Martindale from 2014-'16 then became an analyst under him in 2017-'20 before taking an assistant role with the Jags in 2021. If those guys were just running Wink's stuff I imagine the Ravens would have hired Wink back this offseason. But he's not "just another Ravens name" either.

Wink came up through or is one step removed from just about every major 3-4 school or NFL coach you can think of, working under Bob Davie, Rick Minter, and Mike Nolan. Former Baltimore DC Dean Pees connects him to the Saban/Belichik tree.

The "Amoeba" defense actually came out of cap considerations. Pass rushers were expensive, safeties were relatively cheap, and their data showed elite cornerbacks were essential. So the Ravens invested heavily in the secondary, going with smart linebackers until they could draft cheaper ones, and trusting a huge defensive line to mosh rush the quarterback instead of winning (expensive) 1-on-1 battles. It was their luck they developed Matt Judon into a guy who could do both.

Colin had a thread (referenced on our message board) that suggests Wink is much more of a Cover 1 and Cover 0 guy, whereas Minter and to a lesser degree Macdonald liked to use sim pressures and rotating coverages, IE the Amoeba stuff that gives the defense its flavor.

If you're lost on that chart, I think it means the Giants blitz the passing game like the Vikings, and Broncos. The Ravens influence is there in a lot of Cover 1 and Cover 3.

Ross Fulton went so far as to call Wink's defenses "Fangio-esque."

I'm not sure what they mean by that. Fangio's tree, as I understand it, shares the light boxes, off corners, wide standup edges, and disguised coverages with the Ravens, but the "system" is mostly based in two-high, specifically lots of Quarters and Cover 6. This worked a couple of times for Denver in slowing down Pat Mahomes, and has been getting eviscerated underneath ever since the scheme profligated to the Chargers (pre-Harbaugh), Seahawks (pre-Mac), Packers, Vikings, and Browns. Michigan bases out of Cover 3 with a lot of sim pressure, but Colin notes he thought Macdonald was a Don Brown guy when Michigan hired him initially, considering often the Ravens were running Cover 1 with five-man pressures in 2020. The supposition is that Martindale likes to run Cover 1 until he can run Cover 0, and Macdonald/Minter really spread their wings when they got to Ann Arbor.

If you're just comparing their NFL defenses, yeah, Wink is a lot more blitzy (that was kind of the point of spending all that cap space on ninjas in the secondary). I don't know if you can compare the two, however. Michigan spends long chunks of its season in a base Cover 3 and leans into the weird stuff for Ohio State and maybe a Washington on top of it. NFL teams play other NFL teams 16 times before the postseason. It's a much different level of exposure, and affords you a slower installation. Being in the NFL for the last two decades probably means Martindale will be a downgrade from Minter in the strategic deployment of Michigan's Amoeba tricks, but I'm not convinced he runs a different system. That would defeat the point.

Can he recruit or is he just an NFL lifer?

Wink somehow never overlapped with Greg Mattison despite coaching at a lot of the same stops, but he's got a profile very similar to Matty's when he returned to college. That is, Martindale's got a college background but has been in the NFL since 2004. Originally from Dayton—Trotwood-Madison in fact—Wink was a truck driver(!) for a year after college then went back to his school (Defiance) to be the defensive coordinator in 1986. He was a linebackers assistant at Notre Dame under Bob Davie in the mid-'90s under Rick Minter before joining Minter's staff at Cincinnati. Jack Harbaugh then hired Martindale to be the defensive coordinator at WKU from 1999-2003.

Wink's NFL career started with the Raiders, and two years later he joined the Bronco's for Mike Nolan's second stint in Denver. Nolan only lasted a year under Josh McDaniels, who promoted Wink to defensive coordinator in 2010. McDaniels was gone before the season ended and Wink was out of there with him. After a season off, John Harbaugh hired his dad's old assistant to be the new linebackers coach because Dean Pees was being promoted to DC. Pees kept the position until 2017 when Martindale in turn replaced him.

One important note: Via Sam on our podcast yesterday, Wink's was a name who moves the needle for keeping Michigan's defensive stars. The chances that everybody makes it the start of the season just went up substantially.

Staying power?

This is probably a short-term rental—two or three years—since Wink's been a successful pro DC and didn't come back to the college ranks for 20 years once he got his NFL shot. I haven't gotten into what was going on with the Giants, but this seems like a marriage of great convenience. Wink's a 60-year-old coach whose career was stalling out, and Michigan spent the last three years running his stuff with two of his guys who quickly became coaching darlings. Sherrone Moore missed out on Orr, seemed to be losing Cullen to Macdonald, and spent the last two weeks losing battles over assistants with his former boss.

To Sherrone Moore, this is a feature, not a bug. Moore is one of those young guys that Harbaugh brought on. Harbaugh had a ton of experience, and had his dad around. Jesse Minter's dad was around too. Sherrone explicitly wanted a more experienced coach for his DC, which means he was never going to hire a hot up-and-comer in his 30s.

Martindale probably isn't going to do a lot of recruiting, and if he beats Ohio State again and an NFL team wants him he's probably gone. Those are the downsides. The upshot is Michigan gets to keep running the Amoeba—now under the guy who invented it—and gets to keep telling players with NFL dreams that they've come to the school where that happens.

Ideally, Martindale gets to coach a loaded defense for a couple of years, and when he 's ready to go back to the pros Clinkscale's spent all that time in Wink's back pocket and is ready to run it like a Raven.