LB Blake Martinez
September 1, 2020
Q: You guys added Logan Ryan to this defense. What do you know about him from your time in the league? What can he bring to the back end here?
A: I’ve never met him. Obviously, I’ve heard a lot of great things throughout the league from guys that have known him. Nate Ebner for one, obviously, he’s on our team now, talks really highly, really highly of him. I’m just excited for him to get here and get to work with him.
Q: You mentioned Nate and other guys who have kind of talked highly of him. What do they say? What do they kind of mention about his physicality, his cerebral style? What is it that they talk highly about?
A: Just he’s a player that has a non-stop motor. Someone that’s versatile that can kind of do a lot of things. I think that’s kind of the main stuff. We didn’t spend too much time talking about it. But for the most part, that’s kind of the gist that I’ve gotten so far.
Q: Just wondering how you’re feeling? We see you during live drills. You’ve kind of been on the side the last couple of days. What has this last week been like for you?
A: it’s good, I’m good. We don’t discuss injuries and things here. I have to push that to Coach Judge. But for the most part, I’m doing well. Just doing what I can do and getting ready every day.
Q: If you had a game, do you feel good enough that you could go out on the field, you could play football and do what you have to do?
A: Yeah. I’m always ready to go. Always ready to go.
Q: As a former Packer living in Wisconsin, what’s your take on what happened in Kenosha? Have you talked to your former teammates? Have you been involved at all in kind of those discussions?
A: As a team, we’ve had a lot of discussions on it. I know we obviously put a statement out before our scrimmage. We’ve had certain team meetings, leadership meetings about it. Us as a team, even in general, we’ve been doing a lot in the community. We have a bunch of different groups working in different areas in New Jersey and New York, just fighting for social justice and things like that. I haven’t talked too much to old players from the Packers, old teammates and things like that. But overall, it’s just a tragedy. It’s something that you kind of try to take the positives from it, where it can push things even more forward and more in the right direction to make sure this doesn’t happen and doesn’t continually happen.
Q: Coach Judge ran what sounds like a really fun drill at the end of practice. I’m just kind of wondering have you ever gone through something like that? Can you just talk about some of the things that Coach Judge has been doing to make it fun for you when training camp is usually so much hard work?
A: I think Coach Judge is always about efficiency, but he adds the fun aspect to it. I think that was one of those types of moments where we’re working on ball security and recovering fumbles, but making it a lot of fun for everyone around and a lot of fun for the guys who are doing it. Whether it’s adding in water, adding in that type of aspect, it brings that kid feeling where you’re on a slip n’ slide. It just made it a great way to end practice.
Q: Have you ever had a practice like that where they worked in some drills to bring back the old childhood memories, I guess?
A: No, this was the first time. I’ve done other things where it’s competition, but it’s more like oh we do an egg toss or something random outside of the football realm. But this was the first time that I’ve had a football type aspect like that.
Q: With the season less than two weeks away, in other seasons you might have pulled preseason games to get a hint of what other teams might be doing. How do you prepare going into this season?
A: It’s a little different obviously with not having preseason games to see, like you said, little bits and pieces. But overall, pretty much every year, the first four games of the season are kind of a crapshoot in general with what teams are going to do, whether it’s new offensive coordinators or a new type of philosophy offense wise. But I think going into this year, we talk about it a bunch, is it’s just going to come down to our overall kind of knowledge of football, whether it’s situations, fundamentals for each position. As long as we have those things down, you can kind of have the ability to adjust on the fly and see the certain things that teams are doing to either start the game and make those adjustments as the game goes on.
Q: Does the crapshoot work the other way too with people not knowing what you’re going to do?
A: Oh yeah, 100 percent. I think that’s the big component where you try to make it an advantage instead of a disadvantage. Where all of a sudden, you’re out there, you’re able to have those, like I said, situations and fundamentals down that other teams don’t have. Now they’re scrambling to fix those instead of having the time to adjust to what we’re doing.
